ANTI-SOCIAL NETWORK (4 page)

For over two minutes, the grainy footage showed the long-haired girl having sex with a young man who was not Rajesh Chawre. Thoroughly nonplussed, Virkar was still trying to understand the implication of the video when his phone rang. A little embarrassed at his own vicarious curiosity, he turned the iPod off and slipped it into his pocket. Reaching for his cell phone, he barked into it in the gruffest voice possible, ‘Virkar here.’

‘Saheb, where are you? Please come to Vidyavihar as soon as possible. It’s urgent.’

‘Why?’ barked Virkar.

‘There has been another murder, in the same style.’

Virkar swallowed hard. ‘How do you know it’s the same killer? Did she cut off the…’

The voice broke in, ‘No, saheb, this time it’s the tongue.’

V
idyavihar, a dusty little suburb of Mumbai, is named after the Somaiya Vidyavihar College, which is one of the most important landmarks of this area. Apart from the college, there is not much else in Vidyavihar besides a suburban railway station, factories and the ubiquitous slums. The Somaiya institutes have hostels inside the large campus, but students also take up paying guest accommodation in the outer rooms attached to the flats in the nearby housing colonies in Rajawadi, especially so in the government colony near Shastri Nagar. The people living in the colony are serving government employees who were allotted quarters. But in order to earn a few extra bucks, many of them let out the additional, independent room (normally meant to function as the servant’s quarters) to students.

It was in one of these independent-access rooms in the government colony that the body of Kshitij Bhatia was found by a curious neighbour. Kshitij, the son of an Old Delhi oil trader, was a student of the Somaiya Institute of Management and was generally considered a loner. He had spurned the hostel accommodation on campus and decided to rent the room where he was murdered. The residents of the colony generally maintained familiar relations with each other—some would say
too
familiar, considering the fact that most people knew what was going on in the others’ house, right down to every meal that was cooked. However, in Kshitij’s case, no one really knew much about him. Perhaps they didn’t care, as he diligently attended his classes all morning and returned to sit in front of his computer to type away till the wee hours of the next day. But today there was a rush of excitement among his neighbours—the middle-class suburban gentry of the colony had never really experienced a crime so close to home, let alone a gruesome murder.

And gruesome it surely was, even though to Virkar it just seemed like a repeat of the murder at the Blue Nile Resort with only a few differences—Kshitij’s body had its penis intact but his mouth hung open as if he had frozen while screaming. What chilled Virkar to the bone was that Kshitij’s open mouth was missing its tongue. To a casual observer, it might have seemed like the tongue was snipped out mid-scream. But on closer examination, Virkar realized that Kshitij’s mouth had been pried open to get adequate access to the tongue which had been cut out with a sharp blade. This seemed to have been done only after all life had left the victim’s body, his death brought on by the multiple stab wounds on the chest.

Virkar quickly measured the wounds, this time with a plastic ruler that he picked up on his way from a nearby stationery shop. The wounds were of a similar depth and the cuts in the flesh clearly indicated that it was the same weapon that had been used on Rajesh Chawre. The killer had obviously been let into the small room through the only door that led in from the stairs. Stepping outside, Virkar noticed that the door to the main house was padlocked. The sub-inspector on duty let him know that the resident of the flat, Tapan Mazumdar, was away on a holiday to his native place in Burdwan, West Bengal, with his family.

As per his notes, the sub-inspector had information that no one in the colony had seen anyone enter or leave the building. To Virkar this seemed extremely suspicious, as he had seen how the residents of the colony had gathered all around him. He went back into the room and stood in a corner, taking in all the details. The blood spatter on the wall and on the floor gave the room a macabre feel. As he stared at the sparse furniture that comprised a single bed and a study table with a large-screen computer, Virkar felt that the room had a certain kind of similarity to Rajesh Chawre’s bedroom. Something bothered him but he just couldn’t put his finger on it. He stood looking at Kshitij’s body and realized that he looked vaguely familiar. His eyes settled on the computer on the table but although it was brand new, it was entirely different from the one on Rajesh Chawre’s table. Virkar walked to the cupboard and opened it, half hoping to see a collection of shoes, but all he saw was a pile of neatly ironed clothes on various shelves. He looked under the bed and saw two pairs of shoes and one set of sneakers.

‘What about his mobile phone and wallet?’ Virkar called out to the sub-inspector who stood in the corridor outside the door.

