3 and a Half Murders: An Inspector Saralkar Mystery

by Salil Desai

  A cold, clammy sensation gripped Geeta’s being. This was the first time since she’d been brought here that she’d received a ghost of a hint of why she’d been abducted like that, although the thought had crossed her mind before. She tried to speak again. Her mind screamed to ask questions, to know why, to plead!

  She heard a chair being dragged and her captor sit down within arm’s length of her. “You want to know what’s it all about, don’t you?” Meenakshi Rao asked in a wicked, teasing tone.

  Geeta emitted guttural, pleading sounds. Who was this woman? Why had she kidnapped her? What did she have against her or Dr. Dhingra? Was she doing all this to punish her for having an affair with Dr. Dhingra? Was she Dr. Dhingra’s wife, having discovered her husband’s adultery? Was she by any chance a former paramour of Dhingra? Or was she a criminal holding Geeta for a big, fat ransom from Dr. Dhingra?

  Above all, Geeta’s tortured mind wanted to know—would Dhingra pay up or do what the woman wanted? As her captor had asked—did Dhingra love her enough? Suddenly Geeta wasn’t so sure.

  The next moment her fear magnified hundred fold as she felt the chilling touch of her tormentor’s fingers and palm on the nape of her neck. Geeta wanted to howl in terror, as the touch travelled down from her neck to the cups of her firm breasts inside her blouse, fondling them, squeezing the nipples hard.

  “Nice. Genuine. Guess Dhingra likes the real thing,” she heard Meenakshi say with menacing sarcasm. Then, the woman extricated her hand from Geeta’s blouse and placed it on her exposed midriff, feeling the soft belly, pinching it, one finger circling the navel, then taking a quick dip inside it.

  Every fibre of Geeta’s body screamed with fear, as if her skin and flesh knew her captor’s hands could slice and rip through her, if she so decided.

  Anushka Doshi was groping at Geeta’s buttocks now, pinching, pulling and patting but mercifully the fabric of the saree spared Geeta the direct touch of her loathsome fingers. But that relief was shortlived for Anushka Doshi’s hand reached Geeta’s feet now, and then joined by its companion both her hands entered the folds of her saree – ten spidery fingers riding up her ankles, calves and her thighs.

  What do you want, you sick, pervert woman?Geeta wanted to cry out. Meenakshi Rao’s touch felt slimy, filthy, and evil. The fingers of one hand inevitably entered Geeta’s panty now, tugging at the folds of her most private parts, then slowly, insidiously, slid into her cavity.

  “Perfect . . . how does that feel, Geeta?” came the question in a hypnotic, low pitch echo. “I too wanted to be like that, experience such sensations, feel like a woman all over. I trusted Dr. Dhingra, trusted him with my body . . . and he fooled me and betrayed me! He said, “Anushka, you’ll feel every pleasure, but he’s a liar! I don’t feel a damn thing!”

  She abruptly withdrew her fingers from deep inside Geeta. Geeta tensed as she felt her captor’s mood change. Who was Anushka? She had said her name was Meenakshi. What was happening?

  “Tomorrow is his last chance. I’ve told him if he can’t make me feel the way I yearn to feel then he should give me back intact what he took from me; he better do that! So pray he loves you, Geeta, or tonight might be your last night on earth.”

  The voice was almost maniacally calm and chillingly matter-of-fact. As if the thin line of sanity had been erased in Anushka Doshi’s mind and everything she thought of appeared perfectly reasonable.

  Geeta heard her walk away in the darkness. The door of the room opened and shut behind her, leaving Geeta shaking uncontrollably.

  Outside, the lone constable watching the two-storey house was almost nodding off, blissfully unaware of the conversation between the kidnapper and her hapless victim.

  Sherly Fernandes had slammed the phone down on Saralkar twice. Then when he had called again for a third time, she had threatened to file a complaint against him with NCW, NHRC, and Maharashtra state police authorities. When he still persisted firmly but politely, she had resorted to abuse.

  That’s when Saralkar decided to take the bull by the horns. “Listen, Mrs. Fernandes, did the torture Rahul subject you to have anything to do with gender reassignment?”

