by Ruby Gupta
‘Why?’
‘Well for one, I know enough about human psychology and Pallavi is not the type to commit murder. And Amar definitely does not have the persona to commit any crime – much less murder. He does not have it in him. Even if he had, he would not have been that big a fool to conceal the blood-encrusted knife in his closet. And if Pallavi had committed the murders, would she have hidden the knife in her own son’s closet? Then for Amar to confess it all – it was bizarre – all quite out of the realm of probability, if you look at it logically. And finally, the telephone call giving the tip off about Amar’s apartment. That was the clincher! Clearly someone was trying to frame Amar,’ Professor Shantanu analysed.
The way his friend put it, the entire thing did sound impossible; and yet the police had readily bought it, Dinkar thought.
‘I then decided to look at this case from an entirely different tangent. I thought, it had to be someone who was intimately aware of everything about Rajvir’s family who could have put all this into action. Only one name cropped up when I looked at it this way – Maheshananda. Suddenly I had a brainwave – and I was proved right.’
‘Brainwave about what?’
‘About scopolamine.’
‘Scopolamine?’ Professor Dinkar had no idea what his friend was talking about.
‘Yes scopolamine. You know when Pallavi told me that swamiji had given a special concoction for Amar to take every day before going to bed, I was curious. Also, it became common knowledge that Amar was becoming more and more delusional. Everyone thought it was due to Rajvir’s sudden and shocking murder, which caused his increasing dependence on drugs. I too had not given it another thought at the time. But now the circumstances were different. I wondered what was this so-called miraculous calming medicine given to Amar by the swami. On a hunch, I asked the lab to test the contents of the concoction for scopolamine.’
‘Why scopolamine?’ Dinkar was confused.
‘I recalled from somewhere that scopolamine was a dangerous drug used to induce memory loss among other things. It is also the key ingredient of the infamous date-rape drug.’
‘Oh!’ Professor Dinkar was shocked.
‘I dug up more info on scopolamine, and found that it is widely used by robbers to make their victims reveal bank details, etc. And later they have no memory of doing so. The victims become willing zombies under its influence.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I realized then that Maheshananda had some ulterior motive in giving scopolamine to Amar. It could not be possible that he did not know that what he was giving Amar contained scopolamine, or that it was an accidental ingredient in the medicine he had given. I knew it was deliberate, and done by design.’
‘But how did you arrive at this conclusion?’ Dinkar asked.
‘I recalled the hi-tech lab that I had seen at the swami’s ashram on my last visit. It was set up for the preparation of pure, herbal medicines I was told. I did a bit of research and learnt that scopolamine is extracted from the abundantly found Dhatura plant in this region. The modus operandi became clear to me.’
‘What modus operandi?’
‘Regular doses of the scopolamine, along with daily brain-washing by the swami was enough to convince Amar that he had indeed murdered his father. He really came to believe that he had committed the act due to his passionate hatred for Rajvir. And he had done it under the influence of the usual cocktail of drugs he took, and so did not have the actual memory of it,’ Shantanu explained.
‘Oh my God. This was wicked,’ Dinkar was appalled.
‘Yes. Pallavi had already told me that the swami had very kindly agreed to her request to speak to Amar on a continual basis. Maheshananda called up every day for over an hour over the phone, counselling the poor boy. But we know now what the counselling was all about,’ Shantanu shook his head ruefully.
‘Gosh!’ Dinkar was astounded at the convoluted plot.
His friend was silent.
‘But why did the swami have his lab develop concoctions based upon scopolamine?’ Dinkar asked after a while.
‘It could be because he must have found it useful to make his disciples pliable. He must be giving it to them along with his usual spiel about god, meditation or whatever mumbo-jumbo he fed his devotees. The drug combined with his sermons, must have made it very easy for him to manipulate his followers,’ Shantanu said contemptuously.
‘My God, that is sneaky,’ Dinkar was offended.
