The COMPLETE Siya Rajput Crime Thrillers (Books 1 to 4)

by UD Yasha

‘You stole my words for you,’ she said, rubbing my back.

  I returned upstairs after a spell. I set a timer for ten minutes and started meditating. But I did not get to ten minutes. Halfway through, my phone began buzzing. I opened my eyes.

  The moment I saw the name of the person calling me, I knew it had to be something good and something big.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The person calling me was Salim Khan and I answered the ringing phone immediately, excitement flowing through my body.

  ‘I have been waiting for your call,’ I said.

  ‘I was able to retrieve the data from his phone.’

  ‘You’re a superstar. I knew I could count on you.’

  ‘Not so fast. I could only retrieve it partially and it is still encrypted. I remember your sister being interested in such stuff.’

  ‘Radha? Yes.’

  ‘I need some extra eyes on this to crack it quicker. I could use her help.’

  ‘I’ll ask her to call you right away. You can discuss it all in your own techie language.’

  ‘I'm sending her a copy of the data now. We'll be able to crack it faster if we work together.'

  I thanked him and hung up. I ran to my room and told Radha about Salim. I came back to maa's room. I inhaled deeply. Just as I closed my eyes, my phone started buzzing again. It was a message from Rathod.

  Got the warrant. I’m heading to the hospital myself to get Sachin Gill’s medical records.

  I punched the air and sent a message to Rahul, telling him we were going to get the reports soon. He was going to show them to the in-house doctor at his company. I texted Rathod, asking him to send the reports directly to Rahul. Things were finally falling into place. I closed my eyes and felt my body relax.

  I opened my eyes when my phone went off. This time it was actually my alarm, playing a happy tune of birds singing. I rubbed my eyes and went to the control room once again only to find it empty.

  Just then, the door swung open and Radha entered. ‘We’ve cracked Manohar’s phone,’ she said.

  At that exact moment, a man who wore a diamond ring on his index finger was getting restless. He had not anticipated Manohar to cause harm from behind bars. Especially when he knew what was at stake. Siya Rajput had also been a nuisance. She had come from nowhere and was poking her nose in places where it did not belong.

  None of the safety triggers he had set in place had gone off. Yet. One was about to start ringing. He needed to think about what could be done. Whatever approach he took, he knew it was going to get messy. Two people had to be killed. The trick was to get them together and then take them down one after the other. That was the ideal plan. A lesser logistical nightmare. But this situation was not ideal.

  A little bird inside the CID had told him that Manohar’s transfer to Yerwada Jail was going to take place at midnight.

  Was a lawyer supposed to be present when her client was being taken to jail?

  He was not sure. Plus, Siya Rajput had been unpredictable. In any case, he had to be ready to execute plan B. He inhaled deeply and thought it all out. Money was not a problem for him. All he was worried about was the mess that would be created. If it were not for what had happened with the Sinhas, he would not have been worrying about any of this at all.

  He had to make it clean this time. There was no other choice.

  A rap on his door. He turned around. It was his secretary.

  ‘The news channel is here,’ he said. ‘Should I tell them you would be joining them soon?’

  The man turned the diamond ring on his finger once again as he nodded, his mind still occupied by Shaunak Manohar and Siya Rajput.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  We huddled around Radha’s laptop to know what she and Salim Khan had found in Manohar’s phone.

  She typed some code for a few minutes and said, ‘Manohar had started taking out his phone’s SIM card since the day of Sumeira’s interview at Ad Astra. He did not want to be tracked. He removed it whenever he stepped out of his home or school.’

  Radha paused and looked around the room. She said, ‘Luckily for us there's another way to track location of a mobile phone. The first is the popular method in which the location is found by knowing which cell towers the phone is getting a signal from. The phone always interacts with a number of towers so its location needs to be triangulated to know the exact spot. But there is another way to track location thanks to the proliferation of the internet. We can do the same with phone WiFi. Do you remember the last time you navigated to some place, your navigation app asked you to turn your WiFi on for a more precise location?'

