Brutal

by Uday Satpathy

  10 Pm, Ambala City

  Roshni Lodge was a small dingy hotel they found in one of the alleys leading up to the Grand Trunk Road. Prakash looked at the building. The first floor seemed devoid of any lights, suggestive of vacant rooms. While he went to its reception, Mrinal took off with the car in search for a place to hide it. Prakash booked one of the bigger rooms to accommodate all three of them. He also told the receptionist to order dinner for them.

  In about fifteen minutes, all three were inside their room. There were two beds, with stained and yellowed bed sheets lying over them. An additional mattress was tucked into a wooden almirah. It felt damp and smelled of cigarette smoke. In a moment, they realized that even the curtains, the sheets and the bathroom, reeked of cigarette smoke.

  Bloody hell! What was it? A smoking room? Prakash walked towards the lone window in the room and opened it to let in some air. He looked down. The road below was dark and silent. No vehicles. He wondered where they would run if cornered. He turned around and looked at Mrinal and Kunal. They looked shell-shocked, sitting on one of the beds and staring at the floor.

  “Where did you park the car?” he asked Mrinal.

  “Found a dark alley.”

  “Did you cover it with something?”

  “Yes Sir! I covered it,” Mrinal replied with a touch of anger and irritation in his voice.

  Prakash said nothing. Mrinal had good reasons to be worked up.

  “I’m sorry for putting you through all this,” Prakash said apologetically. “I’ll ensure you leave safely tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m going nowhere till I hear this man out,” Mrinal spat, pointing towards Kunal, who lifted his head up.

  Prakash eyed Kunal with a questioning look. Spill your guts buddy. We don’t have all night here.

  “You guys have won a terrific bunch of enemies now,” Kunal mocked.

  “Who are these men?” Prakash asked. “Who are you?”

  “Where should I begin?” Kunal closed his eyes for a few moments, diving into an abyss of memories.

  Then he began, “You must have heard stories of people going berserk and massacring innocents. Happens in the United States most of the times. The Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 for example. A student carries a gun to his college. Kills 32 people in cold blood. Two years prior to that, in a similar incident in Minnesota, a 16-year old kid killed his family at home and then drove his grandfather's police vehicle to his school. He killed seven people. I remember another incident in Connecticut in 2012. A 20-year old kid first shoots his mother. Then he goes to his school and massacres 26 people. Guess what’s common between these incidents, other than the fact that they were cold blooded massacres?”

  Prakash was filled with a sense of foreboding. He looked at Mrinal’s face, which looked sombre.

  “How do you know so much about these incidents,” Mrinal interjected.

  “Because I’ve been a part of one such incident.”

  Mrinal shivered. He did not dare ask the next question. Prakash did the job.

  “You were an eyewitness, a survivor or…”

  “I was the killer.”

  Prakash looked at him in silence. Holding his breath, he said, “You can carry on. I can’t make any guesses at the beginning of a story.”

  “OK,” Kunal said calmly. “What’s common between these incidents is that the killer in each case was on anti-depressant drugs prescribed by psychiatrists. Some of these drugs have a history of inducing violent behaviour. A few have also been linked to homicides and suicides.”

  “So you’re saying that these incidents resulted from depressed people taking some psychiatric medication?” Prakash asked.

  “Yes. The Virginia Tech shooter was on Varenicline, a drug eleven times more likely than other drugs to induce violence. So was the Minnesota killer. The Connecticut shooter was also suspected to be on an anti-depressant.”

  “You pop a pill and then shoot people! Just like that?”

  “It wasn’t that simple earlier. You needed to be severely depressed to become violent. You needed to have a history of stimulation with violent video games, movies and news of massacres.”

  “That’s scary. But what do you mean by ‘earlier’?”

  “It means that now some people have created drugs which can induce extremely violent behaviour in a very spontaneous manner. A couple of hours is what takes the drug to result in homicidal tendencies. You will have terrible dreams where you cannot realize what’s real and what’s not. And you need not have a history of exposure to violence. A small external stimulus is all it takes to turn into a killer.”

