Race Course Road: A Novel

by Goswami, Seema

  How could a well-brought-up girl like Asha consent to pose for such dirty pictures? And if she had posed for them willingly—as was clear—and shared them with her boyfriend, could she complain now that they had become public? Surely, she should have known that it was the easiest thing in the world to hack into the cloud and steal private pictures? God knows it had happened to enough celebrities over the years!

  On social media, too, the character assassination continued unabated. Twitter was awash with anonymous people sharing ‘shameless-Asha’ stories with the nudge-nudge wink-wink hashtag #AshaSucks. One of them swore he had witnessed Asha being initiated into the Mile High Club in the First Class cabin of a British Airways flight to London, while the rest of the passengers looked on aghast. Another talked about the time Asha had been so high on cocaine at a New Year’s Eve bash that she had stripped naked and dived into the swimming pool even before dinner was served. And so on and so scandalous.

  It mattered little that none of these stories were true. The only thing that mattered was that everyone believed them.

  The only silver lining on the dark cloud of gloom that was Asha’s life was that, by day two, the offending pictures themselves had disappeared off TV screens across the country. This was thanks to an injunction that Karan Pratap had won against their use, in an emergency petition filed before the Supreme Court, arguing that they violated his sister’s privacy, outraged her modesty and, most importantly, had been obtained illegally.

  But while news channels could no longer carry the naked pictures of Asha that had created all that furore, they had no problem illustrating their stories with revealing photos of her taken at private parties and helpfully leaked to them by her ‘friends’.

  The only person who refused to play this game was Manisha Patel. She carried a small report on the controversy but resolutely refused to host any debate shows on the subject. Instead, she launched an investigation to find out how these pictures had surfaced, and who was responsible for leaking them. Manisha had herself posed for some rather dodgy pictures in the past, so there was an element of ‘there, but for the grace of God, go I’ in her response. But Asha, watching from the seclusion of her bedroom and oblivious of Manisha’s true motivation, was deliriously grateful for her restraint.

  Gaurav Agnihotri, alas, had clambered down from the moral high ground rather rapidly. His refusal to run the pictures still stood but he saw no problem is referencing them in his prime-time debates. He had adopted a suitably high-minded angle when it came to these stories: the increasing prevalence of revenge porn and how nice girls from good families could make sure that they didn’t fall victim to it.

  Gaurav’s solution to this problem was essentially two-fold. First, keep your clothes on. And two, keep smartphones out of your bedroom.

  If you followed this prescription, you would be fine. If you didn’t, well then, you only had yourself to blame when your naked pictures went viral.

  And, as she huddled beneath her duvet and watched her world collapse around her, Asha was inclined to agree.

  ▪

  Karan Pratap Singh was at his wits’ end. He had managed to get his sister’s naked photos off the TV channels with an injunction. But the Internet was proving to be an entirely different—and far more difficult—beast.

  Initially, Karan had thought that he would soon have matters under control. He had put his best social media hands and Internet experts on the job, and instructed his office to help them liaise with the police and other law enforcement agencies. But two days later, the results were less than impressive.

  YouTube, where the original video containing the pictures had been posted, had been the soul of cooperation. But no sooner did the site’s administrators take down one link than ten others popped up with the same material. Before they could be purged, the site was swamped with a dozen more. It didn’t seem to matter how many IP addresses YouTube blocked, there were always many more with access to the same material which sprang up in their stead.

  Trying to keep the video off YouTube was turning out to be a bit like trying to stem the ocean tide with a paddle and a prayer. Clearly, the people behind this were no amateurs who were just in this for a lark. There was a professional team at work here, with access to the best computer nerds that Bitcoin could buy.

  His team had had more success with such sites as Instagram and Facebook, which were suspending every account that posted the pictures. But as usual Twitter—which allowed anonymity to a much greater extent—was behaving like the Wild West of the social media world, where the rule of law (not to mention, common decency) did not apply.

  It didn’t help that by now every person with a smartphone had screenshots of all the photographs. So, it was the easiest thing in the world to set up an anonymous account and post the pictures on Twitter yet again. But the speed and ease with which the pictures were infiltrating social media sites despite his best efforts to suppress them made Karan believe that it wasn’t just gleeful gossips at work here. There was a concerted effort by interested parties to keep the photos in the public domain and keep the scandal on the boil.

  His primary suspect was Jayesh Sharma. He was the only one who gained directly from these pictures going public. And given how badly he had been polling, Karan wouldn’t put it past the SPP leader to do something as desperate as this.

  But how had he obtained the pictures? That was the question that had been eating away at Karan ever since the photos surfaced. Had Sunny’s phone been hacked by someone paid by the SPP? Or had Sunny given these pictures to Jayesh of his own free will, in an attempt to get back at Asha?

  If he ever found out that Sunny was behind this, he would kill him with his own bare hands. As for Jayesh, the pummelling he would get at the polls would be nothing compared to what he would suffer if Karan had his way with him.

  This evening, though, he had other things to focus on. The IB chief had called twice since morning and asked for an appointment with the Prime Minister urgently. And now, he was stationed in the waiting room, waiting patiently while Karan dealt with the fallout of his sister’s scandal.