  ‘Yeah, I have never understood why,’ Rahul said.

  ‘Your WiFi alone can't work as a GPS. Not right away at least. When GPS determines a location, it tries to access whatever information is publicly available to be accurate. It interacts with the WiFi networks present in that area. It records the location information of all such networks. This way, even if someone else doesn’t have GPS or has disabled it, it can get location information from the WiFi networks. We were able to track Manohar's movements using WiFi in this way. Because even if he had removed his SIM card, his phone was still interacting with a host of WiFi networks.’

  ‘That’s creepy but helpful to us.’

  ‘I know. There’s a way to stop the network location from being recorded. It’s pretty simple actually. Just add underscore nomad to the end of the network name and Google will stop tracking it.’

  ‘What did you find out?’ I said.

  ‘Based off the WiFi connections that Manohar interacted with, we know he went to Sumeira Gill’s house late at night on the 12th of April. He came back home that night. But then he went to her house again. Salim and I were able to track the route he took to go back and forth.’

  ‘Do you know how long he was at Sumeira Gill’s house?’

  ‘Yes. Let me check when he started interacting with other WiFi connections in the area.’

  ‘Sorry, go on. You were telling us something else as well when I interrupted you.’

  ‘Manohar kept going to Sumeira’s house, day after day. He went late on the days he was working. Salim and I aren’t sure, but we think he was never inside their house.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was always close by, literally a stone's throw away.'

  ‘He was spying on them.’

  ‘That’s right. But WiFi data used for tracking location this way can be unreliable. However, we have several reference points to make the most educated guess.’

  ‘How many times did he go to their house?’

  ‘Sixteen times between 12th April and 22nd April.’

  ‘22nd April was the last time?’

  ‘Yes, unless he changed his phone or left it behind before going.’

  ‘Even Sumeira’s neighbours said they last saw the mother-daughter duo more than a month back. Have they really been gone since? No one has missed them enough to even file a missing person’s report.’

  ‘We also found another place that Manohar visited a couple of times. This one is going to interest you more,’ Radha said. ‘It is outside Pune and he went there on the 22nd of April for the first time.’

  ‘No way.’ Could he have taken Natasha and Sumeira Gill?

  Radha said, ‘He again went there a week later.’

  ‘What’s this place?’

  ‘We’re not sure because there were no WiFi networks in the area. Which tells us that it is a deserted place. Which neighbourhood doesn’t even have one WiFi network? We know it is in the direction of the the Pune-Solapur highway though. His phone last got a signal from a WiFi connection at the start of the highway.’

  Solapur was a small town near Pune.

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘About an hour away from Pune.’

  ‘This could be the place where he’s holding Natasha and Sumeira Gill if he has taken them. There’s a chance that even Rucha could be held there,’ I said and paused. ‘While you
're in his phone, can you also check where he was yesterday when Rucha was taken and the Sinhas were killed,' I said and felt bad to have used those words in Atharva's presence.

  ‘Hold on, searching for it now,’ Radha said and started typing faster.

  We held our breath in anticipation. This was the moment of truth. I wondered if tracking a location based on WiFi triangulation was permissible in court. There were already issues with normal cell phone tower triangulation. There was a chance a judge could hear her out. Do I finally have something that will prove Manohar's innocence?

  Even though I felt something was amiss in all the evidence we had collected, I still did not have a shred of substantive tangible evidence that proved Manohar's innocence. Kunal Shastri's face came to my mind, but I pushed it away by thinking about maa and how much progress she had made.

  ‘I got it,’ Radha said. ‘He reached Malini Sinha’s house at 8.40 PM.’

  I remembered Mahesh Bhalerao’s report. The Gunshot Detection System had alerted him at 8.36 PM. According to Rathod, if at all, the GDS reporting was off by a minute. Bhalerao had reached the crime scene at 8.42 PM. That was in line with Manohar’s story. He got there after the shooting and before Bhalerao arrived at the scene.

