‘Do you know what I think, Mr Khan?’ The chief minister spoke with barely concealed rancour. ‘Within the four walls of the room, I think a Muslim investigating a murder . . . two murders . . . that involve a temple is possibly the most blasphemous thing I have ever heard.’ He looked around the table for support. Only Dharmaraja Varma was nodding. ‘So, I am going to recommend to the CBI that you be taken off the investigating team and someone who understands Hindu culture and its practices take the lead.’
Kabir stood up. ‘In that case, sir, I shall be forced to make sure that everyone knows about the gold-plating machine in the temple and the two hundred crore worth of gold that is missing. Mind you, this is only one instance. The more time the audit team spends in the temple, the more discrepancies we shall find. Although, to cast aspersions even a small act of indiscretion is enough. Who needs two hundred crore when twenty-one lakh will do? And by the way, lest we forget, we have documentary evidence. The temple paid from its bank account a sum of twenty-one lakh to allegedly acquire an elephant when the animal was actually donated by N. Srinivasan of India Cements! Your own records show it. Would you like me to produce the paperwork?’
Sitting beside Kabir, Vikram Rai smirked. After all, it was he who had told Kabir about the elephant and given him the evidence to support that claim.
Trust is really a delicate thing. It doesn’t always require a twenty tonne hammer to break it. Sometimes, even a small pat of indiscretion is enough to shatter it to bits. And once destroyed, recovering it is almost impossible. Dharmaraja Varma realized that, as did the chief minister.
‘And, sir,’ Kabir continued, ‘the CBI does not look at caste, creed or religion. That’s for politicians like yourself. There may be some black sheep in the force, but they are also everywhere. In every organization, every religion. Please don’t taint everyone with the same brush, sir. If there are any other questions, I am happy to answer, else please excuse me.’
When no reply was forthcoming, Kabir turned away and walked out of the meeting, leaving both the chief minister and Dharmaraja Varma red-faced.
The chief minister got up from his chair and gestured to DGP Krishnan to join him in the adjacent room.
‘Look, Krishnan,’ he said as soon as the DGP shut the door. ‘The king is an old man. A foot and three quarters in the grave. How much longer will he live? But as long as he does, he is critical to us. People look at him as a protector of the temple, their faith. If we touch him, it won’t be without political ramifications. We need to make sure that he is protected. Else our vote base will gravitate towards the opposition. Dharmaraja Varma is our insurance—insurance that we will win the next elections, which, as you know, are not too far away. Once we win the next term, we will act on him. Till then keep Kabir Khan on a very short leash.’
Krishnan just smiled and nodded.
The meeting was over.
On his way out, Krishnan requested Vikram Rai to join him in the car since they were both headed to the temple.
‘What kind of man was Subhash Parikh? Do you think he could have been involved in a racket of any kind?’
‘What kind of a racket?’
‘Something illegal.’
‘Not that I know of. Why?’
‘He was seen with a woman who we believe was involved in the smuggling of the Nataraja statue from Suthamalli which was eventually recovered from the National Museum in Australia.’
Vikram Rai seemed concerned with this allegation. ‘No, no! He has a highly reputed antiques showroom in New York.’
‘Do you have his telephone number?’
‘Of course. Why?’
‘Can you share it with me?’
Vikram Rai browsed through his contacts and gave Krishnan Subhash’s number. It was the same number the police had.
‘Did he have an alternate number?’
‘If he did, he didn’t share it with us.’
‘Did you ever see him use another phone?’
Vikram shook his head. ‘He used to carry an iPhone. I don’t recall seeing him use another phone.’
‘Well, the other phone could have been an iPhone as well!’
‘Everyone has a secret these days.’ Vikram gave a hollow laugh.
Krishnan smiled grimly. ‘I wonder what yours is.’
Vikram was taken aback. ‘What!’
