by Salil Desai
“Oh, please come with me, sir,” Pai replied with surprising geniality and got up to lead the way.
Saralkar thanked God for small mercies and was even more delighted when he was led to a small air-conditioned meeting room.
“Hope this is okay, sir?” Pai asked.
“Thank you,” Saralkar said almost gratefully. “By the way, there are some documents and reports in Kannada in these files. Who can help me understand the contents?”
“You can please call me, sir,” Pai replied, the dour face breaking into a deferential smile.
PSI Motkar had been determined to regain his standing with Saralkar. He was painfully aware that it was he who should’ve been in Bangalore instead of his boss and that Saralkar had been perfectly right in getting pissed off and looking down upon him for using the excuse of the play for not going.
This had come on the heels of Motkar’s embarrassing failure to dig out key leads from Mrs. Tambe and the Doshi house, which his boss had later managed to. No wonder his stock was at an all time low with Saralkar. The only way to change that was to slog hard and produce results on various leads by the time Saralkar was back.
Motkar had prepared a list of pending matters that needed to be pursued vigorously in the case. He cast a glance over it to make sure he had not missed out anything. It read:
1)Post-mortem and viscera results
2)Forensic and Lab analysis results—fingerprints, suicide note, fridge contents, locker cash
3)Police artist suspect sketch—Mrs. Tambe
4)Sodhi impersonations—trace suspects and interrogate
5)Acid source
6)Complete final caller details verification of both victims’ phones
7)Follow up Mumbai passport verification of Sanjay Doshi
Motkar’s mind hovered briefly over the list. Wasn’t there another significant name that had cropped up in Sanjay Doshi’s mobile’s Contacts list? A name that needed to be checked? Motkar jogged his memory, then remembered—Akhandanath the aide of that god-man, Baba Rangdev.
He quickly summoned Constable Shewale, who was taking a tea break. “Shewale, have you finished all caller verifications on both victims’ phones?” Motkar asked as soon as Shewale showed up a few minutes later.
“Sir, document and ID verifications of every caller have been received but physical verification of some is still pending,” Shewale replied.
Physical verification was always a tedious process, Motkar was well aware. “I want it completed by this evening,” he said bluntly and was struck at how much he had just sounded like his own boss.
Shewale nodded.
“Have you at least traced Meenakshi Rao’s residence and spoken to the neighbours?” Motkar asked.
“Yes, sir. She lives in a one-room kitchen flat in Khadki area. We checked with the neighbours. She had talked of going to Tirupati. She runs a small beauty parlour from home.”
“What about her brother and his family?”
“No, the neighbours just know Meenakshi Rao lives by herself. She’s probably a divorcee. One neighbour said a man sometimes visits her but they don’t know if it’s her brother.”
“Okay, when is she supposed to be back in Pune?”
“Another four to five days, sir. Do you want to speak to her?”
“Not now. But I hope you have confirmed that her current location is really Tirupati.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve put her phone on tracking.”
“Did you also verify from the tower data if the calls she made to Anushka Doshi were from her home location?”
“I’ll do that, sir,” Shewale replied.
“What about Rangdev Baba’s aide Akhandanath? Did you speak to him and ask about Sanjay Doshi’s connection with Rangdev?”
“No, sir. There’s no record of any calls made from or to his mobile by Sanjay Doshi during the week prior to his death. But there was one call about ten days ago. Akhandanath’s name also appears in Sanjay Doshi’s contact list, that’s all.”
“We can’t afford to leave it at that, Shewale. He was one of the handful of contacts on Doshi’s phone,” PSI Motkar said thoughtfully. “Call him now and say we’d like to talk to him and Rangdev Baba.”
Shewale nodded, then asked hesitantly, “Sir, can I ask a question?”
Motkar looked up at him and raised his eyebrows.
“Sir, how come someone outside the squad knows that Rangdev Baba’s involved in the case . . .?”
“Who said anything about Rangdev Baba being involved in the case?” Motkar asked sharply.
“That’s what I am saying, sir. Someone from outside our department wanted to know why we were training our sights on Rangdev Baba,” Shewale clarified.
