by UD Yasha
Shukla said, ‘Zakkal talked about stalking more women and having selected new targets. I think it’s time to issue a statement.’
Rathod said, ‘It’ll only cause people in the city to panic. He could have been talking out of his—’
'You can't base a decision like this on "he could have". Our first responsibility is towards the safety of people,' Shukla said. 'If we issue a statement, people will panic but they will also be more careful. We could prevent Zakkal from abducting more women. If he's indeed been targeting prostitutes, he's going after an already vulnerable subset of the population. I'm calling for a press conference tomorrow morning itself. If it wasn't this late, I would have done it right now. Let's hope that Zakkal doesn't abduct anyone tonight.'
I knew this was a tricky topic. Zakkal would love the attention he would get. His name and face would flash on news channels and on the front pages of all newspapers, and he would start trending on Twitter. By going to the media, we were giving Zakkal exactly what he wanted. But at the same time, Shukla had a valid point. In most societies, prostitutes were amongst the most exploited groups of people. If there was even a slight chance that CID’s statement would prevent the abduction of a woman, then it was worth the risk. When it came to dealing with the most devious minds, I had realized it was futile to engage in ego battles. They never backed down and the collateral damage was too high.
It got me wondering about what I should do. Zakkal wanted me to surrender. I could end this all by turning myself in. I could use myself as bait to get him.
‘You can’t be thinking about it,’ Rathod said, reading my mind.
‘I don’t know. It might be the only way to avoid losing more lives if we don’t get Zakkal by midnight tomorrow.’
Rathod shook his head. ‘You’re not doing that and that’s the end of the discussion. Of all people, you know he’s a psychopath. Do you really believe that he’ll release all the women he has abducted and then never kill again if you surrender yourself to him? Let’s go back to the CID office. We need to go back to the drawing board and regather our thoughts. Dr Sonia has sent two members of her forensic team. They will reach any moment. They’ll sweep the entire place and check if Zakkal left anything behind.’
Before leaving, I looked around once. I said a silent prayer for Smita Kale and then left along with everyone. Just as we got in the car, Shukla’s phone started ringing.
‘Go on, Mathew,’ Shukla said as the call got connected to the car’s Bluetooth.
Mathew said, ‘I just reached the house of the guy who we suspect set Siya Rajput’s house on fire. I have some bad news. Kumar Singhal has been murdered in his house. His throat has been slashed.’
Chapter Thirty
There are two unsaid rules that all police officers live by: eat when you can, and sleep when you can. So, despite the grim state of proceedings in the investigation, all of us were famished by the time we reached the CID office. At one fifteen at night, the canteen in the CID premises was shut and so were most of the restaurants.
I took a punt and texted the head chef of Chef Chu’s, a Chinese restaurant that Radha, Rahul and I ordered from every week. We had become friends with the chef, who was actually a Marathi guy named Sarang Kulkarni. But according to us, he made the best Indo-Chinese food in Pune. Luckily for us, Sarang was awake and ready to deliver food to the office.
‘Making food for police officers would be my honour,’ Sarang said.
He personally delivered the order in twenty minutes. We got plenty of Chicken Lollipops, Burnt Garlic Chicken Noodles and American Chop Suey. A few junior staff members along with Rathod, Shukla, Bhalerao, Mathew, Maa, Radha,Rahul and I—all headed to the conference room. Sarang had got a special bone for Shadow, which he was more than happy to chew on. For the next thirty minutes, there was no talk about the case. In fact, there was hardly any talk at all. Everyone devoured the food. As was always the case, Chef Chu's food was delicious. It tasted even better that night because Sarang threw in a fifty percent discount for us.
Once we were done, it was decided that we would stay in the CID guest quarters for the night. Rathod’s safehouse was ready but it didn’t make sense to move there at night. His close confidant, Shubham Dhawan, had already reached the safehouse.
Soon, Radha, Rahul, Maa and Shadow were taken to the guest quarters on the top floor of the building by an officer named Neeraj Gujre. Knowing we would all be in a building full of police officers was comforting. I stayed back to talk to Rathod about some aspects of the case that were running through my mind. Everyone else had left the office.