‘Yes. These swamis are really something else, you know. All they care about is expanding their own empire for their own selfish interests. Do they really care about their disciples? Do they really offer succour to them, I wonder? At the very best all they do is create a hallucination in the minds of the followers that they are better off in the swami’s world than they were back home, or wherever they came from,’ Shantanu paused. ‘Maybe not all swamis are like this, but I guess most of them are.’
‘Yeah, and Maheshanandaji must have found it very easy to mould his foreign disciples in this way,’ Dinkar said.
‘Yes, the majority of his followers at his luxurious ashram are from abroad,’ Shantanu spoke disgustedly.
Dinkar nodded.
‘Anyway, coming back to the investigation, I knew then, that this scopolamine and counselling combination was a piece of the puzzle that did not fit in where it should,’ Shantanu came back to his original vein. ‘I wondered what Maheshananda’s angle was, in making Amar do his bidding – that is, admit to murder. Obviously, it must be because he wanted to shield the real murderer. And obviously he had a vested interest in saving the real murderer. Why else would he implicate the son of his childhood best friend? Cause harm to the family of the man he had promised to look after?’
‘Yeah, why?’ Dinkar Mishra asked.
‘It meant that the real murderer had to be close to the swami,’ Professor Shantanu said. ‘Who could it be? For the life of me, I could not figure this one out. No matter how closely, or from how many angles I looked at it, I could not arrive at the answer. Who could the swami be protecting? Then, I don’t quite know how – probably intuition, I wondered what if the swami was shielding himself? Even though this seemed farfetched, I decided to explore this angle – more so because I had no other leads.’
‘I see.’
‘I began looking at this perspective in right earnest. In the beginning, I could not find any motive at all. Why would the swami want to kill his best friend? Once I could arrive at the answer to this question, I knew that the other answers would become evident on their own,’ Shantanu paused.
Dinkar waited patiently.
‘What could it be? Was he jealous of his friend? That could be possible. It is well known for best friends to be secretly jealous of each other,’ Shantanu continued.
Dinkar became uncomfortable. Was his friend hinting to the jealousy that he felt for Shantanu? He had always been careful to keep it hidden. But had his astute friend managed to discern it?
‘No – it could not be jealousy. For Maheshananda had also managed to acquire similar success, fame, money and followers like his childhood friend. There was something of Mandrake the Magician in both of them,’ Shantanu continued, oblivious to Dinkar’s discomfort.
‘Yeah,’ Dinkar spoke, relieved.
‘So, it could not be jealousy. It had to be something else. Well what else? If not jealousy, could it be some monetary deal? No, that was not possible. Did they love the same woman? Not really. Although Pallavi does have a rather soft spot for the swami, I don’t think she is in love with him or he with her. And Rajvir in any case fell out of love with Pallavi long back. Then what could it be?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, come to the point,’ Dinkar became impatient with Shantanu’s long-winded description of his deductive reasoning.
‘Ok, I’m sorry. I’ll come right to it,’ Shantanu smiled. He knew how his friend hated it when he did not come to the point directly. But he wanted to savour the telling of how he finally solved th
e case and thus prove his mental prowess. It was childish really, but he did feel a sense of one-upmanship with Dinkar.
‘So, when I realized that it was none of these, I wondered about Maheshananda’s immediate family. Maybe there was some close family member who could provide me with some clue about some motive. I dug around and found that his parents were dead and he had no siblings. He had never married too – did not seem to have a girlfriend or female companion either. So again, I was baffled.’
‘Then?’
‘Then I wondered if he was gay – but that too did not seem to be the case. He did not seem to have any male companion either.’
‘How did you find out so much about the swami?’ Dinkar was impressed.
‘Oh, you know me. Once I want to find out something, I do it somehow or the other. Actually, some of my resourceful students helped me get all this info,’ Shantanu revealed.
‘I then recalled that on all my visits it was Kadambari who seemed to receive special treatment from everyone at the ashram. This got me thinking. Why this special treatment to this one girl? Was it at Maheshananda’s bidding? If so why?’