67
CHENNAI
C.G. Sumangali, the head of the Tamil Nadu HR&CE board, was attending a concert by renowned vocalist T.M. Krishna when her phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number so she quickly cancelled the call before the people around her could object to the buzzing and put the phone on silent. She refused to be disturbed during a concert. Moments later there was a second call from the same number. Then a third. And a fourth. She determinedly ignored them all.
The fifth call was from the culture minister of Tamil Nadu. She hurriedly got up from her chair and exited the auditorium.
‘Where are you, madam?’ the minister bellowed the moment he heard her voice.
‘Good evening, sir,’ Sumangali stammered into the phone. ‘I have come to listen to T.M. Krishna, sir.’
‘Madurai Police has been trying to reach you!’
‘Oh, I . . . I didn’t know it was Madurai Police. I will call them back, sir.’
‘Immediately! And update me after you have spoken to them.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sumangali said. As she waited for the minister to disconnect the phone, she wondered why, if he already knew what had happened, he wanted an update from her.
She called the number from where she had got the missed calls. After talking to them, she called the minister back.
‘Who is in charge of this in Tamil Nadu Police?’ he asked her.
‘Mr Madhavan,’ Sumangali said. ‘He is the DIG of the Idol wing of Tamil Nadu Police.’
‘Call him. Tell him to get to work.’ The minister hung up.
Sumangali’s next call was to Madhavan who was in the DGP’s office in Thiruvananthapuram.
Subhash’s post-mortem report was expected the next morning. Kannan’s murder investigation had taken a back seat. A Subhash Parikh, with his contacts, influence and wealth, was a bigger case than a ‘nobody’ autorickshaw driver. As the media shifted its focus to the Subhash Parikh investigation, Kannan was forgotten, much to Rajan’s frustration. He tried chasing the police and Krishnan to hasten the investigation, but was forced to maintain a low profile, for fear that the secrets he and his family had kept for so long would come tumbling out. The only factor that kept the cops interested in Kannan’s murder was the theory that, on some level, his and Subhash Parikh’s deaths were related.
Mumbai Police had been unable to trace the person who had been waiting at the airport with the placard bearing Subhash’s name.
‘How can that be?’ Madhavan was bewildered. ‘They have the vehicle number. They have his photo. They just need to land up at the address in the RC book of the vehicle.’
‘They did that,’ Kabir said. ‘But it turned out that the address is fake. There is a peculiar problem in Mumbai. If someone buys a car from a dealer and registers it at an address within Mumbai city, the car costs about two to three per cent more on account of octroi being levied when it is brought inside Mumbai. So, a lot of people give a fake address and register the car outside Mumbai. This particular vehicle is registered in Thane. For now they have put out an alert for this car number. All toll plazas and entry points into the city have been intimated. Hopefully, we’ll hear something soon.’ He paused for a second and added, ‘Ask them to put his photograph out on TV channels. Particularly the Marathi and Tamil channels.’
‘Tamil?’
‘Yes, many drivers in Mumbai are Tamilians. They stay in Dharavi and work in Bandra and other affluent neighbourhoods. It’s worth a try,’ Kabir Khan said.
‘I will let them know,’ Krishnan agreed.
‘If we can find out whom Subhash was going to meet in Mumbai, it might help us figure out the motive behind his
murder.’ Madhavan’s phone rang just then. ‘Sollu,’ he answered. It was his subordinate in Chennai. ‘Hmm . . . Okay.’
The sombre look on Madhavan’s face suggested that something was wrong.
‘What happened?’ Kabir asked.
‘Madurai Police has intercepted a group involved in smuggling artefacts.’
68
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
Krishnan’s secretary walked in with a copy of a fax that had just come in.
‘Subhash Parikh’s post-mortem report,’ he said, offering the document to Krishnan.
Before the DGP could take the report, Kabir swooped in and plucked it out of the secretary’s hands. He perused the report very carefully, and then handed it over to Krishnan, who had been observing the change in his expression as he read it.
‘Nothing dramatic in this,’ Kabir Khan volunteered.
