Whodunit - Chapter 23 - Case Solved?

“What’s going on here?” I stepped between Shammi and Shvetank.

“We need to take him in for further questioning.” Shammi nodded towards Shvetank.

“No.. you can’t..” A distraught Aarti was holding on to Shvetank’s arm. “I’ll tell you everything!!” She pleaded.

“Aarti, what are you saying?!” Krupa tried to dislodge Aarti from Shvetank’s arm.

“No.. mum, I know what I’m doing.” She shrugged off Krupa’s hand.

“Everybody calm down!” I ordered.. “Shvetank, you are coming with us. Mrs. Krupa, you have to drive your daughter to the station.”

“She hasn’t done anything! She’s just saying some things to protect him.” She glared at Shvetank.

“Regardless, Aarti wants to say something, and I need a parent’s approval for that.” Krupa Mitwe turned towards Dhruv with a pleading look on her face.  Dhruv shook his head. Krupa sighed, “Fine, I’ll get her.”

We left Shvetank in a holding cell while Shammi filled me in.

“So, I went to the college like you said. And I checked up on Shvetank. Guess what his primary subject is?” He asked.

“I give up, what?”

“Biology. So not only does our boy have access to the labs and Chloroform, I made the lab assistant check, there is some concentrated chloroform missing from the storage area.” I whistled.

“Wait.. That’s not it. The rumor around college is that he was known to experiment with different kinds of substance abuse.”

“And he had the knife.” I said.

“What knife?” I quickly filled in Shammi about the knife. Forensics was going through the contents of Shvetank’s bag but I had already given then a head’s up on the knife.

“But why did he do it?”  Shammi and I were brainstorming now. Before we interrogated the suspect, we needed to have as much information out as possible.

“Didn’t you say he was seeing Aarti?” Shammi asked me.

“Yeah. You don’t think that’s why he killed Rajat right? I mean it’s a little far fetched.”

“Hear me out.” Shammi put up a hand to silence me.

“The last call Rajat received was from Krupa’s house. What if it was Aarti?” I opened my mouth to protest but then stopped. Maybe he was right.

“Lets ask him some questions before Aarti gets here.” I suggested. Shammi nodded. We walked into the holding cell, where Shvetank was looking increasingly nervous.

“What’s going on! Why am I here? I didn’t do anything!” He exclaimed.

“We know about the chloroform.” I said quietly.

All wind zapped out of Shvetank. His shoulders slumped.

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to..” he put his head in his hands and began to cry. I had to remind myself, that even though he was legally an adult, he was just 19.

“Shvetank.. why did you do it?” I still couldn’t guess a motive.

“He caught me..” He paused. “Doing weed. And he asked me where Aarti was.”

“Where was she?”

“Hiding. She didn’t want her father to find her. She had taken the money from him.” He was sobbing now.

“Money for what?”

“To buy the weed.  And when he turned around, I just dabbed a little chloroform on my handkerchief, and put it around his mouth. I never meant to kill him.”

“You’re lying.” Shammi said roughly.

“No.. no.. you have to believe me. Please! I just wanted to make him unconscious, so that Aarti and I could escape.” He was pleading with us.

“So that’s why you went back to stab him?”

“But I didn’t! He got stabbed?” Shvetank looked perplexed.

“Shvetank. We found a knife, identical to the one you have on the crime scene.” Shammi explained patiently.

“But I lost my old one. I don’t know where. That’s why I bought a replacement.”

We spent an hour with Shvetank, but he did not budge from his statement , that he didn’t stab Rajat Sinha. We were still charging him with murder. He was the murderer, I could feel it.

And Aarti’s testimony, would only confirm it. I was waiting eagerly to interrogate Aarti and be done with this case.

Whodunit - Chapter 19 - Prerna's findings

I don’t know when I fell asleep. I woke up with a start and checked my watch. It was going to be a long day.

Over breakfast I opened the newspaper, to find Rajat Sinha’s face smiling at me. The newspaper was full of his achievements. Luckily, the newspaper guys hadn’t gotten hold of any details yet. But it wouldn’t be too long, I was sure of that. There was also a small column dedicated to the scene that had taken place at the morgue yesterday. Smruti’s face had been plastered on the front page as she had walked away from the morgue, angry that she had been denied access to Rajat. Mrs. Sinha had struck a tragic pose, exactly as one would expect a new widow to be. Krupe Krupa Mitwe made a small appearance, nothing too significant.

Shammi and I made our way downhill again. This was turning out to be a regular affair. Prerna’s office was our first stop.

Prerna was just stepping out. She smiled tiredly at us.

“Did you go home last night?” Shammi asked her.