‘Pallavi had also told me that of late Rajvir had started to spend more and more time at the ashram, particularly since the last six months. And a miraculous turnaround had come about in Rajvir’s personality. He had become less stressed, calm, happy and even younger.’
‘So? How is this relevant?’ Dinkar was by now thoroughly confused.
‘Also, during one of my long talks with Amar, he let something slip,’ Shantanu continued in his own vein. ‘The scopolamine worked not only for Maheshananda, it worked for me too,’ Shantanu smiled.
‘Let slip what? And what long talks?’
‘You remember during Amar’s downslide, Pallavi had requested me to speak to Amar, whenever possible and talk some sense into him?’
‘Yes. Pallavi does have you wrapped around her little finger,’ Dinkar smirked.
Professor Shantanu looked reproachfully at his friend.
‘Sorry; please go on,’ Dinkar was contrite.
‘Well, in the course of my extensive talks with Amar, during most of which he ranted and raged against his father; he let slip the extent of Rajvir’s debauchery in not even sparing the innocent Kadambari. At that moment, I knew I was onto something that had never come up so far in the investigation.’
‘Wow!’ Dinkar was astounded.
‘I knew I had to get the other half of the story. So, one day, when I knew that Maheshananda was staying over at Xanadu at the behest of Pallavi, I had driven up to his ashram. There I managed to talk to Kadambari. The sweet guileless girl, who has no clue of what was happening in the outside world, easily admitted to loving Rajvir, and having that love reciprocated in equal measure. She spoke fervently that Rajvir was much misunderstood by everyone. In reality, he was an intensely lonely man, looking for true love to fulfil him. And when he found it in her, he changed – changed his womanizing ways,’ Shantanu explained.
‘Really! Do you think it was true?’ Dinkar was taken aback.
‘Kadambari certainly believed so.’
‘Then what did you do?’ Dinkar began to get impatient again.
‘I’m afraid I did not do anything about all this information at the time,’ Shantanu looked contrite.
It was not like his friend to ignore any kind of information, Dinkar thought. Why had he done so this time round? Had he been preoccupied with something else?
‘After visiting the film sets for recreating Natalie’s murder, as I looked at the case afresh, I began exploring Maheshananda’s culpability in right earnest,’ Shantanu elucidated.
‘Go on.’
‘I recalled Maheshananda telling me that he had special affection for Kadambari, because she literally came into this world in front of him, during his days at Boston. This was borne out by his actions as well. Even though he talked about detachment, he could never quite mask the sparkle that appeared in his eyes, whenever he was with Kadambari. I noticed this on several occasions; and wondered at it, because it was not in character. Maheshananda had also decided to groom Kadambari as his successor,’ Shantanu continued.
‘Really?’’
‘Yes. On a hunch, I called up a former PhD student of mine who is currently working in a software company in Boston. I asked him to trace the birth record of Kadambari. I knew she was 26 years old. Now I don’t quite know how he managed to get this confidential information. But he did – perhaps owing to his respect for me as his teacher,’ Shantanu smiled.
‘And?’ Dinkar became impatient.
‘As I had suspected, a certain Mahesh Anand Kumar was listed as the father and Mary Anderson as the mother of a baby girl born on 18th February 1992 at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.’
‘Wow!’ Professor Dinkar looked at his friend with newfound respect.
‘After that, the plot became absolutely clear. There was no mystery at all.’
‘How?’ Dinkar was still hazy.
‘You see, Kadambari had confided in Maheshananda about her love for Rajvir. She talked about the furious anger of Maheshananda when he found out about Natalie being pregnant. He had screamed at her to understand that this was the real Rajvir, a man who could not help bedding every woman he came across.’
‘Oh! And did Kadambari come to her senses?’ Dinkar’s eyebrows rose.
‘No, she was too blindly in love to do so. She readily believed the plausible explanation of Rajvir that he had slept with Natalie only once and that too because she had practically seduced him. And it meant nothing; because it had all happened well before he understood the depth of his feelings for Kadambari.’
