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Shakeel’s Fixation
When Inspector Shakeel entered the Saifabad police station, the echoes of the boots-in-attention greeted him, and as he stepped into his cabin, as if calling stand-at-ease, the telephone had started ringing. Soon, as Shakeel opened the dak folder, the Head Constable Karim rushed into the cabin to alert him about a double murder.
“Where was it?”
“At 13, Red Hills, sir,” said Karim
“Have you checked about the jurisdiction?” asked Shakeel, who was newly posted there.
“It’s a stone’s throw away, sir, in our very own Hyderabad,” said Karim unable to hide his irritation as if the question questioned his procedural knowledge.
“Who’re the victims?” asked Shakeel unhurriedly.
“Man and his mistress, sir.”
“What if it’s a suicide pact?”
“No sir, they were poisoned by the man’s wife.”
“Who told you so?”
“Pravar, sir, the dead woman’s brother, who said she’s absconding.”
“Let’s see how long she can evade me,” said Shakeel, getting up.
“Not long enough, sir,” said Karim stepping aside.
When the duo entered the drawing room of that single-storied building at 13, Red Hills, Pravar had drawn their attention to two empty glasses and a half-empty Teacher’s Scotch bottle on the teapoy, with khara boondi for company. When Shakeel surveyed the scene, Pravar ushered them into the adjacent bedroom, where Madhu and Mala lay dead on a double cot bed. Soon, as the forensic squad, summoned by then, was engaged in collecting the evidence, Pravar, who provided Shakeel a photograph of Radha, Madhu’s wife, made out a case that she could have poisoned the couple.
Leaving the corpses to Karim’s care, when Shakeel returned to the police station with Radha’s photograph, he was surprised to find her there ‘to aid the investigation’. But in spite of her assertions about her innocence, Shakeel, whose mind Pravar had poisoned, could see but her hand in the double murder, and so arraigned her as the sole suspect. But as his sustained custodial interrogation failed to crack her, believing in her guilt, with a view to extract her confession, he brought every police trick up his sleeve into play, including the third degree, but to no avail. Though eventually he had to set her free, owing to the judicial intervention, yet he failed to free himself from his sense of failure to pin her down to the murder of her man and his mistress. As he was cut up thus, seeing Dhruva’s ad in The Deccan Chronicle for a ‘lady sleuth to assist him', he had a premonition that she might try to secure the position to secure herself. So as to preempt her, even in that inclement weather, he had set out that evening to 9, Castle Hills.