Brutal (9 page)

I
t was
after a long time that Seema was inside an educational institution. As she passed through the teachers’ corridor, she felt good to see young boys and girls moving around. A few of them stared at her, curiously eyeing the new visitor in their campus. She asked around to locate the dean’s office and approached the peon sitting outside. He was an old and frail looking man, who ideally should have retired decades ago.

“Tell Amar Mani Singh
ji
that Seema from Century News is here.”

“Please go ahead,” said the old man with a shaky voice. “He’s expecting you.”

On entering the Dean’s room, Seema came across a balding man with a moustache, who got up to greet her. He was possibly in his early fifties. His desk was loaded with files and documents. She also saw a couple of dog-eared books on Indian history. An ashtray was loaded to the brim, suggestive of a heavy smoker.

He asked Seema for tea or coffee, which she politely declined. Her cab was waiting outside and she wanted to get it over with quickly.

“As I’d told you, we’re covering the Bandhavgarh skeletons story. Considering the fact that the four kids were from your college, I thought you might be able to give us a backstory.”

“Why so much interest in the story now?” the Dean asked. “I’m curious about this ever since you called me.”

“We are making a documentary on some of the unsolved and most baffling cases of India,” Seema replied. “And this mystery easily qualifies as one.”

“Well, if you ask me, there’s nothing baffling about this case. It’s unsolved till now only because the police have not done their bit. There have been no arrests till date.”

“Why don’t you tell me a bit from the beginning?”

The man took out a cigarette from his pocket and asked Seema if she minded if he smoked. She shook her head.
It’s your cabin. Do as you like.

“It was eight years ago. The final exams of the third year batch had just ended,” he said, taking a puff from the cigarette. “As usual, every kid wanted to party. But these four pricks went overboard. The Bandhavgarh jungles are nearby. So, they decided to party there.”

“Partying in a jungle full of wild animals… Isn’t that prohibited?”

“Well, even smoking is prohibited inside our college campus,” he said with a grin. “We have all kinds of rules here. Only nobody bothers to follow them. And to tell you the truth, I was fed up of shepherding these buggers. One beats up a junior, one molests a girl, one comes drunk to the class. If I keep getting into every such issue, I’ll lose my sleep.”

“How did they get away from your campus?”

“Two of the kids had their own bikes. So, escaping from the campus was easy for them. These guys left our campus after lunch and that was the last time anybody saw them. Their plan was outrageous. They wanted to have a bonfire in the jungle, can you imagine? Little bastards! They even stole an axe from the hostel tool room to cut firewood.”

“Was it the same axe which was used to kill them?”

“I’m not sure. These are the stories I have come to hear only in the subsequent years.”

“Tell me more about these kids.”

“Well, these guys were not bad at studies. Ratan was even one of the toppers. Kunal used to be good at sports.”

“Kunal Chaubey is the same guy who is still missing. Isn’t he?”

“Yes. Poor chap. You know, he had lost his parents in a car accident a year ago. I’ve heard that he used to be really low and depressed since then.”

“Was he used to getting angry? Or of the kind who may harm others?”

“I know where you’re going with this. It seems to be an easy conclusion that Kunal Chaubey might have killed his friends and then run away. The only thing missing is a motive. I’ve asked other students. No one ever believed that Kunal is capable of such a thing. In fact, he was trying to recover from his depression. I’ve heard that he was even seeing a psychiatrist.”

“Which psychiatrist?”

“I don’t know the name. As I’ve have told you already. I know most of these stories through hearsay only.”

“Did they have any enemies? Sometimes, small fights at their age could take a violent turn.”

“We’ve explored that option as well. Our college is a peaceful place. Without much disturbance. Students here get along well with the locals. So, no, I don’t think these kids had any enemies.”

“In other words, it was a complete surprise to find these kids dead in the jungle.”

“That’s true. I’ve tried many times to uncover this mystery on my own. But with the police not helping, I have failed.”

“What makes me curious Singh
ji
is that their skeletons were found so many years later. Weren’t people searching for them at the right places?”

“We searched for them like mad dogs. We knew they had gone into the jungle. But madam, Bandhavgarh is a huge national park. It is practically impossible to search the whole forest.”

“What about their bikes?”

“Their bikes were never found.”

“And, why were there no clothes on their skeletons?

“I don’t know. You can ask the police,” the Dean said, with a hint of frustration on his face. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again.

“You want to know what I believe?” he spat. “I think they came across some really fiendish people in the jungle. They were mercilessly killed and then buried to prevent the discovery of their bodies. Their clothes and belongings were removed and burnt. Their bikes were also taken away. I’m telling you, some day we are going to find Kunal Chaubey’s skeleton also, buried somewhere else in the jungle. I believe they’re all dead. Killed by the devil himself.”

Seema did not ask any more questions. She was done.

A
JK Umaria was
the third police station she visited today. The first two were Chandia and Indwar police stations, from which she had to return empty handed. People there had very little idea about the skeletons case. A head-constable in Indwar police station had told her to visit AJK Umaria for more information. They were the ones who had worked in the skeletons case two years ago.

This was the last police station she intended to visit. It had been a tiring journey for her on this wild goose chase. She had made up her mind to contact Dr Kalyan once she was back in Delhi.
He will have to answer me this time.

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?”

A
s 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.”

I
t 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 standing 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.