  A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I had believed something was off about Manohar's implication from the very start. Yet, I had doubted myself. For a good reason. I had been wrong before. But now relief washed over me. Maybe there was hope after all, I thought.

  Manohar was innocent.

  I knew he could have given his cell phone to someone else and that could have been his alibi. But this was a start. I knew we would find substantive proof.

  Radha read what I was thinking. She always did. She pushed her laptop away and crossed to me. ‘I know,’ she said with a beaming smile.

  ‘Superb job, everyone. Radha, you’ve cracked this open for us along with Salim,’ I said and as if on cue, my phone began buzzing in my pocket.

  It was Rahul. He would’ve gotten Sachin’s medical reports from Rathod. I answered the call.

  ‘Siya, I have news about Sachin’s death for you,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I put the phone on speaker and placed it in front of me on the bed. Radha and Atharva leaned forward to listen in. I felt my pulse quicken. Not a word could be missed.

  ‘The doctors had ruled Sachin's death as a clear-cut case of a heart attack. No autopsy was performed. Probably because they did not have a reason to conduct one,’ Rahul said. ‘However, I could get a hold of the doctors’ reports when Sachin was taken to the hospital following his heart attack.’

  I said, ‘Who took him to the hospital?’

  ‘One of Sachin’s work colleagues, a man named Umesh Bhalla, took him. I spoke to Umesh and he told me that he was not supposed to meet Sachin that day, but something at work came up and he needed Sachin’s signature. When he reached Sachin’s house, he saw his boss on the floor. Then Umesh took him to the hospital. Sumeira was not present during any of this,’ Rahul said and paused. ‘I found a few abnormalities. Umesh told me that Sachin was vomiting when he found him. He also told Umesh that he could not feel his face. In addition to this, the doctor’s report says that they detected arrhythmia, which is an abnormal heartbeat rhythm. The doctors gave him a host of medicines to get it back on track but nothing worked. Sachin kept slipping.

  Rahul paused and said, ‘That’s when something hit me. I began looking up this poison called aconitine. It is a natural defense mechanism made by the aconite plant. The poison is found in the tuber of the plant and it has been traditionally used in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. To reduce its toxicity, the tuber is boiled for about half an hour. But if it is merely soaked in water, it retains all its toxicity.

  ‘When used as a poison, even five milligrams of aconitine can kill an adult. The early symptoms of aconitine poisoning are vomiting, nausea and numbness in face and extremities. Sachin displayed all of them. Eventually he developed arrhythmia which is fatal. The usual medicines which work to reverse arrhythmia did not work in Sachin’s case as it had been induced by aconitine.

  ‘Aconitine interferes by pumping sodium ions in and out of the heart. This messes with the natural pacemaker of the heart. Bear with me as there’s a reason I am telling you all of this,’ Rahul said and inhaled deeply. ‘Aconitine binds to the sodium pumps which causes the heart muscles to contract. That in turn keeps them open and causes arrhythmia. As the aconitine binds to the sodium pump, the patient needs to be given seven to eight medicines instead of the usual two or three. In Sachin’s case, the doctors gave him just three.’

  ‘How did the doctors not realize this?’ Radha said.

  ‘No one checks for aconitine poisoning. It would have popped up in his autopsy though.’

  ‘How can you be certain that Sachin was killed by his wife Sumeira?’ I said.

  ‘That’s the tricky part. I am not. I would need his urine samples and a mass spectrometer to find out. But it has been a while since Sachin last took a leak. However, given the evidence that we have, I can make an educated guess that he was poisoned by aconitine. There’s a chance his bones could still hold traces of it.’

  My heart began to race. We were onto something big if Sumeira had killed Sachin.

  ‘Great work, Rahul,’ I said. ‘You have done everything you could and I think I know enough to speak to Manohar about it.’