“I promised you I’ll have the results for you.” She smiled. “Come on in, I’ll give you a brief overview.”

Before Shammi could protest and send Prerna home I walked in. I had already spent one night with the reports. Totally wasn’t in the mood to read any more.

“Ok.. So lets start with Smruti’s apartment.” She said once we were inside her office. “The blood on the phone, is indeed Rajat’s. No doubts there. The blood on the t-shirt is also Rajat’s. But..” She paused for effect. “This was not what the murderer was wearing while he or she stabbed Rajat Sinha.”

“Then?” I hadn’t believed Smruti was the murderer anyway.

“The blood splatter a stab would make is utterly different from what we found on the t-shirt. I mean, not much blood would come on the murderer and even if does, it would be in the form of droplets which splash on impact with the murderer’s body. But the stains we have on this the t-shirt, I could bet my month’s salary that the t-shirt was thrown on Rajat Sinha’s body so that it absorbs some of his blood.”

“So it’s a set up?” Someone had planned this so meticulously, but missed out on details like this.

“100%..” Prerna moved on to the other item which her team had found, the wallet.

“There’s no cash in it,” She said. “But the credit cards are here, not sure if all of them are, you have to check that, but there’s no currency note. A man like Rajat Sinha, would, at any time have some cash on him, don’t you think? Also.. I found some hair on the wallet..”

My heart beat quickened, “That’s great!”

“Not so fast.. Its animal hair.. Maybe our killer had a pet?” She suggested.

“Anyway,” she continued, “The car.. I spoke to Mrs. Sinha, and I over stepped my authority a little. I asked her a couple of questions.”

She gave me a quick glance. I shrugged, as long as she was helping with the investigation, I didn’t have a problem with it.

“She said the car was Rajat’s, but since her car had gone for servicing and Rajat’s car was available, she has been using his car. Rajat’s car keys aren’t there. Maybe in the same key ring as Smruti’s house keys? She moved some stuff out of the boot when she started using the car. I took everything and got it with me. It contained a gym bag. With some woman’s clothing. I asked Mrs. Sinha, she didn’t know anything about it. I am still working on that, but I think it’s Smruti’s stuff. Maybe the t-shirt came from there. And ya.. I analyzed the soil sample you got me. Its from the same area. But I guess you already knew that.”

She yawned suddenly..

“That’s all I have for you people right now.” She said apologetically.

“This is great stuff Prerna.” I was genuinely impressed by her skills. She blushed a little.

I sent Shammi to drop Prerna home. I myself, got ready to tackle the lawyers.

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!”

Whodunit - Chapter 3 - The Murder Weapon

Before I could get a closer look, the rest of the team arrived with sirens blaring loudly. A lady was leading the group. We didn’t have to tell them where we were. Like it had for us, the stench had led them straight to the body.

She stepped forward and held out her hand to introduce herself, “Prerna Batra. Forensics.”

She was far too attractive and too petite to be in this job.

“Inspector Chetan Gupta,” I shook her hand and turned towards Shammi, “And my partner, Sub Inspector Shammi Singh..”

Prerna passed a cool look over Shammi, “Ah yes.. Shammi Singh, We’ve..” A scornful smile appeared on her face, “worked together.”

Shammi looked away. Prerna turned her attention to the body. I turned to Shammi with a questioning look in my eyes. What was all that about.  Shammi shrugged his shoulders.

“So what do we have here Inspector?” Prerna called out to me. She had put on a mask and gloves and was on her knees next to the body. She handed me a pair of gloves as I stepped in beside her.

“Help me turn him over..” She ordered.

Now that her team had taken all the necessary pictures, we could move the body. We turned the man over and suddenly the cause of death was apparent to us..

The man had been stabbed, a number of times. The front of his shirt was smeared in blood. I was perplexed, there had been no blood stains on his back.. The multiple stabbing reflected the killer’s rage and I was surprised that not one of those cuts had pierced through his back.

Prerna preliminary inspection was over.

“Okay.. Let’s move him..” Some of her team members carefully lifted the corpse and took it out of the crime site. By the time we got through with the surrounding, a post mortem would have been done.

“Split up, bag anything suspicious, anything that looks out of ordinary, anything that doesn’t belong in the forest.” I took charge of the team now. Everyone nodded and went about their way.

With everyone out of my way, I turned my attention back to the shiny object. I put my hand inside the shrub and tried to blindly locate it.

“Find something?” Prerna said from behind me. She leaned over to peek. 

I was about to reply when my hand touched something.. I pulled it out.. Prerna saw it before I did.

We both stared at it speechlessly. I believe, we had found the murder weapon.