  There was stunned silence at the other end of the line. Saralkar waited, unsure what she would do next. Would she disconnect? In which case he was sure she wouldn’t take another call from him. Or would she answer—confirm or deny—that he had hit bullseye? “Please, Mrs. Fernandes,” Saralkar spoke again, “trust me, I will not make any information public. You will not be dragged through any muck.”

  He was surprised by the deep empathy palpable in his own voice. Had it got across to her?

  He heard little sniffles as if Sherly Fernandes was crying. “The sick bastard . . . used me as a guinea pig,” she said, her voice full of indignation and tears. Then her words gushed forth in a torrent.

  ASI Dharmesh Murgud sensed he was in trouble the moment his ex-boss, Inspector Hegde, entered the room with his current boss, along with a Maharashtra state police officer. It was clear to him that he had been baited by the phone call from his colleague the previous day to ensure his presence. The point was how much did they all know?

  The allegations and questions came thick and fast but he knew all about interrogation techniques and feints. For God’s sake he himself had used them so often! Murgud almost relished parrying and refuting all suggestions of wrongdoing. He denied everything. He denied ever having helped Bhupathi or Sodhi; he denied being in touch with them over the years; he denied helping them get new identities; he denied knowing Sanjay Doshi and Anushka Doshi; he denied getting petty criminals to pose as imposters for land deals in Pune; he denied being Anushka Doshi’s accomplice in Sanjay Doshi’s murder or knowing her whereabouts now.

  He kept proclaiming his innocence, claiming hotly that he was an upright officer now being framed for reasons unknown to him. Murgud had no illusions. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep up the denials forever. But he certainly could limit the damage by first assessing how much they knew. Most people who committed crimes sealed their own fates by implicating themselves during interrogation. The trick was to make the policemen lay their cards on the table—a technique only habitual criminals used with a fair degree of success.

  Only when he had some idea of the limits of the information and hard evidence available with them, would he start framing answers. He dared not underestimate the cops in front of him, of course. The Maharashtra cop, PSI Motkar, had slipped in a few surprise questions already and Murgud also knew Inspector Hegde to be a wily man, capable of giving suspects a frightening grilling. They would eventually press the right buttons or tie him up into knots. But he was fairly sure they wouldn’t resort to third degree against one of their own ilk, that too so soon.

  Just as he thought the first round of questioning was drawing to an end and that he would get through without being seriously pinned down, the unexpected happened. His other cell phone, the one in his pocket, began to trill. His official cell phone had already been taken from him and switched off temporarily by the interrogators. The rings from his pocket alerted them to his other cell phone, since he had not been searched so far.

  “Take the call,” Inspector Hegde ordered him. “Put it on speaker.” The stiffening of Dharmesh Murgud’s body and the momentary look of alarm on his face had roused Hegde’s instincts immediately.

  Murgud slid his hand into his side pocket and drew out the phone slowly, hoping the rings would stop while also wondering whether he should disconnect instead of taking the call. He knew he was damned either way. Why hadn’t he put it on silent mode? But how was he to have known he would be in the midst of an interrogation.

  “Murgud, quick! Take the call,” Hegde repeated sharply.

  Dharmesh Murgud did as he was told and put the phone on speaker mode.

  “Dhingra’s mobile is switched off,” Anushka Doshi’s voice came through. “You think he might be up to something?”

  Hegde gestured to Murgud to reply. Murgud cleared his thr
oat. “Maybe he’s just in a surgery or something. Try again after some time.”

  “Hmmm . . . I don’t like it,” Anushka Doshi said edgily. “Could he have gone and contacted the police?”

  Murgud looked at the three cops in front of him nervously. If the conversation went on, he was bound to implicate himself in Geeta Chaudhari’s kidnapping—a matter that his interrogators had not raised so far and perhaps did not have inkling about. If they got to know about it now, he knew his goose was cooked.

  He could make out from their shrewd glances that they had scented they were onto something. Hegde silently whispered instructions into his ear.

  “I-I-I’ll call you back in an hour’s time. I can’t speak much now,” Murgud stuttered into the phone as instructed.

  “Okay. But if that bastard Dhingra tries anything smart I swear Geeta won’t go back in one piece,” Anushka Doshi rasped viciously before hanging up.

