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Word Count - 7400

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09 | The Interim Criminal Profiler & The Drunk Dogra Patriarch

"Sahib, Joseph Varghese sir is here."

"Let him in." The patriarch tipped his chin.

Karim nodded his head and turned around to strut out of his boss's office.

Sixty seconds later, a soft yet systematic rapping came from the locked entranceway of the patriarch's posh workspace. "Come in." He directed.

Immediately, the lofty Brazilian rosewood door unbolted to reveal a tall man in an olive-green turtleneck, black trousers, and a pair of Chelsea boots. Flashing a genial smile at him, he walked in.

Noticing this, Mahadevan stood up to greet him. "Good morning, Your Grace." He said, poker-faced.

"A sun-kissed hello to the chieftain of the Dogra clan from my side as well." Joseph Varghese greeted him back wittily.

Minimizing the Excel sheets on his MacBook, Mahadevan flashed a faint smile and ambled closer to the man in front of him. "Coffee, wine, or Scotch?"

"Scotch," Joseph stated, engaged in a firm handshake with the man before.

"On the rocks?"

"Yes."

"Alright." Gesticulating at the davenport in the far left section of the office, Mahadevan said, "How about we settle down with our drinks first and then carry on with our conversation?"

Joseph assented.

A few minutes later, the Dogra patriarch ensconced himself on the single high-headed sofa chair while Joseph settled down comfortably on the three-seater sofa, two rock glasses filled with two ounces of the amber-hued distilled spirit clasped sophisticatedly in each of their right hands.

Taking a sip from his glass, he said. "Now, coming to the main business, why are you here?"

"It's Sebastian's baptism ceremony on the 7th of this month." Joseph Varghese said while taking out a short and crisp-looking pale blue envelope from his pants' pocket. "Here is the invitation card."

"Oh, wow. Congratulations!" Mahadevan raised a toast as he grasped the cute little envelope.

"And I expect you, Bhabhi, and Anirudh in Saint Nicholas Church at Gulmohar Park on May 7th, sharp at 9 a.m. in the morning, clear?" Joseph announced while savoring the peaty and smoky taste of the scotch with faint undertones of premium bourbon. "Only our families would be there, with the security personnel ofcourse. No chance of her identity sliping out, I assure you."

"Done." Mahadevan brought up his left hand to signal a thumbs-up, a smile etched on his face.

"Cheers!" "Cheers!" Glasses clinked as they shared another round of laughter.

A minute later, as the two friends reveled in the soothing silence of the office, Joseph asked, "How is married life, Mahadevan?"

Mahadevan gazed at his friend as a tranquil smile tugged at his lips. "I have never felt so happy, relaxed before. The past few months have been bliss." He said.

"She makes you happy?" Joseph probed, his left eyebrow quirked up.

"Happy?" The Dogra patriarch chuckled. "Happy as a term is an understatement for what she makes me feel, Joseph. She makes me feel content. I am so damn high on dopamine all the freaking time." He let out lightheartedly.

Joseph chortled.

"How did I become so lucky all of a sudden, Varghese? How did I become so damn fortunate and blessed to have her?" He paused, taking a sip of the woody, distilled spirit, his earthy eyes blurred due to a thin layer of sheen.

Joseph moved closer to rub his friend's back as a gesture of comfort.

"Everybody gets their chance at happiness, Mahadevan, and for that, patience is the only key." He said this as a ruminative smile spread across his lips.

The Dogra patriarch nodded back as he adjusted his specs, warmly gazing at the distant photo frame perched up on his escritoire—a picture of his wife cradling their son in her dainty arms.

A quarter of an hour down the line, the patriarch saw his friend off outside his office.

He then fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed Karim's number. The man answered his call within the first two rings.

"Sahib."

"How is that fucker doing?"

"Alive, Sahib."

"Good, keep him alive. Is Gurung there with you?"

"Yes, Sahib."

"Okay, then, wait for me. I am coming there." Gyrating the golden doorknob of his office door, he entered inside. "Oh yes, is the shutter closed from inside?"

"No, Sahib. It's open."

"Okay, wait for me." He disconnected the call and entered the washroom in the far right corner of the office, closing the door behind him.

He then raised his right arm up to rotate the showerhead anticlockwise exactly nine times.

Immediately, the front wall of the chic and lavish washroom separated into two parts in opposite directions to reveal an unlatched, side-folding shutter gate. The path beyond it was reveling in dim red lights.

He strode straight into the path beyond the grill gate, after which he turned around to fold the shutters behind him. Once the shutters were closed, he volte-faced to press the switch on the left wall of the narrow passageway. Instantly, the two separated walls of the washroom beyond the grill gate latched back to each other once again, preventing whatever little luminescence the washroom's recessed lighting was reflecting on the constricted walkway.

He walked ten meters forward in the diabolical-looking, dark passageway illuminated with dim red lights, finally ceasing his footfall in front of a thick silver door. 

