Whodunit - Chapter 12 - Handling the media

I swore under my breath! Media invariably ends up poking its nose into an ongoing investigation. In my experience, severe media criticism had forced the police department to get results but I had my doubts about how accurate the results were. Under pressure to deliver even the best of cops overlook clues. I was not going to let that happen to me.

I stepped outside and found Krupa Mitwe talking to the reporters. I guess I knew now, who Krupa Mitwe was calling as she was walking out of the morgue room.

She was telling the reporters what a great misfortune it was that a great man like Rajat Mitra  Sinha had been brutally murdered. She turned around and smiled at me.

“And that’s the inspector who’s investigating Rajat’s death.”

The reporters turned to me with all their questions.

I raised my hands to silence the horde of journalists, “The investigation is on. We will issue a statement only after we have something substantial to report.”

Prerna and Supriya stood behind me watching the press with awe. It was going to be their first high profile case.

I had just stepped back inside, leaving Krupa to handle the reporters when Shammi called.

“Chetan, things are getting complicated.” He sounded excited.

“What do you mean?”

“The person who made the call about the stench? I tracked him down.”

“That’s great! Anything new he can tell us?” I wasn’t expecting anything much from him, but maybe, just maybe he had seen something.

“Yes," He paused, "Are you ready for this?" He asked.

"What is it Shammi?" He had piqued my curiosity now.

"He saw Mrs. Sinha’s car near the church around 10 days before he reported the smell.”

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! He described a black color Scorpio with blue seating, just like Mrs. Sinha’s car.”

“That’s great! Bring him in; I have a few questions for him.” My mind was thinking furiously, now we had a witness who could place Mrs. Sinha in the area where we found her husband’s body.

“Chetan, that’s not it. He identified the person who was driving the car!”

I could barely contain myself.“Who?” I asked softly.

“Rajat Sinha.”

Whodunit - Chapter 11 - Discussion with Dr. Mahajan

Seems like everyone wanted him dead.   Krupa’s statement did not bother me, Mrs. Sinha had expressed more or less the same views. Prerna though, was shocked. She passed me a quick glance so as to say, Did you hear that?

I nodded and turned to Krupa, “Yes he is. Very much so.”

Krupa smiled softly, “Thank you Inspector.” She looked positively delighted with the news. As she walked out, she pulled out her cell phone, probably to share the good news.

Mrs. Sinha dropped all her pretenses of being the widow and asked impatiently, “Now can I see the body?”

Prerna, who had barely recovered from Krupa Mitwe’s behavior, stared at Mrs. Sinha’s with her eyes open wide.  The change in Mrs. Sinha’s demeanor was dramatic.

“Mrs. Sinha, how did those two get to know about Mr. Sinha’s death?” I was sure nobody from my team had told them.

She smiled coyly, “How am I supposed to know that?”

I didn’t believe her, but I had no choice. I led her into the morgue and showed her the body. We needed a family member to confirm the identity.

Most people are nervous and apprehensive about what they might get to see in a morgue. Not Mrs. Sinha. She looked comfortable in the morbid surroundings.

She took one long look at the corpse in front of her. “That’s him.” She said softly. She reached out to touch him, but checked herself midway.

Maybe there was some attachment in the relationship after all, I thought. She turned around suddenly, “What next?” Her cool composure had taken over again.

I sent her outside, to fill up some forms before she could claim the body. Prerna followed her. She too had noticed the sudden glimpse of emotion on Mrs. Sinha’s face.

I turned to leave when Dr. Mahajan walked in.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.” She said.

“I came with Prerna.”

“Oh!” An awkward silence ensued.

“So..” She was trying to cover the silence in the morgue. “Did you read the report I sent to your office?”

“No..” I looked at her confused. “What reports?”

“The complete autopsy report..” She saw the expression on my face. “Okay.. don’t think you have read it. Call me if you have any queries.” She turned to leave. She took one last look at Rajat Sinha and said “You know, I feel sorry for him.”