  “What kind of stimulus?”

  “It can be anything. A malevolent thought buried in your mind, a gossip on some violent happening, a sudden reminiscence of a bloody incident in the past…. Even a picture or a poster depicting violence.”

  Prakash was stunned. What is this world coming to? He recalled that Nitin Tomar was also seeing a psychiatrist. A chilling realization began taking shape in his mind.

  “Did Nitin Tomar also take such a medication?”

  “What Nitin Tomar took was a drug about hundred times more potent than Varenicline or Fluoxetine. They call it NB-67.”

  “More than a hundred times! That’s… that’s terrifying,” Prakash exclaimed. “If what you are saying is true, then this drug accounts for Nitin’s behaviour that day. He was seen chatting happily with other teachers a few hours before the killings. The drug turned him into a demon. But isn’t it illegal? How can such a drug be available in the market?”

  “The drug is not in the market. It cannot come into market unless it is approved by the drug regulating authority of a country. In US, it’s the FDA. For us, it is the Drugs Controller General of India,” Kunal said. “NB-67 is a molecule under research. And Nitin was a guinea pig.”

  “You mean Nitin was a clinical trial subject?”

  Prakash had a fair understanding of clinical trials. He had once done a story on how the huge pharmaceutical companies conduct clinical trials in India without fully complying with the regulations. Many a time, it led to patient deaths through severe side effects and adverse events.

  As per the law, before a medicine is brought out into the market, it has to be proved that it is safe to use and effective to treat the medical condition in a specific category of human population. For that, the molecule is first tested on animals, the process being known as a pre-clinical trial. If it is successful in animals, the molecule is then tested on human subjects. This process is known as a clinical trial.

  “He must have been told so by his psychiatrist,” Kunal said. “In reality, it was a completely illegal activity. In an authentic clinical trial, one needs to spontaneously give details of any adverse event, that is, any harmful side effect to the drug regulating authority. But no such thing happened in this case. The people behind this drug were running their clinical trials knowing exactly what the drug was going to do to the subjects.”

  “Why do you say so? It might have been a mistake on their part which they are now trying to hide.”

  “I say so because they tested it on me eight years ago. They clearly saw the deadly results, but didn’t stop at that. They tried it many times after that, on different people, with possibly enhanced potency of the drug. The latest is the case of Nitin Tomar.”

  “What did you do eight years ago?”

  “I slaughtered three of my friends in Bandhavgarh National Park. We had gone there for a party at night. I was on NB-67, administered to me by a psychiatrist named Dr Avneesh Chauhan. The drug did not have any immediate effect on me. But in an hour or so, I started feeling dazed. I still don’t remember exactly why I attacked my friends. There was a point when I saw terrible dreams with my eyes open – demons trying to take me into another world. I tried to resist and break free but couldn’t. I had to kill them. One by one.”

  No one said anything for a full minute. The atmosphere in the room suddenly felt suffocating, as if the lingering sm
ell of smoke had got into their brains.

  “When did you come back to your senses?” Prakash asked.

  “I found myself lying beside a boulder the next morning. A bloody axe was lying near me. Having only a fleeting memory of what I might have done, I rushed back to the place where we had built our bonfire. I saw blood everywhere. Flies were buzzing over large patches of blackish clotted blood,” Kunal said, closing his eyes in regret.

  He added a few moments later, “But shockingly, I found no bodies. I wondered whether I had buried them somewhere, but couldn’t recollect at all. I sat there and wept, feeling disgusted with myself. Felt like committing suicide. Somehow I managed to reach the place where we had hidden our bikes. Guess what I saw? There were no bikes either.”

  “Are you saying that the whole incident was a clinical trial?”

  “Yes. They were watching me, monitoring me. They wanted to see the impact of NB-67 on people. When the killings were done, they disposed off the bodies and took away our bikes.”