Just as I was about to speak, the phone on Rathod’s desk started ringing. Fueled with energy because of the food, Rathod crossed to his desk, picked up the phone, gave two grunts of acknowledgement and said, ‘Yes, we’ll be there.’
He replaced the receiver and said, ‘That was Dr Sonia. She is burning the midnight oil too. She just finished conducting the autopsies of the bodies from the farmhouse. She thinks she has found something that we would want to know.’
Both of us ran downstairs, knowing that this was the one part of the case in which Zakkal had made a mistake. The clues we would find at the farmhouse were actually the ones that would lead us to him. So far, all our efforts had come up empty.
'I'm glad I caught you both before you left,' Sonia said when we reached her office. 'ACP Shukla and Bhalerao are on their way too. Luckily, both hadn't gotten that far away.' Sonia then walked to her office's door. 'If you don't mind, it's been a long night, so I'm heading to the coffee machine to get some.'
Shukla and Bhalerao had reached by the time Sonia returned with coffee in hand. She took a few sips and then downed all of it. ‘Let’s go to my examination room,’ she said and we followed her through the corridor.
Before entering it, a peon handed us face masks that we strapped on. The examination room had also received an upgrade like the rest of the forensic department. It had large steel panels on one side, which I guessed was the cold storage to preserve the bodies while they were being examined. The primary morgue was down the corridor that we had come from. A large screen occupied most of the wall to my right, while there was a large closet to my left. The temperature inside had again dropped by several notches and the smell of formaldehyde wafted in the air. Sonia's assistants, two women whom I had seen around the forensics department before were working in a corner with some test tubes. On seeing us come in, they joined their boss near the steel panels.
Together, they pulled out the steel panels one by one. Once they had been fully removed, I realized that the panels were actually large stretchers on which the bodies were kept.
Sonia stood at the head of the first table and said, 'As you know, we have six bodies, all women aged between twenty-five and forty-five. All were strangled to death. None of the bodies have any other sign of trauma. As I shared with you all earlier, the strangulation marks on the neck of the latest victim, now identified as Aarti Lunkad, are a match with Kishore Zakkal. The remaining women are still unidentified.' Sonia walked across to the second body. 'The condition of Jane Doe Two's remains was worse than those of Aarti Lunkad, but better than the other bodies. Both their bodies gave me something to work with. I've found some commonalities in both. For example, it seems like both women's heads were shaved before they were killed. In fact, the hair follicle pattern and the follicle root's growth indicate that Zakkal shaved their heads repeatedly. I can't tell you why, but this is something that might be useful to you. Apart from the shaving of the hair, I saw some residue of contact lens cleaning solution in the eye sockets of both the women. It was more prominent in Aarti Lunkad's eye sockets, but I found traces of it in Jane Doe 2 as well.'
‘This may sound stupid, but is a contact lens cleaning solution used for anything else apart from cleaning lenses?’ I said.
‘It can be for cleansing the eyes in a dire situation, but that’s if you’re stranded on a remote island where there is no medical help and you have developed an eye infection an
d you happen to have a contact lens solution for some reason.’
‘So, the short answer is no?’ I said.
'Well, you can say that.'
‘Also, this is not consistent with Zakkal’s other known victims, right?’ Bhalerao said.
‘That’s right. He did not do either of these two things.’
Sonia walked across to the last body. 'I can give you a fair idea of when these women died. Please keep one thing in mind—the older the death, the higher is the margin of error. So, take all dates with a wiggle-room of about two weeks.' Sonia paused and inhaled deeply. 'The first woman was killed sixteen months ago. Certain types of flies, insects and maggots only show up during particular seasons. They also breed only at certain times of the year. I found the remains of some maggots in the body that only show up in late winter in Pune. It is June right now. That coupled with the level of decomposition and scavenger activity, I can say that this woman died sixteen months ago.'