Krishnan read through the report. ‘The toxicology results are inconclusive. They say that his death could have been because of the Alprax, which might have compounded his sugar problem. There are needle punctures on his thighs which could be because of insulin jabs. But there is nothing to explain the divots on his back, just above his buttocks. That’s what prompted the toxicology test,’ Krishnan replied.
‘Whoever killed him is smart. They know that most toxins don’t normally show up in regular tests, unless specifically tested for. And to test for a particular toxin, one needs to know which one it is. Very smart work,’ Kabir responded.
‘This just means, Khan, that all our hypotheses have an equal chance of being correct. We can’t drop a single hypothesis as improbable.’
69
The deaths of Kannan and Subhash, particularly of the latter, refocused the media’s attention on the temple. The story that at one point in time seemed to be settling down and losing traction, was back on the front page of every major newspaper; each one peddling a unique conspiracy theory. News channels went ballistic, discussing Anantha Padmanabha’s wealth and how it should be handled. ‘Don’t mix religion and commerce!’ a popular news anchor shouted during a prime-time debate.
At lunch that day, Vikram asked Nirav, ‘What scares you more: god’s fury or human anxiety?’
‘A bit of both,’ Nirav replied.
Work in the temple had almost come to a standstill. Only a quarter of the people initially hired to work in the vaults remained; the rest had left. Vikram was worried about the stance the Supreme Court would take if things came to a head and they were unable to complete the work entrusted to them.
Kabir Khan was in the Thiruvananthapuram police headquarters when his phone rang.
‘Hi Madhavan, how have you been?’ he said, answering the call.
‘Good.’
‘You ditched us right in the middle of an important assignment!’ Kabir chuckled. ‘You better be busy with something worthwhile.’
‘You’ll be surprised when you hear what I am doing right now.’
‘Really?’
‘You know we Indians are probably the most hypocritical race in the world.’
Kabir was surprised at this tangent in the conversation, but he detected frustration in Madhavan’s tone and so he didn’t interrupt. He knew that when someone was frustrated, the best thing to do was to let them speak their mind. Interrupting their flow of thought would only result in incoherence. Left to themselves, they would eventually come to the point.
‘On the face of it,’ Madhavan was complaining, ‘we are so god-fearing. Yet we do not let slip a single opportunity to strip our gods of all the dignity and plunder their temples. That’s our culture. We are possibly the most corrupt race in the world.’
Kabir remained silent.
‘Hello?’
‘I’m here, waiting for you to finish.’
‘The truck that was seized in Madurai was a sand truck. It was being taken to a construction site in Rajapalayam. When it was inspected the police found small statues buried deep in the sand. They were en route to the port of Tuticorin.’
‘And what was the intent?’
‘Kabir!’ Madhavan said, clearly exasperated with Kabir’s question. ‘Obviously they weren’t for a temple there. They were meant to be smuggled out of the country and sold in the international market.’
‘So another Shreyasi Sinha at play here,’ Kabir remarked.
‘Or maybe our own Shreyasi Sinha.’
‘Any idea whom the truck belongs to?’
‘I don’t want to say anything yet. Give me a day.’
70
‘I need to bring in Dharmaraja Varma.’
When Kabir Khan said this, the tumbler of hot filter coffee nearly slipped out of Krishnan’s hands.
‘Are you out of your mind!’
‘Why? Is there a ban on questioning him?’
‘Oh come on!’ Krishnan exclaimed. ‘Don’t you know what you are asking is impossible. He is one of the most powerful men in Kerala. He is the gatekeeper to god, the controller of Hindu votes. He is the man whom every politician in the state bows to. He may be living the life of a recluse in a very middle-class mansion—’
‘That itself is an oxymoron. “Middle-class mansion” indeed!’ Kabir rolled his eyes.
‘Whatever. You will not get permission to bring him in. Period. I don’t want to fade into oblivion, Khan, especially at the fag end of my career.’
‘Can we meet him at least?’
‘Not at this point in time. Not till we have some evidence which shows his involvement. The state will not give you permission,’ he repeated.
