Brutal

by Uday Satpathy

  Her cab, which she had booked from Jabalpur, stood outside the police station as she went inside the small and dingy building. The SHO's desk was empty. There was only a single constable sitting at a desk in a dark corner of the room. She went there and introduced herself.

  The man had probably never come across the media. He got really excited with the prospect of being seen on the TV, but Seema dampened his spirits by telling him that she was only investigating and there was no camera team. The constable told her that everybody except him had gone on a police raid somewhere.

  Seema asked him about the skeletons case. His answers to her questions were similar to the ones she had heard in other police stations.

  “Madam, cases like these are extremely difficult to solve. We found the skeletons six years after they died. I don’t think we had any clue even at the time of their disappearance. Nobody in this police station today was posted here eight years ago.”

  “You mean people have been transferred?”

  “Some got promoted and moved out. Some got transferred. One of them retired also. Nobody wants to live in this miserable place.”

  “Is there anybody nearby who can help me with the story?” Seema said, ignoring his ‘miserable place’ remark. Every government employee seems to have some complaint.

  “You can try meeting Sukh Ram Singh. The old man retired three years ago. Now lives in a village a few kilometers from here. He was posted here during the disappearances.”

  “Can you write down his address?”

  * * *

  As her cab took a narrow road towards village Barhi, Seema fought an urge to tell the driver to turn back and take her back to Jabalpur. A full day of running around places had frustrated her. She wondered what new clues would this small village in Chandia throw. Apprehensively, she looked out the window. Evening was about to fall. The surrounding jungles had begun darkening ominously. I better hurry.

  The rustic smell of countryside India reached her nose and helped soothe her nerves. Her car was often stopped by herds of cows and goats heading back to their shelters. She saw people looking curiously at her and her car, as they moved across a road with small houses on both sides of it.

  The driver talked to a passer-by and asked for Sukh Ram Singh’s house. The man motioned towards a dilapidated house at the far end of the village.

  As Seema got down from her car in front of Sukh Ram’s house, she saw a couple of small children running towards her, curiously eyeing the madam from the city. A few women were peeping at her through their windows from the adjoining houses.

  Sukh Ram Singh lived in a mud house with a thatched roof. A large haystack lay in a small courtyard beside it. The doors were open. Seema asked for Sukh Ram. An old lady in a sari told her to sit in the front room and called out the man’s name.

  An old man wearing thick spectacles came into the front room. His hair and moustache were completely white. He squinted on seeing Seema’s unknown face. I have disturbed this man’s siesta. She stood up and told him about her and her purpose. The man took a seat beside her and looked for a minute at the horizon visible from his door, as if he had been carried into some other world.

  “I was waiting for someone to ask me about this case before I retire. You came three years late. But still I’m glad at least somebody came,” the old man said with a feeble voice. “What I’m going to tell you is completely off the records. If you quote me, I’ll deny ever meeting you. Is that agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Eight years ago, on the evening these kids disappeared, I was doing my night shift in the AJK Umaria Police Station. It must’ve been about 3 AM in the morning when I got a call from this man. He sounded hysterical and was in complete paranoia. He told me he had killed his friends. And somebody is after him. They were going to kill him.”

  Seema looked at him wide-eyed. This was news to her.

  “Was it Kunal Chaubey?” she asked. He was the only one whose skeleton was not found.

  “I think so. I didn’t know then, because he didn’t tell me his name. He was talking about murder and it was a serious matter, so I immediately called up the control room and told them to dispatch a team.”

  “Where was he calling from?”

  “Some PCO booth on the outskirts of the national park area. That’s what he told me.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “The team took too long to reach. I guess about 2-3 hours. The man was not at the booth till they got there. He was gone.”

  There was an unsettling silence between Seema and the man for a minute.

  Then Seema said, “This is shocking. What you’re saying is nowhere in the investigation reports.”

  “Because there was nothing to suggest that the call I received that night pertained to this case.”

  “Ridiculous! It sounds highly relevant to this case.”

  “I think there was something fishy going on. Because when I told the sub-inspector next day about the call, he refused to believe me.”

  “Why would he refuse?”

  “I had a condition,” he said and hesitated for a few seconds before continuing again, “Actually, I had a drinking problem. I would often come to the police station drunk. But I swear I was not drunk that night. Still, that fucking bastard was not ready to put my statement on record. It struck me that day and still continues to needle me that sub-inspector Neeraj Jaiswal knew something more about this case than me. The man is a DSP now, transferred to Andhra Pradesh.”

  “Do you remember anything else which the caller might have told you?”

  “Yes. And I have kept it for the last. There was one statement, which he made while blabbering on the phone. He said something about Dr. Chauhan. I don’t remember what exactly.”

  The word ‘Doctor’ rang a bell in Seema’s mind. The Dean was talking about a psychiatrist. Doctor.

  “Dr Chauhan? Is he a psychiatrist?”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “One of my sources said Kunal was in touch with a psychiatrist,” Seema said.

  She looked at the man’s brooding face. He was silent; absorbed in his thoughts, as if trying to link this information to what he knew already.