  Karan walked across to the door of his office, popped his head out, and motioned Suresh Shastri to enter.

  ‘Tea? Or coffee?’ he asked as Shastri settled down on the sofa.

  Shastri shook his head, no answering smile on his face. The poor chap was probably too embarrassed about the whole Asha business, thought Karan. For how long exactly would people continue to greet him as if there had been a death in the family?

  But, as it turned out, it was quite literally the death in his family that Shastri had come to discuss. He took out a sheaf of phone transcripts and laid them on the table as he began to brief Karan about a significant breakthrough in the investigation into his father’s assassination.

  As is so often the case in such matters, the break had come about entirely by accident. As part of an entirely different investigation, the mobile number of one of Delhi’s biggest arms dealers, Deepak Sethi, was being tapped for the past six months. Over the last month, the IB had extended the tapping to the phones of six other people, who were in regular touch with Sethi and who—or so it seemed—had some skin in his game.

  Last night, the weekly report on this investigation had landed on Shastri’s desk. The agents on the case had flagged up a recent conversation between one of these targets, a middleman called Akshay Trivedi, with another shady arms dealer, Gopi Goyal. It was clear from the recording that Trivedi was very drunk while Goyal was relatively sober. So, when Trivedi started talking indiscreetly, Goyal lost no time in shutting him up.

  ‘Do you have the recording with you?’ interrupted Karan, trying hard to keep his excitement under control. He had spent so much time listening to leads that went nowhere that he didn’t want to get his hopes up yet again.

  Shastri nodded, and pulled up the voice clip on his phone.

  The conversation began innocuously enough. But it soon turned unpleasant with Goyal taunting Trivedi abo
ut how he wasn’t big enough to handle a certain arms deal he was negotiating with Israel. ‘Akshayji, yeh aap kay bas ki baat nahin hai. Aap ko hamare office ki zarorat padegi.’ (This is not something you can handle, Akshayji. You will need the help of my office.)

  The drunk Trivedi was not having any of this. ‘Arre, kya baat kar rahe ho?’ he blustered. ‘Mere bas ki baat nahin hai? Aap toh mujhe jaante hi nahin. Maine toh Korea ke kalam se Bharat ka naya itihas likh diya hai!’ (What are you saying? This is not something I can handle? You don’t know me. I am the man who has written a new history for India with a Korean pen.)

  There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. And then, they heard Goyal say in a strained voice, ‘Chaliye, kal baat karte hain.’ (Let’s talk tomorrow.) And the line went dead.

  Karan’s heart was beating so loud that he was sure that Shastri could hear it. Keeping his face as neutral as he could, he asked Shastri, ‘What does this mean? Do you think this was the guy who was behind my father’s murder?’

  ‘Well, I am not sure about that,’ said Shastri, ever the cautious bureaucrat. ‘But he certainly is a person of interest. We are currently investigating his movements over the last few months and we have placed him under surveillance as well.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should arrest him and interrogate him? He just said that he changed Indian history with a Korean pen. What else could he be talking about except my father’s assassination?’

  ‘Well, sir, he was rather drunk so there is always a possibility that he was boasting.’

  ‘What about the reaction of the other guy? He clearly knows something too. Why don’t we take these chaps into custody? If you knock them around a bit, I am sure they will tell us all they know.’

  ‘We will do that eventually, sir. But right now it is more useful to tap their phones and follow them around. Who knows, they may well lead us to the primary movers in the conspiracy to kill the Prime Minister.’

  ‘And what if they up and disappear? Then we will be left with nothing at all.’

  ‘Believe me, sir, that will never happen. But there is something else of significance that I needed to share with you.’

  With that, Shastri handed over a sheaf of pages containing the call lists of Trivedi’s mobile phone over the last six months. One particular phone number had been highlighted several times. Trivedi had been making calls to it regularly, sometimes as often as four times a week. In the weeks leading up to and immediately following Birendra Pratap Singh’s assassination, the number of calls to this number showed an exponential increase. On the day of the assassination itself, there were as many as four calls exchanged between these numbers.

  ‘Who does that mobile phone belong to?’ asked Karan.

  ‘We don’t know for sure, sir. It is a pay-as-you-go number that is registered in Dubai. We were hoping that Trivedi would call it again so that we could record the voice of the other party. But he hasn’t called it even once in the last two months. And when we tried to call, the number was switched off.’

  ‘So, again, we have come up against a dead end,’ said Karan bitterly.

  ‘Well, not quite, sir. We traced the number back to the agent who sold it in Dubai. And we have the credit card details of that transaction.’

  ‘And?’ asked Karan. He was getting rather tired of Shastri’s propensity to spin the story out instead of leading with the most relevant facts.

  ‘The SIM card,’ said Shastri, ‘had been bought using a credit card issued to a Dubai-based company called PP Consulting.’

  ‘Why does that name sound familiar?’ asked Karan.

  Shastri looked a little discomfited at this. ‘That’s because it is the name of the consultancy firm owned by Sagar Prajapati. You know, the one in which Madan Mohanji’s son and daughter-in-law are directors.’