The sub-inspector popped his head in and said, ‘No wallet and no phone, saheb.’

‘Are you sure the boy was studying at Somaiya?’ Virkar asked.

The sub-inspector looked incredulous. ‘Saheb, everybody in this area goes to Somaiya.’

Virkar turned thoughtful, mulling over the information in his head. The two victims lived in two very different parts of Mumbai, far enough not to ever come in contact with each other. They studied in two different colleges. In fact, one of them was not even from Mumbai. What could be the connection between them that would have lead to them being murdered by the same killer? The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he had no real answers.

As he looked around the room once more to see if he had missed something, his eyes fell on a portion of the wall in the corner. He walked a few steps forward to examine the spot on the wall up close, wondering if he was imagining things. At a height of about a foot and a half from the ground, the chalky pale yellow
chuna
on the wall displayed a faint shape of the back and head of a human figure where it had rested itself. Virkar knelt down and examined the wall more closely till he could clearly make out the outline left behind by the sweat of a naked body. What’s more, a few strands of long straight hair were snagged on the wall. Virkar’s pulse quickened as he reached out for the hair and scraped them off using his plastic ruler. He tapped the ruler on his open palm and examined the strand of hair. He knew that he had been right all along. The girl had sat against this wall after killing Kshitij Bhatia, perhaps sitting there through the night, waiting for the right moment when she could make good her escape.

‘Y
es, the DNA sampled from the long hair follicles matches the DNA from the toothbrush you gave us.’

Virkar gave himself a mental high five as he heard this statement over the phone. ‘Thank you, doctor, I appreciate your call. Please send in the written report as soon as you can,’ he said into the receiver and hung up.

Sagarika Purohit
. Virkar turned the name around in his mind as he shut his drawers of his desk, readying himself to head back to Willingdon College, where Sagarika was registered as a student. Over the past week, Virkar and his team had relentlessly followed every clue that they had come across, trying to make sense of the two gruesome murders. Finally, three days ago, Virkar had had his first breakthrough when the warden from St. Teresa’s Girls’ Hostel had reported that one of their hostel inmates, a nineteen-year-old girl called Sagarika Purohit, had been missing from the hostel for the past week. The hostel authorities had been under the impression that Sagarika had gone to visit her parents in Nagpur, but when her parents themselves had called the hostel in search of Sagarika, the warden smelt trouble.

Virkar had immediately rushed over to search Sagarika’s hostel room. He had found it clean and devoid of any clues that pointed to Sagarika being involved in the murders in any way. But Virkar had not given up. On a whim, he had picked up Sagarika’s toothbrush to send to the forensic lab in Kalina and badgered the doctor to conduct a DNA match with the long hair follicles that they had found at the Blue Nile Resort and at the flat in the government colony. His gamble had paid off and now he had conclusive proof that Sagarika Purohit’s DNA matched the strands of hair found at the crime scenes. She was definitely the killer, and he was going to stuff this fact down ACP Wagh’s throat and gloat all over him.

Virkar had also found that, although Rajesh Chawre was a student of the Vasaikar College in Goregoan, he used to visit Willingdon College quite frequently. Even though the practice of the students from one college hanging out at another was not uncommon, Virkar found it a little strange that Rajesh travelled all the way from Goregoan to the Fort area in South Bombay. In fact, most of the students in Vasaikar College hardly knew Rajesh, and the few who did could give only sketchy accounts of their interactions with him. Virkar had seen something quite similar in the case of Kshitij Bhatia—not many people in Somaiya College had interacted with him. It seemed like both the victims lead a shadowy existence on the fringes of their college life. And, yet, they seemed to be somehow involved in something that had gotten them killed. What that activity was, Virkar had not yet been able to put a finger on.

Moreover, the experts in the Cyber Crime Cell had not been able to find anything on either Rajesh’s or Kshitij’s computers that could be labelled as incriminating evidence. Apart from evidence of visits to the usual social networking sites and Internet porn sites, their browser histories hadn’t throw up much. Virkar had examined the video on the iPod that he had found in Rajesh Chawre’s room. The grainy picture made it difficult to make out much, except for the fact that the girl had long, silky hair and could be Sagarika Purohit. In fact, Virkar had gone through her profile photos and other pictures in her room to try to conclusively match the two but unfortunately, he couldn’t be sure since the video had been shot from behind and the long-haired girl had shown her face only for a fraction of a second while changing positions. Even the Cyber Crime Cell could not help him with a video enhancement as the video was of a very low resolution. Who the young man in the video was, Virkar was still not sure, but from the built of his body, he guessed that it was Kshitij Bhatia, although he could not say this with full certainty. The big question in Virkar’s mind was, why did Rajesh Chawre have this video on his iPod? He hoped he would be able to find an answer soon.