He clicked on the green-colored button set up on the wall next to the door. Forthwith, a biometric iris scanner emerged out of the wall and scanned his warm, earthy irises, and then and there, the silver barricade unbolted on its own, revealing three human figures in the distant darkness of a mammoth-sized confidential chamber, the first two erect on their feet while the third was seated on a chair, his arms and limbs tied up and his head dangling forward like the neck of a lifeless hen.

"Sahib"

"Saab ji"

Karim Khan and Amar Gurung bowed their heads to acknowledge the patriarch's presence.

"Dead?" He tipped his chin, as he walked into the chamber, closing the unassailable metallic door behind him by pressing on a switch on the wall above the metal barrier.

Gurung leisurely strolled to the half-dead man on the chair and brought the middle finger and index finger of his right hand in close proximity to his nostrils for ten seconds to check his breath.

"No, Saab ji, he is still breathing." Just as he finished with what he was trying to say, the withering man before him sneezed loudly.

"Fuck! Son of an overweight elephant!" Gurung bounced backwards, as if struck by a truckload of influenza virus. "He has not even properly cleansed his nose, Saab Ji! There is so much gunk on my fingers!"

Karim rolled his eyes as Gurung paraded into the washroom of the secret chamber to wash his hands.

Mahadevan stood before the man with a demoniacal, lopsided smile etched on his face. "Good morning, Kalki."

Kalkinath Sahu lifted his head up in debility to look at the autocratically Mephistophelian man in front of him. Trepidation seeped in through each and every pore of his body as he convulsed back in panic. "W—why have you brought me here, Sahib?" Words spoken in barely whispers echoed in the absolutely still room.

"You laid your wretched eyes on my woman. You and that minion, Guru Surya, both of you tried to harm her; is that a reason enough?" He inclined his head to his left shoulder as he advanced his right hand to softly caress Kalkinath's cheek, flashing a soft smile at him, quite a contrast to the unobtrusive, cold-blooded glint in his eyes.

"Sahib, wh—who—are you talking about?"

" Sub-collector Hinduja Rao." Mahadevan announced. "Indian Administrative Services."

Recognition blazed right through the man's cat-like eyes, and he yelled out a profanity despite his incapacitated state. "That bitch!?" In a flash, Mahadevan yanked out Kalkinath's tongue and impaled the pocketknife he was holding right through his slippery, saliva-coated muscular organ, while Karim heel-and-toed to the man sitting on the chair and stabbed him brutally across the back of his right metacarpus with his serrated Khukri.

Eerily spine-chilling cries left the man's mouth as Mahadevan broke into a fit of humorless chuckles.

"Not. a. word. against. the. lady, clear?" Karim ruthlessly enunciated. Kalkinath bobbed his head desperately as Gurung got out of the washroom, hearing the loud yawp. "Oh, you people have started the fun already?" He stated this with a forlorn mien, embracing his visage. "Saab ji, you didn't call me, too?"

Karim sighed in vexation.

Meanwhile, Mahadevan inched closer to the bleeding man before him. "Listen, you have no idea who she is. You better mind your fucking language, yeah?" He paused, tracing the trail of blood oozing out of Kalkinath's tongue. "Or let me ask you..." Saying so, his exceptionally tall and rugged figure crouched down to grab the jaw of the man before him.

"Do you know who she is?" The long and sturdy phalanges seizing the man's jaw in a vice-like grip tightened exponentially.

Bones cracked. A pair of mandibles dislocated. Molars broke. And crimson gore dribbled down a pair of bruised and moisture-deprived lips.

Next, a gruesome and bloodcurdling scream echoed in the various dimensions of the covert chamber.

"Y—you—your wife?" He tried to answer despite the copiously bleeding tongue in his mouth.

"That's right. She is my wife." Mahadevan seethed, taking a whiff of the metallic fetor around his carmine-stained digits. "But do you know about the other rank she wields the saber of?"

Terror struck the man as his forehead perspired; each drop of sweat trickled down to coalesce with the crimson vital fluid flowing down his contused chin and lips. He decrepitly shook his head.

"My crown; she presides over the position of my crown." He whispered, his tone slow yet menacing. "She is the diadem I confer upon my head."

He crept closer.

"So, here is a decree you should abide by: no one—absolutely no fucking one—meddles with the Dogra patriarch's crown."

He then turned around to look at his bodyguard, who was upright on his feet behind him. "Khukri."

Just as Karim was about to pass the Khukri to him, Gurung jumped in. "Saab ji, look at Karim bhai's Khukri, na! It's already smeared with so much of this weasel's blood." 

He then fished out a cleaver out of his black ensemble and handed it to his boss. "Look at my poor cleaver—not a drop of blood on it! It looks like a stark naked infant without a diaper. Make it holy by bathing it with this dog's blood, Saab ji." He appealed like a crotchety preschooler.

Karim rolled his eyes yet again.

"Alright." Mahadevan sighed in exasperation. He then about-faced to maniacally scrutinize Kalkinath once again. 