  ‘Are you heading to CID right away?’ Rahul asked.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I’ll come there directly.’

  I told him about the data we got from Manohar’s cell phone and hung up.’

  I sat still and thought about my next move. I pulled out my phone and dialled Rathod’s personal number. He answered almost right away. I told him what we had found.

  ‘I’ll tell Manohar you’re on your way to meet him.’

  ‘I also need a warrant to exhume Sachin's remains to check for aconitine in his bones. Ask the same judge who owed you a favour. Also, ask him to put the warrant in a closed envelope. Again, fly under the radar as much as possible.'

  ‘Got it. Get here fast because they’re going to move Manohar to Yerwada at midnight.’

  ‘One more thing.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I’m going to try and get Manohar out by showing reasonable doubt as he was not at the crime scene when the murders were committed. I’ll need to speak to your judge right after I get done with Manohar.’

  ‘Sure thing. See you in twenty,’ he said and hung up.

  I changed my clothes in two minutes and went downstairs. Maa was waiting at the door.

  ‘Radha told me you had to head out. Be careful, Siya,’ she said and planted a kiss on my cheek.

  I stepped out in the warm night air. I swung my car out of the parking lot and checked the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was following me again. I was alone, at least for now. I called Rathod. It was eleven in the night.

  ‘Can you run a plate for me?' I said and gave him the car number.

  ‘Anything serious?’

  ‘A media van was tailing me when I was coming back from CID office earlier. I noted the number. I wanted to be safe.’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  I reached CID in fifteen minutes flat. It was just past eleven in the night so the media presence had reduced. But there were still four journalists and two vans outside the CID building. They knew I was a person of interest because of the number of times I had driven to CID. Luckily, the guard opened the gate right away this time, and I got in, parked my car and ran up the stairs as if a wildfire was chasing me.

  Rathod was waiting for me outside the corridor that led to the Detention Room.

  ‘I ran the number plate you gave me,’ Rathod said.

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw the look on Rathod’s face.

  ‘It doesn’t belong to any media organisation. It doesn’t belong to anyone. I don’t know who was following you.’
<
br />   My hands tingled. I could feel sweat gather in my hair. Who was it then? I focused on my breath and the immediate job at hand. This will all end soon. Once I speak to Manohar, he would know he can trust me. He would tell me what he has been hiding. That would lead us to Rucha and the Gill girl. Soon, I’ll make sure he’s out of police custody and we’ll get the girls back to their homes.

  I waited for a beat for my body to stop shivering and went inside to meet Shaunak Manohar.

  This time, Manohar was not standing by the window. Instead, he was at the table, sitting, waiting for me. His eyes narrowed on seeing me. Strobes of the city light coming from the window slanted on his face, lighting up his scar. He scratched it as I sat across the table.

  I got right to the point. ‘I know Sachin Gill raped his wife. I know Natasha was born out of such abuse. I know that Sachin was poisoned. His heart attack was not from natural causes but instead induced by a poison named aconitine.’

  Manohar smiled. ‘That was quick,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘I also know you are afraid of very powerful people. Just so you know, when I went back home after meeting you the last time, a car disguised as a media van followed me home. I lost the tail but I know someone was interested in me.'

  ‘You’ve ruffled the wrong feathers.’

  ‘I have kept the entire line of investigation regarding Sachin Gill off the grid.’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you satisfied now? Do you now trust me? What do you know about the Sinha family's murder and Rucha's kidnapping?'

  Manohar placed a hand on the table. He said, ‘You have to know that you cannot trust anyone. Even any law enforcement authority. Especially the people right at the top of the hierarchy. Corruption is rotting the system. I made the mistake of approaching the police the first time around. That's why I wasn't sure I could trust you. Even right now, I am going out on a limb when I tell you this. But this is the closest I'll come to trusting anyone. You may call me paranoid but what the hell.'