As he stepped out of the Crime Branch Headquarters, he saw the troupe of media people heading towards him for their daily byte. The two murders had become big news in the media and journalists were continuously shining the spotlight on any little titbit of information they could squeeze out of anyone. Despite requests from the police to not share vital information connected with the case, the media had not backed off. For a minute, Virkar considered sharing the latest bit of information just to spite ACP Wagh and make him eat the words of ridicule that he had directed towards Virkar when he had come up with the female-killer theory. But Virkar decided against it, realizing that he would be putting his own case in jeopardy and warning Sagarika Purohit in the process, instead of letting her think that she had gotten away with murdering two people.

Virkar ducked into the corridor that led to a small canteen at the end. Entering the canteen, he quickly made his way to the kitchen and out the back door into the lane behind the Crime Branch Headquarters where he had parked his Bullet.
Why would a girl from a middle-class family from Nagpur become a psychotic killer? Where was she hiding in the city? Who was sheltering her? Was she a member of some cult which was shielding and sheltering her? Were these some kind of ritual killings? What was the significance of cutting off the penis and the tongue? Was she going to kill again?
These were the questions buzzing around in Virkar’s head as he gunned his Bullet and turned it in the direction of the Fort area to head to Willingdon College.

W
illingdon College is housed in a magnificent Gothic structure that has been classified as a Grade-I heritage structure and stands as an example of the best of British Raj architecture. Established in 1854, ‘Willy’, as it is commonly referred to, is one of the oldest colleges under the University of Mumbai. Up until the late seventies, the college had a vibrant faculty that strove hard to retain the college’s status as a ‘centre of excellence’. However, once exalted as a prestigious seat of learning, it had fallen from grace in the marks-oriented educational culture prevalent today. As the Fort area got increasingly commercialized, the college’s geographical location always proved to be a major disadvantage. Located bang in the middle of a shopper’s paradise, the Fort area now offered numerous distractions to its student populace. In fact, Willingdon College is fast acquiring a reputation among Mumbai parents as an institution to avoid sending their children to, lest they get ‘spoilt’.

Virkar was aware of the crumbling reputation of Willingdon College, as it was one of the colleges that he had aspired to join in his own student days. Unfortunately, his father had insisted on Elphinstone College, which was much closer to his home in Colaba’s Machhimaar Nagar. ‘What is the point of going to such a hi-fi college when all you have to do is attend classes?’ his father had said, thwarting Virkar’s Willingdon dreams. But Virkar had got his own back. He had made friends with some of the ‘hi-fi’ crowd from Willingdon and hung out with them at the city’s happening joints, till the ‘hip’ crowd turned to taking drugs to enhance their cool quotient. The middle-class boy inside Virkar shrank away from the ‘druggy’ label and he eventually broke away from his set of friends—but not before he was introduced to all the galis and
khopchas
where they ‘hung out’ while indulging in their drug of choice.

It was one of these galis that Virkar had turned his Bullet into. Being aware of the parking hassles on the main roads of the Fort area, Virkar had remembered this gali as a place where one could park without worry. He was trundling along, looking for an empty space between the rows of two-wheelers already parked on each side of the gali, when he noticed the two men standing in a lane a short distance ahead of him. There was nothing particularly significant about their appearance and one of the men was handing a bundle wrapped in newspaper to the other. This, too, was a normal, often-seen activity on the busy streets of Fort where deals of all sorts were transacted and goods wrapped in all sorts of everyday items were exchanged. Only one thing about them stuck out—the man accepting the bundle had a face that Virkar was very familiar with. It was the face of Usman Teacher. At the very instant that Virkar recognized him, Usman Teacher turned his head in the direction of the reverberating phut-phut-phut of the Bullet. Although Virkar was dressed in plainclothes, Usman Teacher and the man with him recognized the unmistakable policeman’s aura about him. While Usman Teacher’s companion turned on his heels and ran, Usman tore open the bundle in his hand and suddenly its contents gleamed in his hand.