  “Did you see anyone following you or watching you that night?”

  “After days of wracking my brain, I recalled a small incident which had gone unnoticed that night. A shining object had momentarily caught the beam of Ratan’s torchlight in the jungle. He said it seemed to be a person wearing a goggle. We brushed off his statement. I thought it must have been an owl or some animal. Later, I realized that it must have been a man wearing night-vision equipment.”

  “This is shocking. Who are these people?”

  “I don’t know. I tried to locate Dr Avneesh Chauhan. He had been referred to me by another doctor. But I never found this Avneesh guy again. He was gone.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “Because I was shot at by these people,” Kunal said, gritting his teeth in anger. “I was feeling extremely guilty. So the night after the killings, I called up the local Police station from an STD booth. The man told me to wait till the police came to pick me up.”

  He continued, “I waited for an hour. I saw a van stop at a distance. The men who came out of it were in army attire, but looked dangerous. One of them located me and they started running after me. Wary of their intentions, I ran into the jungle. They kept firing while chasing me. One of the slugs got me in the thigh. But I didn’t stop. I kept running till I was completely lost from them. I never again attempted to call the police.”

  “So, these people tried to finish you off because their experiment was done.”

  “Yes.”

  “You said that you know of many more such experiments?”

  “Over these eight years, I have followed many such incidents where there has been a massacre and the killer goes missing or is dead. For example, random killings in schools, colleges and in the military, unexplained violence at home, incidents like those. I found a partner in a psychiatrist named Dr Kalyan Ghosh. He had a history of activism against big pharmaceutical companies whose drugs had serious side effects. I found his name in a newspaper article and contacted him. He was stunned on hearing my account. Together, we decided to expose these people and began investigating. Over the years, we came across a few cases where NB-67 or its more potent successor could have been used,” said Kunal and took a deep breath. “But, somehow the wrong guys got wind of what we were trying to do. Since then, both of us are living in mortal fear.”

  “Where does Dr Kalyan Ghosh live?”

  “I don’t know. He went into hiding about two years ago, fearing for his life. In recent times, he used to live in a state of constant paranoia, rarely sharing any detail with me. If he is alive, I guess he would be investigating independently now.”

  Prakash looked into Kunal’s eyes. “You have really gone through terrible times. It’s tough imagining me in your place.”

  Mrinal chipped in with his own question. “So how did you come across the Nitin Tomar case?”

  “I wasn’t aware of the Nitin Tomar massacre till it actually happened. The death of Mohammed Afroz and the Mujahid hogwash prompted me to come to Ambala and do some research on my own. But these bastards got me.”

  Prakash nodded and said, “We also suspected Mujahid-e-Bashariyat of being a phoney outfit.”

  “Yeah. That’s an easy way to hide their footprints. Blame it on the Jihadi,” Kunal said.

  “Does the name Dr Varun Gupta ring any bell?” Prakash asked. “He was Nitin Tomar’s psychiatrist.”

  “No. But I am sure the name is a fake. Who knows, he might be the same guy who gave me NB-67.”

  “A psychiatrist with different names – Avneesh Chauhan, Varun Gupta…”

  “Yes.”

  Prakash shook his head in disbelief. He looked at Mrinal who seemed lost. He himself felt dizzy with all this information.

  “One final question,” he said. “Who are these people? What is their motive?”

  “That’s what I am trying to find out. Our pursuers are small fish. They don’t know who their bosses are. We need to find out the big fish and what exactly do they want to achieve with NB-67.”

  “We will,” Prakash said. But first I need to verify your story.

  He walked towards the window, took out his mobile phone and googled ‘Bandhavgarh mass murders Kunal Chaubey’.