‘Oh! People in love are such fools,’ Dinkar shook his head ruefully. ‘Then?’
‘When the swami could not convince his daughter, he knew there was only one way to save Kadambari from certain disaster. It was to get rid of Rajvir,’ Shantanu paused.
‘Oh! That was quite an extreme decision,’ Dinkar said.
‘Actually, Maheshananda must have been enraged that Rajvir, his childhood best friend, the very person whom he trusted, had turned around and stabbed him in the back. There was no way he could forgive Rajvir for preying upon his daughter. This was the ultimate betrayal. Rajvir would have to pay the price for it, the swami must have decided,’ Shantanu continued.
‘And he did it on the night of the party because the suspicion could fall on any one of the people present. He knew that it was the best opportunity to commit the dastardly act and flummox the police, both at the same time. Particularly since he knew that there were many people at the party as well as his family members, all of whom could have had the motive to kill Rajvir,’ Dinkar stated the obvious.
‘Yes, absolutely. And committing the murder was the easiest thing for him to do. Maheshananda knew very well about where Rajvir kept his gun and the key to it. And he knew that it was loaded as well. It was so simple for him. He entered the study via the secret passage behind the bookcase so that the cameras would not detect him. Then he just took out the gun from the drawer and lay in wait outside the window on the terrace, for Rajvir to retire in his study. After most of the guests left, he saw his chance and shot Rajvir in cold blood. And then left the study again via the secret passage. After that he quietly retired for the night in his suite in the guest wing. Then early in the morning left for his ashram,’ Shantanu paused.
‘And you know he had all along planned for Amar to take the fall for it and so had been drugging him with scopolamine even before committing the murder,’ Shantanu continued.
There was a long silence.
‘But why Chandra Prakash? How and why was he murdered?’ Dinkar was perplexed.
‘When he failed to ensure that Chandra Prakash was killed on the sets the first time round, and Natalie got killed instead; then for his next attempt on Chandra Prakash’s life, the swami did not take any chances. The unsuspecting Chandra Prakash readily let in the swami inside his flat that night, and
lost his life in the process. Then as per his plan to implicate Amar, Maheshananda helpfully hid the bloodstained knife in Amar’s love pad. And later made the anonymous call tipping off Bhogle.’
‘But why did he want to murder Chandra Prakash?’ Dinkar was confused.
‘Oh…I forgot to mention! Kadambari in the course of her conversation also told me of her fondness for Chandra Prakash, which was mostly because he was so like his father, Rajvir. She could not help feeling great affection for him, not only because he was exactly like his father in every way, but also because he so obviously loved and cherished his father. This open loyalty and affection for Rajvir brought Kadambari close to Chandra Prakash. After the unexpected death of Rajvir, Kadambari had no one to turn to, to share her sorrow. At this time, Chandra Prakash was the only one in whom she could confide in. Rajvir’s death brought the two really close. Perhaps too close.’
‘I see.’ Dinkar marvelled at the ramifications of the relationships of the Rajvir clan.
‘When Maheshananda learnt of the growing closeness between the two, he became alarmed. He foresaw a repeat of what he had just barely managed to prevent. He assumed that Kadambari would in all probability fall in love with Chandra Prakash and end up getting hurt. He believed that the son would in all likelihood follow in his father’s footsteps and become a womaniser. And after having his way with Kadambari, abandon her. This was the one thing that the swami could not – would not allow to happen. And this sealed Chandra Prakash’s fate,’ Shantanu breathed in deeply
‘Who would have thought that swamiji could have been behind all this?’ Professor Dinkar said. ‘But given the rate at which so many so-called swamis are being proven to have clay feet, it is no wonder,’ he continued, smiling.
‘No – I genuinely believed that Maheshanandaji was different; and he was, you know. I have never come across a more accomplished, more widely-read person. He had extraordinary powers owing to his years of sadhana which enabled him to tap into more regions of the brain, more than what ordinary mortals could do,’ Professor Shantanu spoke broodingly.