  He finally looked at Seema and said, “That makes it easy then.” His eyes were excited. “You know, even though no one was ready to go after this Dr Chauhan, I tried my hand at some personal investigation. I located four Dr. Chauhan’s in Jabalpur. But I didn’t know what to do with those names. I didn’t have any warrant. Neither did I have any support from my seniors. So, I didn’t go any further. But today, eight years later, I see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

  “How so?”

  “Because only one of these doctors is a psychiatrist.”

  * * *

  It was completely dark by the time Seema came out of Sukh Ram’s house. But she was beaming with a renewed sense of optimism. She had a chit in her hand, which held the address of one Dr Avneesh Chauhan. She gave it to her driver.

  Her cab began its return journey to Jabalpur. Besides the headlights of her car, there was no light anywhere else on the deserted road. The surroundings were painted in pitch black. A faint smell of burning coal hung in the air. She felt a little cold as the car made its way through a patch of road surrounded on both sides by the thick forests.

  She was deep in her thoughts. What can be the link between the skeletons case and the Nitin Tomar massacre, other than the gruesome murders obviously? Were these men acting as puppets in some grand play? Somehow, this psychiatrist seemed to hold the only key to this case.

  She was jolted out of her thoughts when her driver pushed the brakes all of a sudden. She almost hit her head on the front seat.

  “What happened…” she stopped her sentence midway and stared in shock, when she saw a Toyota Innova standing in the middle of the road. Two men in army attire stood beside it, pointing guns at their car. Seema heard some movement behind her car. Through the rear windshield, she saw that one more man was stan
ding near the boot. He was also holding a gun. A chill ran down her spine. She rolled up the rear windows and locked her door.

  A bald man in sunglasses emerged from the Innova and started walking towards her car. He approached the driver’s side, pointing his gun at him. He was chewing gum.

  “Miss Seema?” he asked.

  “Yes?” Seema replied from behind the driver. She tried to look indifferent.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us,” the man said, opening the driver’s door. Before the driver could say anything, he grabbed his collar with one hand and pulled him out.

  “Kya hua sahib?” The driver protested sheepishly.

  “Stand outside!”

  This was a sign of danger. She quickly took out her mobile phone. But before she could do anything with it, she saw herself staring down the barrel of a gun pointed at her.

  “Open the door and move out!”

  “Who are you? Do you know I am from the Press?” Seema asked with a shaky voice.

  “I will say only once more,” the man barked. “Open the door and move out!”

  Seema opened her door and came out. She sensed some movement behind her back. Before she could turn, she felt a palm around her mouth, gagging her. She struggled, trying to shout and break free. But her hands wouldn’t move. Another man was holding her hands tightly.

  They carried her and thrust her into the Innova’s rear seat beside another man who was sitting there already. One of her captors entered after Seema, sandwiching her. From the tinted glass, she saw her cab driver pleading to the man in sunglasses. Before she could blink, the man in sunglasses shot the driver in the head. She tried to scream, but felt a hand around her mouth. With tears flowing from her eyes, she saw the two men dump the driver’s body in the forest.

  The man in sunglasses took the driver’s seat of Seema’s cab and drove it in the opposite direction.

  As the Toyota Innova also started moving, a chilling realization began to trouble her. It might be her last day in this world. Only one face came into her mind.

  Vidisha.

  26

  7:30 Pm, Grand Trunk Road, Ambala City

  The warehouse of M/s Turbo Steels Pvt. Limited stood on a secluded road branching out from the Grand Trunk Road. Nothing usually moved on this road, except occasional trucks carrying steel bars to the warehouse. Even during the day, lush green fields of sugarcane and tall trees would conceal the movement of people and goods on this road from public view. In the darkness of the evening today, the road lay as silent as a graveyard. The nearest building, an abandoned car garage, was more than a kilometre away from the warehouse.

  There was no chance that any onlooker would spot the car parked carefully behind this garage. Two people sat in the car since the last couple of hours, waiting for the evening to grow darker. In a minute, both of them came out of the car, holding torchlights in hands. They sneaked into the adjoining sugarcane field.

  “You really think it’s a good idea?” Mrinal said, stooping low while negotiating his way through the sharp sugarcane leaves.

  “Believe me. If there was a better option, I would’ve gone for it,” Prakash replied. “I’m just as scared as you are.”

  A few hours ago, after parking their car, Prakash had checked-out the front side of the warehouse. Outside the entry gate, he saw a small room with a window. There seemed to be some movement inside the room suggesting the presence of one or two guards. They had probably locked the entry gate and remained outside. So, entry from the front gate was impossible.

  The only remaining option was to enter from the back of the warehouse. To make things simpler, it bordered on the sugarcane fields, allowing for stealth.

  “How are we going to get into the warehouse?” Mrinal whispered.

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Both of them walked in the dark sugarcane field trying hard not to stumble over a stump. It was a tough walk and took them about twenty minutes to cover the distance. The wall at the back of the warehouse greeted them with a foul smell of rotten food and urine. The grass was wet, slimy and littered with dirty polythene bags and beer bottles.

