Deja Karma

by Vish Dhamija

  After a few minutes of polite conversation about retired life and rising prices and increasing traffic and crime, the SP without warning asked, ‘Why now?’

  ‘Why now what, sir?’ Jay repeated the sentence in order to comprehend what the old man was talking about.

  ‘Why do you want to know about that incident after all these years?’

  ‘Who knows? Sometimes the chips come together only when they do. Kumbh Mela can happen every year but it doesn’t. You see what I mean?› Jay wanted to add that I might not be smarter than you in my search, but I do have an emotional involvement, though he avoided any such words. ‘I am not here to solve the case, sir. I’m here to do whatever it takes to get to the truth, with or without evidence. How much do you remember of the case?’

  ‘It was one of the most publicised cases in my career. A big time real estate developer killed by his wife in his own home. The media had a field day. Oh, I remember everything. Does that make sense?’

  ‘It does, but it prompts another question, if I may?’

  ‘Of course I’m retired and live alone, so any company can keep me talking for hours. Care for a drink?’ Saxena asked mirthfully.

  Jay smiled. How fortuitous. He nodded acquiescently.

  The old man got up and walked slowly towards his kitchen. He came out a full five minutes later with two glasses of orange juice.

  ‘Isn’t there a possibility that there was someone else in our house that night?’ Jay started after the old man had settled back into his seat and taken his first sip.

  ‘That’s a bit of a stretch. We never found any evidence of that, but…’ The old man hesitated, stopped mid-sentence.

  Jay waited for a while. The old man shook his head in disgust.

  ‘But…?’ Jay uttered when the old man did not speak for a while.

  ‘Jay, trust me, every police officer retires with one or two cases that scorch his soul till the grave accepts us. An unsolved case is a failure.’

  ‘But why do you think it was a failure when my mother was convicted for it? For the police it was solved, closed. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t forget, we’re talking about a time when a murder accused or suspect was already deemed guilty even before they were brought for a trial before a judge. Then, in your mother’s case, there were no other suspects, no one found with a tangible motive. But, there was one thing that intrigued me then and bothered me for a long time and probably even now as I speak — ’ the old man took a sip of the orange juice and slurped — ‘when the knife was analysed by the forensic experts, there was only one set of fingerprints on it. No partials, no smudges, just one set — your mother’s. She seemed to have wiped off the knife right before she used it to stab your father, or so it appeared. Therefore, I looked elsewhere. I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced she killed him, but please appreciate that there was a lot of pressure from the top to bring the case to a closure. And, as though that wasn’t enough, she pleaded guilty. What could one expect?’

  Again, Jay waited for the old man to continue.

  ‘It’s one thing to find partial or unrecognisable fingerprints, it’s a totally different situation where they’ve been wiped off the murder weapon. You see what I mean? It was like no one had ever held that knife before.’

  Which was untrue. Jay knew that he had held that knife to his father’s neck only a few hours before his murder, so the forensic team should have recovered his partials but they hadn’t. His theory was finding some roots again. He racked his brain, his eyebrows arched; his eyes widened and narrowed a few times. Disbelief? Shock? Was his mind playing with him? Was he in some trance or had the old SP lost his marbles? Could he be trusted? Then again, what was in it for a retired police officer to prevaricate?

  ‘Your best guess?’ Jay softly asked.

  ‘Faugh!’ the old man exhaled. ‘I’ve always believed she covered up for someone, protected someone. We found out that some people owed your father money, lots of money, which was not in the books. Hence, the debts died with him. But there wasn’t even a remote piece of evidence of someone being near your house that night. Everyone we checked had an ironclad alibi. So you can say that though some other people might have had the motive, they certainly did not have the opportunity, which saved them from any further stringent investigation.’

  It all sounded egregious, but Jay sat silently.

  ‘The case was closed years ago. She never said anything except admitting to the crime. You won’t find much now, Jay.’

  ‘The case might have closed for the world. For me it will remain open till I find the truth.’

  ‘And that is…?’

  ‘I wish I knew, but I will.’

  ‘So you think the police of this city apprehended the wrong person and the courts convicted that wrong person?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then, why?

  ‘Why, what?’

  ‘Why bother with the past?’

  ‘Because the past is waving at me, looking at me for an answer.’

  ‘That sounds philosophical.’

  ‘I know it does, but it’s the truth. If the past wanted to stay buried it needn’t have called me.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense to me.’

  ‘Don’t bother, sir.’

  The two sat looking at each other for a while, sipping their orange juices. It was the silence like bumping into your ex in a lift on a journey up to 71st floor and there is nothing to say. Or more like, struggling to find the right words to re-break ice or wondering if it’s worthwhile to even attempt rehashing the past. A total impasse.

  ‘Imagination is useful if you are an inventor or a creative person, not when you are a police officer. It’s a strict no-no. We work with facts and facts alone. I’m sure it’s the same for you advocates too.’

  ‘I am not imagining it. My mother died recently and left a note that she hadn’t committed the crime.’ Jay enlightened Saxena about the letter.