“Because he was murdered?” I asked.

“Partly, but mostly because of how he died.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s obvious that first he was drugged with something. He died because of that.”

I nodded. This part I already knew.

“Then, someone stabbed him, in a vertical motion. To do that, someone would practically be sitting on him!”

I wasn’t following her. “I don’t understand Supriya.”

“Okay, see..” She pulled out a pen from her pocket. “Suppose this was a knife, and I was to attack you while you were standing,” She drew a rough diagram for me.“The blade would leave a gash, going either from left to right or from right to left, depending on the murderer’s dexterity. But the wounds on Rajat’s body, they are like a..” She struggled to find the right word, “pin pricks, only bigger in size. The blade has just pierced his body, no trails. Understood?”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to do with that piece of information though.

“Also,” she was in full flow now, in her element. “I think after he was dead for some time, he was turned over. Or maybe he rolled over. Was he found somewhere near an inclined surface?”

I shook my head. There was no way Rajat Sinha could have rolled over to where we had found him.

“Why do you think he was rolled over after some time?” it was obvious someone had rolled him over because of the way we had found him, arms tucked in neatly under the body. What interested me was that Supriya was suggesting the killer had come back!

“His liver,” She said thoughtfully. “It was ruptured by the stabbing. If he was turned over immediately, most of the bile would have trickled outside his body. But the amount of bile we found coagulated inside his body was significant. I am guessing he was turned over after 3-4 hours.”

I tried to digest that piece of information when a frantic Prerna rushed in interrupting our discussion. “You better come quick!”

“What’s wrong?” Supriya reacted before I did.

“The media..” Prerna said panting heavily, “they are here!”

Whodunit - Chapter 10 - Back at the morgue

Contrary to what Supriya had told Prerna, there were three women waiting for us at the morgue.

I could only assume that they were the women in Rajat Sinha’s life.

Mrs. Sinha smiled as she recognized me. Her demeanor had changed completely. Her eyes were red and swollen as though she had cried before coming. I raised my brow questioningly as she approached me.

“Appearances.” She whispered as she stepped closer.

“Inspector! My husband! You said I could come here and claim the body. Why are these women here?” She cried playing her part perfectly.

Smruti Sharma, who I recognized from the pictures in the report, came forward. She too had tears in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell whether they were genuine or fake. “Rajat and I were planning to get married! Please, please tell me he is not dead!!”

Both women were looking at me to take a decision. I turned towards Prerna for help. She shook her head. This is not my problem, she indicated by raising her palms.

I turned towards the bickering women, “Please. Calm down.” That only seemed to get them more agitated. My voice drowned as the women turned towards each other, each asking the other to leave. Strangely, the third woman did not involve herself. She had covered her mouth with her hand. She was trying not to laugh!

I dragged my eyes away from the third woman and focused on the other two. After watching me struggle for a while, Prerna stepped in. She physically separated both of them and said, “Only the legal wife of Mr. Rajat Sinha has claim over his body. Miss..?” She turned towards Smruti.

“Smruti.” Mrs. Sinha provided spitefully.

“Miss Smruti, I’m afraid, you have to leave now.”

Smruti turned to me for support, I looked away. There was nothing I could do for her.

“But he hated her! I’m sure she murdered him!” I called some deputies to escort her out. She shrugged their hands off her shoulders. “Fine! I’ll leave,” she turned towards me, “You come see me later on and I will tell you why she murdered him!”

She walked out of the room, her head held high

. Prerna turned towards the third woman, “And you are?”

“I’m Rajat’s ex-wife, Krupa Mitwe. We got divorced a year back when he married..” Her voice trailed off and her eyes rested on Mrs. Sinha.

“I’m sorry Krupa,” Prerna said gently. I was sure she hadn’t seen Krupa laughing. “But you too, have no claim over the body.”