  There was a large but rusty metal gate on the wall, which was locked tight with a thick iron chain. The sharp spear-shaped tops on the gate threatened to make climbing difficult. But these were exactly what Prakash thought they can hold on to while climbing.

  Prakash put his ears on the metal gate to listen to any movement inside the building. No movement.

  “I’ll climb first,” Prakash said.

  He secured his right leg on the rough wall and the left on the metal gate. By giving a slight jerk to his body, he was able to catch hold of a pointed top. He pulled his body up while his legs and knees scraped on the wall. In a few seconds, he was finally standing on the wall. He took care not to cut himself with the sharp glass shards embedded on the wall top. Prakash studied the warehouse meticulously.

  The warehouse compound comprised of a large open ground adjoining the wall and an enormous tin-roofed building, completely washed in darkness. A huge pile of long iron bars and rods was lying over the ground. Three trucks were standing beside this iron dump. The entry gate of the warehouse was to his left. Let’s hope it’s locked.

  “Nobody seems to be there. As we expected,” Prakash said, looking down at Mrinal from the top. “I’m getting in.”

  He used the support of the pointed tops to get down into the warehouse compound. He stood there till Mrinal also entered the compound in the same way.

  “We should be getting a Pulitzer for what we are doing,” Mrinal said, while walking behind Prakash.

  They crossed the iron dump yard and approached the tin-roofed building. Prakash threw torchlight over the building. Three large door-less halls, connected by a corridor, came into view.

  Two of the halls were packed to the rafters with long iron rods and bars, protruding almost halfway down the corridor’s breadth. Prakash checked out the two halls one by one. Mrinal followed him closely. After the fiasco at Afroz’s house, Mrinal seemed careful not to remain very far from Prakash. There was nothing of any importance in these rooms.

  They walked towards the third hall. It seemed vacant from a distance, but as they got in, a nauseating stench of human urine and faeces hit their nostrils.

  “What the hell are they doing here?” Prakash said, flashing the torchlight inside the hall. He was both surprised and scared to see what was in front of him.

  There were three empty metallic cages at the far end of the hall. Each cage was about six feet tall and three feet wide. The grills were made up of cast iron rods, like the ones they saw in the other rooms. As they came closer to the cages, they could see thick metal chains lying inside. A white powder was strewn on the floor of the cages. From its smell, Prakash figured out it was bleaching powder. He had an eerie feeling about the cages.

  “Seems like we’re in the right place,” Prakash whispered, swallowing.

  “Look at that,” Mrinal squeaked with a horrified face. He was pointing at the floor of the corner-most cage.

  What Prakash saw made his hair stand on end. Blood.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Mrinal said, almost getting into a sprint.

  “Wait!” Prakash said, throwing his light beam at a corner. “There seems to be another room.”

  Washed in the light, a metallic door came into view. It was not locked, but shut simply with a large latch.

  “We have to check this out,” he continued.

  “Hurry up, then. I don’t want to find myself in those cages.”

  Prakash opened the latch and pushed the door carefully, not making any sound. He flashed the torch around. The room was about half the size of the bigger rooms. At exactly the mouth of the room, there was a desktop computer on a table beside a large steel almirah.

  “Take out the hard drive,” Prakash said.

  Mrinal nodded and got down to work.

  Prakash moved inwards. There were various cartons lyin
g on the floor. He pored over each of them. Most were filled with hardware parts. One of the cartons piqued his interest. It was a plastic carton, unlike the others, which were made of paper. He opened its flaps and looked inside. It contained a video camera, a few tripods, some lighting equipment and a black robe and mask. Home run.

  “I have found what we were looking for,” Prakash whispered. He lifted the video camera and showed it to Mrinal.

  “Oh my God! This is good,” he said. “But I am stuck with this desktop. The CPU box is locked with a strong bolt. It won’t open. Why don’t…” Mrinal went silent all of a sudden.

  The sound of a vehicle reached their ears. It had pulled over outside the entry gate.

  “Bloody hell! Let’s run,” Prakash said, rushing towards the door. Mrinal was already outside.

  They made their way past the cages and came out of the hall into the corridor. The metallic sound of a lock being opened echoed in the silence.

  The main gate is opening. Shit!

  There was no way they were going to escape. The only option was hiding. As the main door opened, they ran into one of the large halls containing the iron rods. The heap was large enough to hide two people. Both Prakash and Mrinal were now crouched behind the metal heap. In complete darkness.

  A vehicle got inside the compound and stopped. Prakash could hear a few men getting down and dragging someone out, who was crying in pain. A man! The wails of the man intensified in a few seconds. It seemed the other men were hauling him across the corridor. A realization made Prakash shudder. They are taking him to the cages.

  The victim kept on crying and wailing as they dragged him into the adjoining hall. His cries stopped all of a sudden after a loud shriek. Prakash winced. Mrinal caught his shoulder. Did they just kill him?

  Prakash heard footsteps moving towards their hall. Shit. The men stopped at the opening of their hall and started smoking. He tried hard to listen to what they were saying. Their words were barely audible. All he could gather were a few words – ‘…got the bastard after 8 years’ and the name ‘Kunal Chaubey’.