  The policeman looked hurt. It has been considered since time immemorial that generally people don’t lie right before their deaths. With his mother having repudiated her guilt before her death, Jay knew it was something that would bother the old man’s conscience till his own end. He looked crestfallen.

  ***

  Jay left Vasant Kunj a little before four. He hadn’t got anything new from Saxena, but sometimes things just topple into alignment. The epiphany had brought a new spin on his theories. Mulling over the info he had just received made him livid. Hitherto unknown, and therefore impossible, scenarios, now zumba-ed in his head. Someone had killed his father and escaped. And his mother had borne the brunt.

  Saxena had rightly said that an unsolved crime is a failure: failure for the investigating officer leading the enquiry, failure for the trial judge sentencing the innocent, failure for the victim, failure for the accused and failure for the family of the accused innocent. The whole thing had flunked on so many levels. There were far too many coincidences for someone like Jay who did not believe in them. The forensics should have found an overlap of fingerprints, some latent prints, partials. But they didn’t. Had his mother inadvertently cleaned all prints? Or did she scrub the knife after the murder and planted her prints firmly on the weapon, and in the process, wiped off any back-story. Did she not realise that by doing so she would become the prime suspect? Or was she shielding someone?

  The obvious question was who? Who had she done it for?

  The obvious answer was Swamijee.

  The not so obvious answer was what to do next.

  Finding that damn Swamijee was of utmost importance now. No one can cover all the tracks; it was altogether a different matter if Jay couldn’t uncover the Swami’s tracks, though he was confident that Bhīma, who was proficient in finding the proverbial needles, would find the Swami too. However, given the isolato’s age, the only problem was digging him up before he turned to ashes.

  On the drive back Jay updated Bhīma on other possibilities that the SP had men
tioned. He remembered some — not all — of his father’s alleged close friends who owed him money, and had disappeared from Jay’s life when tragedy struck and when he needed them the most. Jay was so consumed by the calamity that he had held no prisoners then. But it was time, now, to look for those gentlemen too, and he gave some names to Bhīma.

  ‘Don’t worry, hukum, if the Swami is alive I will find him,’ was Bhīma’s reticent, but confident response. ‘And I’ll find the others too.’

  One of the key factors of success of Jay Singh’s legal practice was that he was an advocate and investigator rolled into one. And Bhīma was the difference. Most other defence advocates were just that: defence advocates. This is where Jay excelled. Jay’s investigative arm got great results, which helped him twist cases. And although he worked on investigation results provided by law enforcement officers and the discovery file handed over by the plaintiff’s advocate, he was cognisant that the police wasn’t inclined to help the defence. If anything, it set barriers for the defence to get to anything that could marginalise the evidence they gathered to prosecute. He primarily relied on his in-house Sherlock, Bhīma.

  Jay skipped work for the balance of the day. It was communicated to Julie that Jay was out on personal business. Put impolitely for anyone in the office, it was none of his or her business to ask or know. Julie understood this. In all fairness, there were lots of cases Jay was involved in at any given moment and it wasn’t necessary for everyone in office to know what he was dealing with on the day.

  On the drive back home they were bubbled into the evening rush hour. The silver lining in the slow traffic of this forever-growing metropolis was that it gave travellers a lot of time to deliberate. Jay thought about his latest hot topic: Manavi, but for some strange reason, his mind quickly wandered into Gina’s life. Where was she headed in her relationship with Kumar? Was that love or lust or financial security that tied her to a married man? And what was in it for Kumar? He had the money and he had a wife and kids. What place did Gina have in his life? Then he figured that extramarital affairs were never about love or lust; they were about ego. Thankfully, or sadly, he wasn’t married and, though he could theorise, he’d have to make a giant leap of thought to comprehend. Kumar was either innocent or a consummate liar. There was nothing that Jay had noticed that gave any indication that his client had been paltering except for some omissions in the beginning: Kumar’s voice never wavered and his eyes didn’t blink even once. All the usual signs of prevarication had been absent. He had a hunch that something wasn’t right. It didn’t fit. Was there a missing piece in the script that he had overlooked and that might come back to bite him later? He decided he should have one more meeting with Kumar and suggest a self-defence route to check for any inconsistency in Kumar’s story. However, if Kumar declined that, then Jay had no reason to think he was the perpetrator of the crime. He pulled out a bottle of whisky and tumbler from the armrest in the rear seat, opened the table on the back of the front seat and fixed himself a drink. He took a sip, closed his eyes and drummed his fingers on the table.

  ‘Bhīma,’ Jay suddenly said.

  ‘Yes, hukum?’

  ‘I don’t want to go home. Please take me to Akbar’s place.’

  Bhīma nodded. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had dug up a lot of land for the construction of a part of the overhead Blue Line extension, and being in the area they were entrenched in traffic of all sorts on all sides. They drove a further kilometre before Bhīma found the next U-turn.

  Jay fixed himself another drink and promised himself it was his last one till he got to Ali. His excitement of telling his friend all about Manavi had waned a bit after this meeting with Saxena. Nevertheless, he knew, he would discuss both things. If he didn’t bring up Manavi, he was certain Ali would.