“Do you mean PSI Sarode or someone else from Kothrud police station?” Motkar asked, feeling intrigued.
It was Shewale’s turn to be wary now. “No, sir, no one from Kothrud . . .”
“Then who?”
Constable Shewale again hesitated, then decided it was better to reveal all. “It was my old boss, PSI Dulange . . . from Dattawadi Police Chowky. I bumped into him yesterday evening and we got chatting since we were meeting after a long time. Somehow the conversation turned to the Doshi case and Dulange sahib asked me whether the rumour he’d heard was true—that the Homicide squad was examining the role of Rangdev Baba.”
“Where did he say he heard the rumour?” Motkar asked.
“I inquired, sir, but he was very vague about it. Said he’d picked it up from the departmental grapevine.”
“Hmm,” Motkar said, tapping the tips of his fingers together, “that’s quite odd, because Rangdev Baba isn’t yet even high on our priority list.”
“I know, sir, but when Dulange sahib asked me I wondered whether you or Saralkar sahib had started some discreet inquiry on Rangdev Baba which the rest of us didn’t know about and that it had leaked out . . .” Shewale remarked.
PSI Motkar was silent for a few seconds, turning it over in his mind. Then he asked, “This PSI Dulange . . . did you feel he was fishing for information from you, Shewale?”
“The thought had crossed my mind, sir,” Shewale admitted, thinking back, “. . . but he didn’t probe too much or too deeply. Dulange sahib was casual about it. Although in hindsight he did ask one question too many.”
Motkar sighed, now cracking his fingers gently. “Any reason PSI Dulange might be interested in Rangdev Baba’s welfare?”
Shewale shrugged. “I doubt it, but do you want me to find out, sir?”
“Yes. Better than confronting Dulange right away,” Motkar replied.
Shewale nodded and exited. He was back in less than half an hour. “Sir!” he said, his eyes twinkling with satisfaction. “PSI Dulange is a regular visitor to Rangdev Baba’s ashram. It’s because of his son, who’s a retarded child. Apparently, Dulange has become something of a devotee because going to the Baba seems to have improved his child’s condition.”
PSI Motkar leaned forward slowly on his desk like a sailor quietly elated at the possibility of spotting land soon.
“Okay, so something’s making Rangdev Baba nervous about his Doshi connection and we need to find out what and why.”
He rapped the desk with uncharacteristic spontaneity and wondered if he was turning into a mirror image of his boss in the latter’s absence!
So Shaunak Sodhi was for real, Saralkar reflected, as the contents of the case files he had spent nearly the whole day reading, spun around in his mind. Indeed Shaunak Sodhi and Krishna Bhupathi alias Sanjay Doshi had been partners in Bangalore—partners in a lucrative job and immigration racket that lured thousands of foolish, gullible, desperate young men and women to beg, borrow, or steal two to five lakh rupees each and deposit it with their partnership firm, Bingo Overseas Recruitment & Immigration Services (BORIS), in the hope of landing jobs in distant foreign lands.
But BORIS also had a third partner—Rahul Fernandes. Together the three partners cheated and duped youth from all over Karnataka—Banga
lore, Mysore, Hubli, Dharwad, Belgaum, Davangere, Gulbarga, Mangalore, Bellary— between 2004 and 2008. And all the cash they collected from these hapless job-seekers was promptly channelized into land deals, betting, horse racing, and high-end escort services.
With hard-edged cynicism, Saralkar read page after page of heart wrenching stories of the scam victims who had been ruined or left in debt or those who had wiped away the life savings of their poor parents. His lips curled in contempt at the credulity of these wretched souls blinded by the prospect of foreign jobs. As a long serving police officer, he had seen it all before and still had not found the answer to the question of how and why people got taken in by such swindlers and trusted them with unaffordable sums that could instead have been used to build a better life in their own country. What was it that got into them? Why didn’t any alarm bells ring? What inspired so much confidence in these charlatans that a man was ready to risk a sum that he knew had the power to sink him if the promised job did not materialize? Why had no inner voice or well-wishers warned them?