Sonia walked across the steel panel. ‘Zakkal killed the second woman about twelve months ago, the third, six months ago, the fourth, two months, the fifth, one and a half months ago, and the sixth, Aarti Lunkad, about ten days ago.’
I ran a quick mental calculation. If the first woman died sixteen months ago, there was a very high chance that she was kidnapped roughly two years ago, soon after Zakkal escaped prison. Zakkal was also killing at a much faster rate now. I glanced at the large clock in the examination room as Zakkal’s words echoed in my mind. If you fail to surrender yourself, then I will kill someone once those twenty-four hours are done. The countdown had started at twelve twenty. It was three o’clock, which meant we had less than twenty-three hours before Zakkal killed again.
Sonia continued. 'I can also help you to identify these women. Apart from the first two victims, the teeth of the rest are intact. I've shared the data with my team to check for a dental records match. The fourth woman to die also had some soft tissue left. I ran some tests on it and found that she had AIDS. It also explains why her bones were more brittle than those of an average thirty-five-year-old woman.'
While I didn’t want to generalize, the AIDS diagnosis further fortified our view that Zakkal might be targeting prostitutes. I made a mental note to follow through with the agency that Aarti Lunkad worked with. If we could find out how Zakkal established contact with them, then there was a chance we could catch him while he took his next victim. As far as I knew, Zakkal did not know yet that we had stumbled upon his body farm.
Sonia said, ‘Please stop me if you have any questions at any point. I know this is personal for all of us as Zakkal has targeted Dr Raghav Barve’s wife. That’s why I asked all my staff to wait back. All of us are working round the clock.’
Shukla said, ‘Have you finished analyzing the evidence you collected from Sudha Barve’s house?’
‘We did not get any fingerprint or DNA evidence. We are currently running tests on some samples we had collected from the crime scene. In fact, my colleagues are analyzing something right now. We’re expecting some of the test results to come soon, while we’ll have to wait for a few days for the others.’
Right on cue, a bell chimed.
‘Hold onto that thought, one of the test results has come through,’ Sonia said and walked across the room to the area where her assistants were working. ‘I had to heat some samples we collected to get a better understanding of an angle I’m exploring.’
All of us turned to Sonia as she peered through a microscope at a specimen on her desk. There was a white spotlight over her, almost like a halo. After twenty seconds, Sonia looked up from the microscope with a grin on her face.
‘I was analyzing the particulate sample we got from Sudha Barve’s room,’ Sonia told us. ‘I separated the residue and found traces of a drug named Cisplatin. It’s a chemotherapy drug, one of the oldest used for cancer treatment; it goes by the trade name Platinol.’
All of us exchanged looks, trying to figure out what Sonia was saying. But Sonia was oblivious to the fact that her words were already out of our scope of understanding.
Sonia went on. She said, ‘Finding traces of Cisplatin is not the intriguing bit, at least by itself. I found traces of several random chemicals or compounds in the six bodies from the farmhouse. Stuff like potassium tetrachloroplatinate, silver nitrate, silver iodide and potassium chloride among others. Not all were present on all the bodies—which is why I almost missed it. But finding those compounds together anywhere is like finding a gold coin at the bottom of a swimming pool—it almost never happens. That made me think about why those compounds would be present in the bodies. I ran tests on the samples we picked from the farmhouse. Nothing came up in those. But when I found traces of the cancer drug in Sudha Barve's house right now, it all made sense and I knew what it was. The compounds I mentioned are used to make Cisplatin. And the residue in which I found it had a small portion of silt that you find on the banks of the Mula Mutha river.'
Sonia paused for a beat and grinned, realizing that we had not understood even a bit of what she had said. 'I'm sorry. I should have made it easier for all of you to understand. I got carried away in the excitement. Let me explain this to you in simple English. There's only one pharmaceutical company in Pune that makes the cancer drug I mentioned. It's called Sino Pharma. It releases its wastewater after some treatment into the Mula Mutha river at a place called Shileshwar, which is at the outskirts of Pune. The presence of the ingredients used to make the cancer drug along with the silt indicates one of three things. Firstly, these dead bodies were kept in that place. Secondly, these women were kept there while they were alive. Thirdly, Zakkal lives close to this place.’