Krupa laughed, “You misunderstand me. I didn’t come here for the body!” She seemed to find it extremely funny that anyone would think that.

Prerna stared at her, surprised. “Oh. Then you are here for?”

Krupa smiled, “I came to make sure he’s really dead.”

Whodunit - Chapter 9 - The Forensics Report

There was nothing left for us to do at the Sinha residence. We made our way to Prerna’s office to drop off the new samples.  We found her in the lab, pouring over a bunch of test tubes and chemicals. I knocked on the glass door that separated us.

Prerna looked up, annoyed that someone had disturbed her. Her face relaxed into a smile when she saw us, or maybe when she saw Shammi.  

“I told you I’ll call you. I don’t have results for you guys yet. ” She said while taking off her labcoat.

“We’ve got something for you.” Shammi picked up the evidence bag and placed it on the table.

Prerna looked at it questioningly, “What is this? I have enough soil samples now.”

“We identified our victim. Does Rajat Sinha ring a bell?” I asked her. She was from this area, maybe she had heard of him.

“Not really, who is he?” Prerna said peering at the mud sample through her glasses.

“An industrialist. His family struck oil in the car ball bearing business. We just met his wife and came.”

Prerna cringed her nose, “How did she take it?”

“Don’t think she cared too much. She might have a hand in it. The sample you are holding is from her car tyres. I want to know whether this is similar to the mountain area where we found the body.”  

Prerna nodded, “I will have the results for you by tomorrow.”

I suddenly realized that Shammi was standing awkwardly at the door, not contributing to the conversation.

“Hey Shammi, I left the reports in the jeep. Track down the detective and see if he can tell us anything apart from the report.” I sensed that he didn’t want to be around Prerna.

Shammi nodded gratefully and started walking out of the room.

I looked at Prerna.

 “So, how did you manage to misplace the first samples Prerna?” I asked softly. I knew the answer already, but I wanted her to accept it.

“I didn’t.” She answered simply, her eyes following Shammi’s retreating footsteps.

The door closed, the moment passed and Prerna recovered her composure, “You might want to see the other results.”

“Sure.” I had nothing better to do.

She led me to her office and handed me a report.

“Its big.” I commented. I was hoping she was going to give me a verbal summary of it.

“What’d you expect?” Prerna smiled.

I flipped through the report half heartedly. I stopped at a page, and re read the word that had caught my attention. I quickly scanned through the page.

“Chloroform!” I exclaimed.

“Yep, some traces of it. Mind you, the traces were very minute. But, there is a high chance that he was rendered unconscious using Chloroform. Ideally,” Prerna dived into a chemistry lesson “Chloroform settles to the ground before it disperses, the traces that I detected were from the soil samples we picked up near the body. Although, you should be aware that it was used as a drug to get high some time back. I don’t think anyone uses it anymore for that purpose though.” I guess the old abandoned church was well known for its activities.

“Hmmm..” I was thinking how one could get hold of chloroform. If it was a difficult to obtain chemical, we could have traced our killer using that. I asked Prerna about it.

“Well, schools have chloroform available in their labs. So I don’t think it’s that difficult to obtain.” She had a good point.

“Anything else?” I found it hard to believe that the huge report had only one point of importance.

“The knife you found, it’s an ordinary kitchen knife. Used for cutting vegetables and stuff. If someone had planned to kill someone using that, he was either stupid or confident that his victim would not retaliate. The blood stains are the victim’s though. That’s your murder weapon. No prints.” She raised her hands helplessly. Prints were rare to come by nowadays.

“The bottles and other things that we picked up?” I asked her.

“We studied some of them, it’s all there in the report. Nothing stood out. Unless you give me something to match the sample with, I can’t help you.”

Prerna glanced at her cell phone and excused herself. Within a few minutes, she was back.

“We have to go.” She said, picking up her jacket.

“Go where?”

“To the morgue. Supriya called, there are two women there, fighting over Rajat Sinha’s body!”