Eventually and inevitably, some of those duped by BORIS had filed police cases and that’s how Krishna Bhupathi, Shaunak Sodhi, and Rahul Fernandes had first come to the notice of the Karnataka Police. The partners had been first arrested in Gulbarga but soon released for lack of enough corroborative evidence. The complainants had paid the money in cash and all that they had to show for it were printed receipt that proved nothing. The partners produced a few candidates who had been given jobs by BORIS, demolished the contentions of complainants that any job guarantee assurance had been given, bribed policemen, and continued with their racket.
Similar arrests and releases occurred in other towns in Karnataka between 2007 and 2008, but then they came up against a more serious challenge. In early 2008, the aggrieved parents of an unemployed young man who committed suicide in Bangalore, filed a case against the trio. The suicide note of their son formed the basis of the complaint. Saralkar had requested Inspector Pai to read out the note to him, since it was written in Kannada. The young man had outlined in some detail how Bhupathi and Sodhi had systematically set up the trap, the lies, the false promises, the extraction of money, the stalling, their refusal to refund, and finally the threats and intimidation he had suffered. The young man had written of his bewilderment and frustration, his utter helplessness and ultimately how it had brought about his financial downfall. He blamed them squarely for the hell his life had become and held them solely responsible for his decision to commit suicide.
The human tragedy had caught the fancy of the media. It was just the kind of story that sent TRPs soaring and left people outraged. The result was a huge uproar that lasted long enough for the heat to be turned on on the police. The partners-in-crime were in real trouble this time. The Karnataka Human Rights Commission also took suo motto notice and a full-fledged police investigation into the wrongdoings began, headed by an upright senior officer.
Krishna Bhupathi and Shaunak Sodhi were taken into custody and subjected to intense interrogation. Rahul Fernandes, though, managed to get anticipatory bail, claiming he had no knowledge of his partner’s nefarious activities. It, of course, helped that the young man had dealt with Bhupathi and Sodhi and therefore only named them in his note. And that laid the foundation for what was to follow.
After a two-month incarceration, Bhupathi and Sodhi were chargesheeted for the jobs racket and were released on bail. One month after their release, Fernandes’ wife filed a police complaint that her husband had gone missing. Rahul Fernandes had gone out with his partners the previous evening to settle their disputes and had not come back thereafter. His wife was scared he had come to harm because he had claimed to her a few times that his life was in danger from Bhupathi and Sodhi. Preliminary inquiries revealed that Fernandes’ bloodstained pullover was found in Krishna Bhupathi’s car, while Shaunak Sodhi was absconding.
Fernandes had last been seen getting into Bhupathi’s car, completely drunk and being escorted by Sodhi. Krishna Bhupathi was taken into custody and under third degree interrogation he had confessed that Shaunak Sodhi and he had nursed a grudge against Fernandes because while they had been in jail for two months, he had quietly liquidated a lot of properties they had purchased jointly and had double-crossed the other two. He was only ready to give them a very small sum, well below the estimated amount he had made.
There had been several heated arguments between them and Sodhi and Bhupathi had hit upon a plan to settle scores with Fernandes. They had fixed up a meeting and invited Fernandes for a final amicable settlement. They had pretended to come to terms and had plied Fernandes with liquor, then taken him to a remote place outside Bangalore city. There they tortured him and extracted all the true details of the land and property sales he had done. Thereafter they had taken him to the place where he kept all his cash—a farmhouse near Nandi Hills, removed the cash and decided to leave Fernandes there. But he had sworn to take revenge and a scuffle had ensued.
Bhupathi claimed he was too drunk to remember what happened then but when he got up in the middle of the night Fernandes’ dead body was on the floor and Sodhi claimed that both of them had killed him. Shaken and dazed, unsure of what exactly had transpired Bhupathi said he simply did what Sodhi instructed him to because he was unable to think properly and was scared. When Sodhi said they needed to dispose of Fernandes’ body, they dumped the corpse in Bhupathi’s car and drove towards Mysore. Sodhi guided him off the highway on to a side road that led into a jungle-like area. Here they severed the head and limbs of the body with a sickle and knives they had found at Fernandes’ farmhouse and buried the torso in a ditch.