  The remark landed a sucker punch on Dharmesh Murgud’s prospects, blowing a big hole in his claims of not being involved in heinous crimes with Anushka Doshi. He felt sick. His interrogators were now going to make mincemeat of him.

  It wasn’t long before Murgud was telling them all they wanted to hear to save his own skin.

  It was late morning and Dr. Mahendra Dhingra had still not left home. Mercifully he hadn’t scheduled any surgeries that needed cancellation that morning, but he’d asked his receptionist to cancel all his appointments and also ring up other hospitals he was attached to, to excuse him for a day or two.

  He’d driven home at 2 a.m., drunk and terrified of crashing his car into something or someone. No sooner had he reached home, he’d staggered to the bathroom and thrown up. His household had woken up, staring unbelievingly at him, shocked and wondering why he was in a state in which they’d never seen him before. His wife was relieved, concerned, and indignant all at the same time, his teenage children puzzled and embarrassed.

  Dhingra, who was in no position to offer an explanation, just crawled wretchedly into bed—spent, humiliated, and scared to death. When he woke up in the morning his head was splitting, his body aching and feverish. The problem had of course not gone away. It loomed even larger, as if it had grown bigger during the night. What was he going to do? How was he going to save Geeta’s life? What was he going to tell Anushka Doshi when she called? He frantically looked at the wall clock. It was past 10.30 a.m., he realized with panic. She was supposed to have called at 10 a.m. What if she had already tried calling, while he had still been sleeping?

  Dhingra reached for his cell phone and doubled up with fear when he saw the missed calls at 10.01 a.m. and 10.10 a.m. What would Anushka Doshi have concluded when he hadn’t taken the calls? How would she react? Would she take it as defiance? Would she be enraged? Would she immediately have acted upon her threats to harm Geeta?

  An intense wave of nausea hit Dr. Dhingra again and he felt mentally and physically drained. Yet he didn’t make any effort to call back on the number and try speaking and placating Anushka Doshi. For what was he going to say? His brain had arrived at no solution. Instead he sought refuge in the bathroom and turned on the shower. Maybe that would soothe the drumming inside his head and stem the sick, unhealthy feeling creeping all over his body.

  He suddenly began to sob and retch, his body wrecked by the effects of last night’s drinking binge and mind devastated by the burden of the situation he was in. Dhingra stepped out of the bathroom a few minutes later, no better in mind or body but feeling just a little less fragile. The rings of his mobile rattled him again and he felt curiously torn between the urge to pick up the phone on the one hand and not doing so on the other.

  It was an unknown number, not Anushka Doshi’s. Was she calling him from another phone to check what Dhingra would do? “Hullo,” Dhingra answered timidly.

  “Dr. Dhingra, this is Senior Inspector Saralkar from Pune Homicide Squad, Maharashtra Police,” a crisp, authoritative voice spoke, stunning Dhingra.

  “Yes, yes,” he managed to say, his blood running cold with the thought that the cop was calling to report they’d already found Geeta’s body.

  “Dr. Dhingra, we have information that a patient of yours called Anushka Doshi has abducted your paramour, Geeta Chaudhari, and has threatened to kill her if you don’t fulfil her demands,” Saralkar quickly summarized. “Is that right?”

  “Ho-how do you know?’ Dhingra asked, his mouth sticky with dried saliva. “Who told you?’

  “Crimes have a way of surfacing, Dr. Dhingra. Never mind. What have you decided about her demands?” Saralkar asked. “Reversing the gender reassignment procedures you carried out on Anushka Doshi four years ago?”

  “It simply can’t be done, sir!” Dr. Dhingra replied. “The procedures can’t be reversed. I mean the breast operations can be but the penile inversion into a vagina cannot be undone. She’s crazy. I’ve tried to explain this to her so many times. Nowhere in the world has it been successfully done.”

  “I see. So what was going to be your answer when Anushka Doshi called today? Say no and let Geeta die?” Saralkar asked sharply.

  “No. I-I don’t know what I was going to do . . . try and reason with her again, maybe. I even had this crazy idea of saying I’d do the reversal surgery. Then once she’d be on the operating table, I would threaten to, uhh, kill her . . . if she didn’t release Geeta.”

  “Why didn’t you approach the Goa Police?” Saralkar cut in.