A phone started ringing in the background. Krishnan walked across the room and took out a phone from his bag and spoke into it. He was back at his desk after a couple of minutes. ‘Sorry. Wife. Can’t not take her calls.’
Kabir smiled. ‘You have a separate phone for her.’
Krishnan nodded. ‘Only for Sundari. Sometimes, when I am in meetings, I leave my other phone behind. But this phone is always with me. Ever since our younger daughter went to Columbia to pursue her engineering, Sundari has become very lonely. Depressed. I try to do what I can, but I am also worried. I don’t want to be in a situation when she cannot reach me. She doesn’t talk to anyone else these days, doesn’t even answer other calls; she’s muted all her contacts. Only if I call from this number will she respond, for she knows it is me.’ Kabir saw his eyes become moist. ‘Parents find it very difficult to reconcile to life after their children leave the nest, Khan. It is not easy,’ he said, wiping a tear. ‘You are lucky, Khan. You don’t have kids.’
Kabir smiled. Krishnan was a different police officer. He was a very simple, down-to-earth, family-oriented man. Kabir had seen him in action. While at work, he was aggressive, calculative, a quick thinker and a go-getter. But with family, his softer side came out.
They got back to discussing the arrest of Dharmaraja Varma, but Krishnan put his foot down. Kabir could have gone against the DGP, but he dropped his idea of interrogating Dharmaraja Varma.
Instead, he got up. ‘I am heading back to the hotel.’
‘Call me in case you need anything.’
On the way out, Kabir kept playing his earlier conversation with Madhavan in his head. There was something in that conversation which Kabir Khan didn’t quite feel comfortable about. But what it was, he couldn’t say.
The reason he had wanted to interrogate Dharmaraja Varma was the discovery of a numbered pot among the gold and silver ornaments found in the sand-laden truck. There were a few other articles which were from temples in Tamil Nadu, which a few experts from the HR&CE had identified, but it was the pot that was bothering Kabir. Krishnan had mentioned that numbered pots had been found inside the vault that had been opened in the Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple. Were these pots also from the same vault? The truck which had been seized belonged to a TPS Cargo Ltd. Unfortunately, the company was fake as was the truck’s registration number. And the truck driver had escaped. Assuming for a moment that the pot was indeed from the vault of the Anantha
Padmanabha Swamy Temple, it begged the question: how had it made its way into a sand-laden truck in Madurai en route to the international market? It pointed towards the involvement of someone on the inside.
As did the misappropriation of the twenty-one lakh rupees in the name of the elephant that Vikram had pointed out. While twenty-one lakh in itself was a small amount, it indicated a rot within the system. It was always the small frauds that lay the pathway for a larger malaise. If one paid attention to the small frauds in the system it became very easy to unearth the decay within. For him, it was difficult to ignore the elephant payout as a small one-time fraud committed by someone from within.
Back in his hotel room Kabir kept going over everything that he had learnt so far. Which was nothing, really. They had not got any leads from Subhash’s hotel room, except for the Alprax; it had been wiped clear of any forensic traces. The murderers had probably been professionals. But then in such cases, where the scene of crime is a public place like a hotel from where all traces of murder had disappeared, there is always the possibility that someone on the inside is involved. The mysterious death of Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of a senior Congress party functionary, at a hotel in Delhi started playing out in his mind. Similar premise. He made a mental note to speak to the investigating officer in that case. However, in this case, what did insider mean. Family? Subhash was a bachelor with no living family members. A friend then? Someone from the audit team? But why would they want him dead? Their association largely began and ended at the temple. Could it be the person he was talking to over the phone outside the Taj the night before he was killed? But there too they had no way of knowing the number Subhash was using. Had they got that number, it might have given them some new leads. Until this morning he had thought it strange that no one in the audit team knew that Subhash had carried two phones, but then despite having spent so much time with him over the past few days, he had found out only recently that DGP Krishnan had a second phone.
In the Name of God Page 17