  31

  8 Am, Lutyens’ Delhi

  Aurangzeb Road in Lutyens’ Delhi, like the famous Kensington Palace Gardens of London, is often hailed as the richest road in India. The Birlas, Mittals, Jindals, Goenkas and some of the wealthiest people in the country have their ‘crown jewel’ properties in this part of the city. Their mansions stand in pride behind tall walls and hedges, comfortably secured from the much-detested world of common people.

  But there are exceptions everywhere. Even on Aurangzeb Road.

  One of the bungalows on the road is quite awkwardly named as Dharavi, the notorious slum in Mumbai, ridiculing the snobbery of the neighbours. The owner of the house probably wanted to remind the world of his origins.

  The property is owned by the maverick business magnate named Anwar Shah, owner of the Centennium Group. With a combined turnover of more than $30 billion, it is one of the largest privately owned enterprises in India.

  Century Corp is the media arm of Centennium Group, running a couple of film studios and a news channel, Century News, under the ‘Century’ banner. Anwar never wanted to carry a news channel under his belt. It didn’t fit well with his empire and also needed a different mindset to run. Besides, the margins were low and the competition was cut throat.

  Century News was a part of Centennium Group only because of his sister, Diya Shah who was fascinated with an ailing news channel named Sacchi Awaz, run by some of the most respected journalists in the country. At one time, the channel used to be famous for its hard-hitting news and unbiased commentary, but slowly lost out to the new generation masala news channels. Anwar bought the news channel as a gift for her, not expecting any returns from the company. It was a toy for his kid sister to play with.

  But quite contrary to his expectations, Diya turned around the news channel under its new name – Century News and it became one of the most popular news channels of India. It often swept the key prizes in award ceremonies for journalism.

  Nonetheless, the fourth estate can rarely stay away from a crisis. Century News was going through one today. Its star reporter Seema Sharma had vanished while working on one of the stories. Diya was worried because in this profession, people who disappear often turned up later in body bags. She was upset with herself for not asking Seema in detail about her activities. She had probably come across some explosive revelations while working on the Nitin Tomar case. What have you got yourself into? Where would I look for you now?

  She was sitting in her brother’s private study, waiting for one of his early morning business meetings to end. She knew she was a bitch as a boss. But to her own surprise she had a compassionate heart for people who worked under her. Seema was a fighter who had helped Century News reach where it was today. She deser
ved to get some help.

  “Why is my private study looking so wonderful today?” said Anwar, as he strode into the room with a broad smile. He opened his arms for Diya. “It has been so long since you stepped into this house.”

  She hugged him.

  “You know, I still miss your cooking,” he said. “Now that you are here, I’ll give my chefs a day off.”

  “Sure, bhaiya,” Diya said, smiling.

  “Now tell me. What pressing need brings you here?”

  Her face grew serious. “You know why I am here. Don’t you?”

  “One of your employees has disappeared.”

  “Her name is Seema, our ace reporter. I think she rankled some anti-social elements while working on a story. She was last seen in a village near the Bandhavgarh forests in Madhya Pradesh.”

  “Which story?”

  “The Nitin Tomar case… the man killed a dozen children in cold blood. He himself was murdered a week ago. She was probably trying to find out who killed him.”

  “You want me to help her family?”

  “I don’t think she’s dead yet. You’ll have to help me find her.”

  Diya looked at her brother. He was thinking.

  “You surprise me sometimes, my little sister,” Anwar began, with an incredulous look on his face. “Diya, you remember what our father used to say sometimes? That my daughter would supersede my son in business. I couldn’t agree more. And look today, it’s me who is running this empire. You wanted to take a backseat. You wanted to pursue what your heart said. You’ve always been like that. Using your heart instead of your brain.”

  He asked abruptly, “You know how many chemical plants we have?”

  “18. Maybe 19,” Diya replied.

  “25. We have 25 chemical plants employing more than ten thousand people. Every year, a few of them are lost to industrial accidents. It is unavoidable in hazardous businesses. We have insurance in place to take care of such situations. The reason why I’m telling you this is that an employer cannot keep running around to take care of every employee.”