Then they drove to Mysore and onward to Mercara. They disposed off the head and limbs at different spots in the valley on the way up the hill road. Turning around, they drove back to Mysore where Sodhi told him it would be safer to disperse and go their separate ways. Sodhi also said they should lie low for a few days and advised Bhupathi to leave Bangalore for some time. He gave Bhupathi a small amount of the cash and took the rest with him, promising to get in touch after a month or so.
Still in a state of panic, Bhupathi drove back to Bangalore to collect his family, wind up things, and flee Bangalore for a couple of months. But just before he could abscond the police arrested him based on Fernandes’ wife’s complaint. Following his confession, the Bangalore Police took Bhupathi along to retrieve Rahul Fernandes’ body but he was unable to locate the spot along Mysore highway. Nor were Fernandes’ head or limbs recovered despite search operations on Mercara road. In the hilly terrain near Mercara especially, the police said it was quite possible that wild animals had eaten the body parts.
The bloodied clothes of Fernandes were the only evidence now apart from Bhupathi’s confession. Realising that the body was not being found, Bhupathi retracted his confession and said it had been made under duress. Sodhi too could not be nabbed and so in the absence of clinching evidence of murder, the Bangalore Police could not file a chargesheet within the mandatory period of ninety days.
Bhupathi thus became eligible for bail and promptly secured it. Ten days later he disappeared, leaving behind his family, and had remained untraceable thereafter.
Saralkar shut the files. This was as far back as 2008. In 2015, Bhupathi had been found dead in Pune as Sanjay Doshi, mentioning Shaunak Sodhi in his suicide note. So where had Bhupathi and Sodhi been for seven long years? What had they done? How had they successfully evaded the law? When and where had Anushka come into the picture? How had Sanjay and Anushka met? Why had Bhupathi changed his name but not Sodhi?
But before he attempted to find answers to these questions, Saralkar had a few questions relating to the three partners prior to 2008, culminating in Fernandes’ murder. And for that he needed to meet Inspector Hegde who had investigated the case. An official request had been made to Hegde, and although busy with his daughter’s wedding, he had promised to be available the day after. So what was he to do for one full day, Saralkar wondered. Maybe
he could try and meet the families of Fernandes, Sodhi, and Bhupathi, his mind promptly provided the answer.
When was the last time she had been to a post office? Kunika Ahuja wondered. Not in the last five years at least, she concluded. Who sent letters these days? And even if you had to send one, official or personal, couriers were so much more convenient and accessible. In the universe of modern, middle-class India— with cell phones and the Internet—post offices were more or less redundant. Post offices were for the poor or lower income groups—places where you sent your peon or driver when something had to be sent by post.
Kunika Ahuja had first thought of going to the small post office in her neighbourhood, but then thought better of it. There was always the chance of bumping into the postman on her beat or meeting some acquaintances. Anonymity would be best preserved by going to a bigger post office like the GPO or City Post or Shivajinagar PO, where she would be a stranger and one among the many visitors. She had finally decided upon GPO, because you could park your car inside.
She looked at the envelope in her hands addressed to Inspector Saralkar of the Pune Homicide Squad. She had looked up the address on the net. She wasn’t even sure of the value of stamps she needed to affix on it to send by ordinary post. Was it still five rupees? Nervous, she stood in the stamp counter queue. After months she had ventured out without her dog.
“What value of stamps do I need to put on an ordinary post envelope?” she asked when her turn came.
“Five rupees for the first twenty grams,” the lady at the counter answered mechanically.
“Okay. Please give me two stamps of five rupees.”
The transaction completed, Kunika Ahuja looked around for the bottle of glue that she remembered would generally be kept in most post offices. Licking stamps had never been her thing. Whatever else had changed, the blue bottle of glue had remained exactly like earlier times—a pasty, sticky, white gruel that made you feel as yucky as licking stamps. But you chose the gruel only because you had to use your fingers, not your tongue.