  There wasn’t much point in asking Bhīma to return home without him; Bhīma wouldn’t budge from his position. The next best thing was to send him for his dinner and to return to pick up Jay. That suited them both.

  As expected, the initial jubilation at seeing his friend faded when Jay relayed what Saxena had told him. Added to the mix was the letter that Jay had received from his mother. In all the years that Jay had known Ali, for the first time Ali was convinced he had a point: it was worth resurrecting the old case. Something had gone wrong. Drastically wrong. Both men agreed that the investigation was botched and consequently the trial was erroneous: if the source of information is rotten everything else that follows, cannot be trusted. An mp3 file cannot produce the audio quality of a CD after all.

  Both friends decided that finding the Swami should be a priority. It was equally paramount to search for the few supposed friends who owed money to Jay’s father; those friends, being from business families and their residences being in Delhi, should impose fewer problems. That the police may have checked their alibis and cleared them did not mean they could not have hired someone for the task. However, how did his mother fit into all this? Why would she let anyone walk away with the family money after offing her husband? The more they deliberated the more they zeroed in on the Swamijee.

  Bhīma returned. He had got kathi-rolls packed for Jay and Ali, which were appreciated after the two had been drinking on empty stomachs. Thankfully, the dinner also changed the tack of their sombre conversation. Ali was ecstatic to know that not only had Jay made the call to Manavi, but he had already been out on their first dinner date too.

  ‘See, didn’t I tell you that she wouldn’t have any objections to dating you?’

  ‘It wasn’t a date,’ Jay corrected him.

  ‘Oh really? What is a date then, lover boy?’

  ‘We merely went out for dinner. That’s it.’

  ‘That’s a date as far as I am concerned. What did you think, she’d jump into bed with you on the first date?’

  ‘I had no intentions of that.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  Jay nodded, took a sip, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Good, when are you meeting her next?’

  ‘This weekend.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At my place.’

  ‘Hmmm…’

  The two friends looked at each other. Their eyes smiled. A strange happiness sprung in the air.

  ‘Should I take it that you two would play bridge or chess?’

  Both burst out laughing. Jay had to spit out the drink he had just sipped.

  ‘We’re more health conscious than you think. We’ll swim.’

  ‘Ooh-la-la, I can see someone is looking forward to it.’

  Jay could feel his face flush. He just gave a smile in response.

  ‘Treat her well, my friend.’

  On the drive back Jay realised that he didn’t want any more drink, which was unusual. He was occupied with beautiful thoughts of Manavi. Imagining her in that little black dress gave him goose bumps. If she came over this weekend, as she had promised, seeing her at the pool — would it be a swimsuit or a bikini? What colour? — would be divine and he refused to envisage the scene. The only apprehension he felt was how was he going to explain Bhīma to her? There was no way he could hide the big man for long. After the first dinner and the drive, Bhīma had categorically refused to leave Jay alone or to drive by himself. He knew sooner or later he had to tell Manavi about Bhīma. There wasn’t a choice. How would he break the news in such a manner that he didn’t come across like a scared cat? It was only right to tell her that his life was fraught with danger, and that the danger could be contagious — and inadvertently traversable — if she linked up with him.

  What if she wanted no part in it then?

  SEVENTEEN

  The first trial date for State versus Vinay Kumar was set for four months later. The clock had finally started ticking. The public prosecutor was recorded as Ramesh Talwar. Jay had tangoed with Talwar before, thrice to be precise. Talwar, like his name suggested, was sharp like a sword with his tongue. Caustic and uncouth, he never minced his words. In fact, sometimes he temerariousl
y used provocative vocabulary and histrionics to dramatize, to invoke anger and uneasiness in both the defendant and the advocate. It was a grandstanding tactic in his book and, though it had limited usage for the court, it definitely provided great masala footage for the media. However, Talwar was bloody good at what he did. He had lost twice in the three times he had faced Jay in the past. The third case happened to be the only defence trial that Jay Singh had ever lost in his illustrious career. Talwar was that good. He was admirable but not when he was your opponent. You didn’t want him as your opponent. For any other defence advocate Talwar could be intimidating, but for Jay only an opponent like Talwar could make the trial more difficult and interesting, and eking out a victory would be that much more pleasurable. The only silver lining was that Talwar, unlike Jay, was known to play fair. But then again, in most cases, prosecution had to play fair, what with the burden of representing the state, and their investigation and discovery being run by the local police; they could delay sending the discovery files to the defence. And they did, but they could not conceal evidence or witnesses. Unfair play, therefore, wasn’t a conscious decision; it was thrust upon most prosecutors.

  Jay knew that with any other advocate, he could have given a shot at negotiating: bribed him or bought him or maybe threatened him. He couldn’t attempt any of those manoeuvres with Ramesh Talwar. Talwar couldn’t be bought and he had enough clout not to feel threatened even by someone like Jay Singh.

  The case, State versus Vinay Kumar should have ideally been allocated to an Additional District Judge, but given the workload it ended up getting escalated to a District Judge. Like in all trials, an internal process — that no one controlled — randomly Judges for criminal trials too.