  Dhingra spluttered to a halt, then replied defensively. “Anushka warned me against it. Geeta’s life is in danger, so . . . so I am really scared. I didn’t know if I could trust the police.”

  “So would you prefer to continue handling the situation on your own still?” Saralkar mocked.

  “No, no! Please, please help me. Anushka Doshi already called twice this morning but I couldn’t take the call,” Dhingra wailed.

  “Couldn’t take or chose not to take the call?” Saralkar asked.

  “No, no. Please. I was so drunk last night. I just woke up. Tell me what to do, sir?”

  “When did Anushka Doshi call?”

  “About an hour ago. Two calls, at 10.01 a.m. and 10.10 a.m.”

  “Okay. Here’s what you will do, Dr. Dhingra. Call back on the number. If Anushka Doshi picks up, tell her you have a solution. That gender reassignment surgery can only be reversed at an advanced research facility in some foreign country by a certain team of specialists who’ve done pioneering work in the field.”

  “But, Inspector, there isn’t even a single successful . . .” Dhingra felt compelled to interrupt.

  “Dr. Dhingra, hear me out,” Saralkar said forcefully. “We have to concoct a convincing solution to lure and snare Anushka Doshi. So you need to tell her what I have suggested. With your knowledge of the field I am sure you can fill in authentic details of which country, which medical research institute, and the leading specialists, etc. You have to further tell Anushka that you are prepared to pay for all the expenses of the surgery, including travel, and that you will arrange for references and even documents to enable her to get a visa on medical grounds. You can even offer to accompany her. Then plead with her to come and meet you for a detailed discussion or show your readiness to meet her wherever she wants to. You have got to be persuasive. Do you understand?”

  “But why not simply tell her I’ll operate and ask her to come over?” Dhingra asked doubtfully. “That’s what she wants.”

  “Dr. Dhingra, do you have any idea who you are dealing with? Do you know Anushka Doshi’s background?”

  “Well, her original name as a man was Shaunak Sodhi when she came to me five years ago. Her documentation and legal compliances were all in order, including psychiatric evaluation from two well-known psychiatrists. Why? How’s the question relevant?”

  “That’s because she’s not some crazed psychotic transgender who wants to become a man again,” Saralkar said. “Anushka Doshi is a dangerous volatile criminal who’s killed at least three people so far,
one as a man and two as a woman, and she will have no compunctions killing again if she suspects you are bluffing her.”

  Dhingra gasped, feeling clammy and weakened. “My God!” was all he uttered.

  “Exactly. So are you confident of explaining to a psychotic murderer why suddenly overnight you are in a position to perform a reversal surgery, which you said wasn’t possible two days ago?” Saralkar asked. “Should we take that risk?”

  “No! No!”

  Saralkar continued driving home the reasoning. “Whereas, if you hold out hope convincingly by telling her you can help get it done abroad, at least we buy enough time. We have some idea where Geeta is being held but we need to make sure we are in a position to rescue her unharmed. Or at least make sure that Anushka does not get into a murderous frame of mind. Also, it’ll be a good reason to explain why you hadn’t been able to pick up the phone earlier by saying you were busy speaking to the concerned specialists at the medical facility abroad.”

  “Okay,” Dr. Dhingra acceded as the officer’s logic began making sense to him. “Where is Geeta being held? Is she all right?”

  “At a farmhouse near Dharwad, about hundred and fifty kilometres from Panjim,” Saralkar said. “She’s unharmed as far as we know.”

  “But Dharwad is in Karnataka state, so how come you are from Maharashtra Police?” Dr. Dhingra asked.

  “It’s a joint operation. In fact we’ll also be coordinating with Goa Police. Anyway, let’s not waste any more time. You need to call Anushka immediately. Ring me back as soon as you finish talking to her. Then we’ll devise the plan of action. Do you want me to repeat the instructions and what you need to say?”

  “No,” Dr. Dhingra said, now feeling a lot less weak and helpless.

  He disconnected the call and then took a few seconds to compose himself. Ideally he would’ve liked to show his face to his wife briefly but he knew there was no time to be lost. He braced himself and began dialling Anushka Doshi’s number. His fingers shook, something that never happened to him when he wielded the surgical scalpel.