‘That’s brilliant, Sonia,’ Shukla said proudly.
Sonia said, ‘It gets better. I know those compounds can be hazardous so there’s a very high chance that you’re looking at a very specific area. In fact, let me share a list of the possible places with you. Give me ten minutes. I need to work out the silt sedimentation pattern in Shileshwar.’
‘Did you just give us Zakkal’s location?’ Shukla said, enthusiasm ripe in his voice.
'Either that or the place where he kept those bodies before bringing them to the farmhouse,' Sonia said.
'Let's head there now,' Shukla said and referred to his wristwatch. 'We have only got twenty-two hours.'
‘Sonia, we’re all glad to have you back. You’re genuinely the best,’ Rathod said.
‘If I’m right, that’s not the first time Cisplatin would have saved lives,’ Sonia said and laughed at her own joke.
Chapter Thirty-One
An hour ago, all of us were dead tired and were looking forward to hitting the bed as soon as possible. But the adrenaline racing through our system had woken us up. There was no way in the world we were going to sleep after what Dr Sonia had shared with us.
I sat in the conference room alone while Rathod had gone to the forensic department to get the list from Sonia of the possible places where Zakkal could be.
Bhalerao and Shukla walked in together.
‘I’ve asked two police officers to join us for back up,’ Bhalerao said. ‘They’re the same ones who had accompanied us to Blossoms. They are on night duty so both of them are fresh.’
‘Great, let’s keep this lean and get that bastard,’ Shukla said.
Rathod strode into the conference room, holding a bunch of papers in his hand. ‘There are three potential places in Shileshwar,’ he said. ‘After looking at these maps, I found that the entire area is sparsely populated. That’s good news for us.’
He sat at the table and spread out the papers in front of us. 'Dr Sonia told me that there are two ways in which Sino Pharma's waste material, containing the compounds she found, could get mixed with soil. The first, less likely way, is through air.'
Rathod pointed at a sheet of paper that had the map of Shileshwar, zoomed in near the Mula Mutha river bed. A large ‘X’ marked the Sino Pharma factory.
He continued. ‘If it’s th
rough the air, then we’re looking at the northern part of the river.’ He pointed at a spot that was circled. ‘The area is about five acres in size. It’s mainly a farm.’
‘But I thought Dr Sonia found river silt in the samples. How does a farm qualify then?’ I said.
'Yes, that's right. I asked her the same question. At times, the farmers in the area take silt illegally from the river bed as it is highly fertile. There are many such farms in the area, but the one highlighted on the map is where the waste material from Sino Pharma can get dumped because of the wind and gust patterns.'
Once Rathod saw that I was satisfied, he continued. ‘I have got a satellite image of the farm. I’ve some more good news. There’s only one property constructed in that area. We can scan it in less than thirty minutes, even at night.’
He looked up from the map and eyed all of us. 'The other two areas are at the Mula Mutha river bed. Both are close to each other and have two pipelines that dump treated water from Sino Pharma into the river.' He pointed at both the places on the map. 'As you can see, both have flat terrain. Again, they are very sparsely populated as they are very close to the river bed. In fact, a total of three man-made houses lie in that area. Also, Dr Sonia told me that out of these three places, she believes we are more likely to find the place near the river beds. She based that on the moisture content found in the samples she examined.'
‘As per government data, what are these two structures near the river bed used for?’ I said.
‘One is a water tower. There’s a small house attached to it, which I presume is meant for the caretaker of the tower. The second is supposed to be a private house. It’s not exactly at the banks but slightly deeper inside.’
‘Do you think we need a backup of more than two police officers?’ Bhalerao said.
‘From what we know so far, Zakkal isn’t directly getting help from Nana Shirole but he’s hiring Shirole’s men independently. He might have some backup present at this place,’ Shukla said. ‘But we still don’t know what he has been using this place for.’