  And suddenly, all the pieces fell into place for Karan Pratap. He knew why and how his father had died. And he knew who had had him killed.

  ▪

  Madan Mohan Prajapati remembered the exact moment the idea of assassinating the Prime Minister of India had come to him. He had been getting into his car after a stormy meeting with Birendra Pratap Singh at Race Course Road when the thought had just popped into his head: How much easier his life would be if the Prime Minister was dead.

  He had initially pushed the thought away. He was just upset, he told himself. Anyone would be, after the kind of confrontation he had had. But things would soon calm down. Birendra Pratap’s temper would cool. There would be some sort of reconciliation. And things would soon return to normal.

  Or maybe he was just fooling himself and Birendra Pratap would never relent—not while there was breath left in his body.

  The memory of the PM’s furious face flashed up again in his mind’s eye. Ignoring Madan Mohan’s unctuous greeting, Birendra Pratap had curtly told him to sit down before pushing a file towards him. ‘Read that,’ he had instructed in cold tones.

  The moment Madan Mohan looked at the first page he had known that he was in deep trouble. Right up there in the left-hand corner was the logo of his Cayman bank. And then there was page after page detailing all the money that had flowed into his numbered account over the years that he had been defence minister. On the margins, someone had helpfully annotated the dates of the major defence deals that had gone through during this period, tying each to the payments that came in.

  As evidence of corruption went, this was all rather damning. Yes, his name was not on the account, but Madan Mohan knew full well that it wouldn’t be difficult to trace the listed beneficiary, a law firm on the island, back to him. Or, indeed, to track the passage of money to firms run by his nephew and his son in Dubai and Mauritius.

  Madan Mohan had thought quickly. He could bluster and swear innocence. But both he and Birendra Pratap would know that this was just for show. So why go through that pretence?

  He had slowly flipped past the last page in the file, shut it and pushed it back towards the Prime Minister, keeping his gaze resolutely on the desk.

  ‘Well, what’s your explanation, Madan?’ Birendra Pratap had asked, a vein throbbing angrily in his forehead. ‘You swore to me that all these deals were clean. That you had got rid of all those arms dealers and middlemen. And now I find that you have been taking kickbacks from these people all along. What is your explanation?’

  Madan Mohan had paused to think for a moment before conceding that he didn’t have any. But he did have a question. What did the Prime Minister intend to do with this information?

  Birendra Pratap was clear. Madan Mohan had to come clean. He had to give up the names of all those shady arms dealers who had facilitated his corruption so that they could be prosecuted. If he did that, then he would be allowed to resign quietly on health grounds and slowly fade away from public life.

  If, however, he refused to give up his arms dealer buddies, then all the information that Birendra Pratap had on his illegal bank accounts would be leaked to the press. And Madan Mohan himself would be booked for corruption.

  Put like that, it really wasn’t much of a choice at all.

  But Madan Mohan knew full well that the people he had dealt with, the ones who had made him richer beyond his wildest dreams, were criminals. And that going up against them meant risking the lives of himself and his family. They would not hesitate to kill him if they thought that he meant to betray them. And once they made up their minds to do that, there was no security force that could stop them.

  There was no way he could give up those names and live. And yet, there was no way he could refuse to give them up and survive. So, what was he to do?

  Realizing the bind he was in, Madan Mohan—ever the astute operator—had quickly gone into penitent mode. He had made a terrible mistake, he told the Prime Minister. He should never have done those deals. He should never have taken the money. He realized that now, and as penance he would divert all the money in his account to the party election fund. He would even agree to be transferred to another
ministry if Birendra Pratap no longer trusted him in defence.

  He would do anything the Prime Minister wanted. But he could not give up those names. Birendra Pratap did not know what these people were capable of. They would kill him without a second thought. They would target his children and his grandchildren. Did Birendra Pratap want all those deaths on his conscience?

  Birendra Pratap had remained unmoved. Stop this needless melodrama, he had told Madan Mohan curtly. Nobody is going to kill you. Nobody is going to harm your family. You have the Government of India protecting you. But only so long as you give up those names.

  Seeing how implacable the Prime Minister was, Madan Mohan swiftly changed tack. Okay, he said, he would do as Birendra Pratap said. But could he just get some time? His daughter’s wedding was a month away. Could this wait until then, so that her wedding didn’t get marred because of his stupidity? Once the wedding was over, he would tell all.

  Birendra Pratap, a family man at heart, found that he didn’t have it in him to deny this request. He knew what an important event a daughter’s wedding was. And he had known Madan Mohan’s daughter, Devika, since she was a child. He didn’t see why she should have her big day spoilt because of her father’s greed and dishonesty. So, giving in to his better self, Birendra Pratap agreed.

  Madan Mohan would have a month. And then, the day after his daughter had wed, he would announce his resignation from government and his retirement from politics. And then, he would start talking to the investigative authorities, detailing how each and every deal went down. Madan Mohan had agreed, thanked the PM profusely and left.

  But by the time he got into his car to drive to his own Lutyens bungalow, Madan Mohan had decided that there was no way he was going to quit. And there was certainly no way he was going to give up the names of the men he had done business with over the years. He valued his own life too much for that.