K For Acknowledgement

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“The woman has identified the man as who murdered her daughter. Doubt how serious she is. Throughout my questioning, she accused the ward member, never mentioning the possibility of her daughter having a specific friend, a migrant labourer.



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Arjun parked his car in the front yard of the district police headquarters. By August, the Monsoon should have toned down, not this year. He found rescue under an umbrella. The corridor at the entrance was wet and stained with mud. He reached in front of the office and knocked on the door.

DYSP Mahesh Kovoor was in a severe mood, as Arjun had anticipated.

After the chit-chats, Kovoor cut the chase.

“The ADGP is submitting the charge sheet for the Chembolli murder case today. Sure, you have heard it.”

“I did. It came in the news.”

“Have they approached you before finalising it?”

“No,” Madhavan felt the brush of a fire stub inside.  It was the deliberate stubbornness of the ADGP and the minister to remove him from the scene that hadn’t granted him any hope that they would do otherwise.  

“The case was your baby.”

‘They threw the baby with the bucket.”  

“Sure, take it easy. I called you to know how far you have gone with the victim’s diary.”

Arjun tried to read out any hint from Kovoor's eyes.  They glowed like two clear bulbs as trying to read his.  What was in a woman's hopes and ambitions scribbled in the sheets of her dairy, who is dead now?  Kavoor didn't divert his eyes. 

“Do you see any chance in that… kind of reopening the case?”

Kovoor shook his head in negation. 

"No... ideally, the victim’s mother should do that, but given her present reaction, no chance for that.”

A door knock broke the train of Arjun's thoughts.  A man entered the room, a delivery man from hotel Devika, Arjun read from the insignia on his uniform. 

"I have ordered lunch for both of us, you don't mind." 

Arjun was hungry and hadn't thought about lunch.  "Very kind of you," he responded. 

They ate lunch in Kovoor's private room.  A vegetarian meal to Anand's taste, the aroma of the dishes warmed his mind and stomach. 

“The woman has identified her daughter's murderer," Arjun said while eating. "Doubt how serious she is. Throughout my questioning, the only suspect was the ward member.  Never mentioned a friend or an acquaintance of her daughter.  Now she confesses a friend of her a migrant labourer as the murderer."

“The blood money is speaking. The government has constructed a new home for her and allocated police officers to guard her day and night. The money has afforded a sudden elevation in her status and lifestyle.   Can she reject the windfallen privileges to go back to the shack.” 

It’s not easy to judge the woman—in a world where truth and justice and morality turn scarecrows-- she has made her own choices.     

“But the woman has her share of secrets,” Madhavan said. “Mys conviction after reading the victim’s diary.”

“Aha, tell me more about that.”

Kovoor leaned forward in his seat, hands on the table, fingers entangled.

“Covering half the volume of a quarter-size notebook. Need hours to sit in front of you.”

“That you can do another time. Now, tell me about your convictions about the mother.”

“The mother and the daughter maintained a love-and-hate relationship. The mother denied the daughter the right to know who her father was and her life secret.   She feared that the secret would put the daughter in more danger. The daughter had some doubts and had almost cracked it. Then they acted.”

“Who?”

“Who feared the consequences of the secrets coming in public. But again, that is only a conclusion one can take.”

“I don’t get you. Tell me, what had she written about that?”

“That is the problem.   How could one narrate one’s death?”

Kovoor sank back in his seat.

“The last entry, she made perhaps minutes before her attackers arrived at the shack.”

“Does she give any hints?”

“The richest family in the town, the most influential men in the political circle, the monopoly capitalists, providing jobs to hundreds if not thousands.”

**


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