"By the way, your blood reeks pathetically metallic. You follow a really iron-rich diet, it seems. Too much hemoglobin in this sickening body of yours, huh?" He quirked his brows up, his sinful lips uplifted to form a sneer as he tapped on the man's chest. "But, you know what? Too much of anything is not good for health. So, how about we help you drain some of it, yeah?" He grinned calamitously as a cold yet satanic guise embraced his phizog.

"Tremendously creative idea, Saab ji." Gurung quipped in animatedly with a thumbs up. "Absolutely ingenious!"

Karim rolled his eyeballs for the third time.

On the other hand, Kalkinath Sahu sweated profusely. Eyes enlarged with consternation, each and every section of his enervated, burly anatomy was battered and bruised due to the continued thrashing from the last ten days. The man trembled in fear, thinking about what was to come next.

"Your crimes are technically not yours actually, but rather your sorry ass of an uncle's, but since you were also his ally, you have to bear the punishment too." Saying so with a cold grin etched on his face, he pinched a portion of skin on Kalkinath's wrist, lifted it up, and harshly carved it with the cleaver. 

Blood gushed out in a trice as the man before him cried excruciatingly.

He then crouched down and took hold of a section of skin from Kalkinath's left ankle and skillfully lacerated it with the cleaver. "The Dogra matriarch is a fiercely observant, quick-witted, and valorous lady, Kalki. Initially, I didn't plan on hunting out all three of you because I knew she'd legally eliminate all three of you one day or another. That's how fucking brilliant she is. But guess what? You didn't seem to express your gratitude for the clemency I bestowed upon all three of you, which forms your main list of wrongs: firstly, you digitally tailed my wife. And then comes the most consequential action of yours; you literally possessed the guts to hire a killer to murder her without her knowledge and under my nose? You not only tried to meddle with my crown, you fucking aimed at killing her? The Dogra matriarch? My wife?!" In a flash, he stood up and brutally penetrated the whetted cleaver straight through Kalkinath's thigh.

Another octave of gut-wrenching wails reverberated in the confined surroundings.

Kalkinath looked on at the man in front of him with immeasurable dread in his droopy eyes, the pain almost rendering him unconscious.

"So, then and there, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Tell me, did you like the torture, kid?" Mahadevan probed with a fiendish grin.

"M—my—uncle?"

"Long dead. I heard that some of his cellmates in prison stabbed him to death." Mahadevan puckered his lips out with a mock sad expression etched on his face. "So sad, right?"

"G—Guru bhai?" Kalkinath gulped, unable to speak with his badly bruised tongue anymore.

"Dead as well. He was here about fourteen days ago, and unfortunately, I was not present here at that time. Gurung here . . ." He paused and turned around to point at a grinning Gurung behind him who was flashing his full set of thirty-two teeth. "Gurung mistakenly stepped on Guru Surya's balls and he died instantly." He finally forwarded his digits to feel Kalkinath's carotid arteries on both sides of his neck.

"And now, it's your time." Saying so, he tweaked Kalkinath's right carotid artery beneath the flabby skin of his neck and sharply slashed it with the cleaver. Scarlet gore spritzed undeviatingly on the patriarch's face.

Kalkinath's moribund body remained buckled to the bloody wooden chair with ropes and chains as Karim came forward and handed a pristine white handkerchief to his boss.

Wiping off the bloodstains across his face and hands, he turned around to lock gazes with the two men standing behind. "Ask Manoramaa to do the needful."

"Sure, Sahib."

"Ji, Saab Ji."

***

| 2 May, 2023 |

| Afternoon |

The conference room of Delhi's Special Crime Unit bustled with anxious whispers and perturbed breathing as Inspector General Neeraj Sathe strode into the conference hall with a poker face and a distraught piece of news.

All the officials stood up in attention at once with their right hands, saluting the senior who just walked in. The bustling environment of the conference room was long replaced with an utter stillness devoid of any auditory intervention.

"Gentlemen officers, here is a bad piece of news for you all. We have just been provided with intelligence that fifteen-year-old Shrushti Thackeray, daughter of two software engineers named Rana Thackeray and Preetika Thackeray, and sixteen-year-old Deepa Mondal, daughter of Megha Mondal and high school teacher Sidhesh Mondal, have both been abducted. Shrushti has been reported missing since the time she didn't return to her home, even after the conclusion of her tuition classes this afternoon. Deepa, on the other hand, has been reported missing since early morning today somewhere in between the path from her home to her school." The senior officer informed his juniors in a grave tone. "It's time we pull up our socks because the serial abductor is on a spree now, and our department will have to go through a tremendous amount of pressure in the upcoming days. Hence, I hereby announce that the 'Serial Abductions of Maia's Month' case has been officially reopened." He declared.

Firmly supporting both his hands on the long teak wood conference table, he said, "Before discussing the details of the case, I would like to call upon the name of the Special Investigation Team's official in charge now, Deputy Commissioner of Police Raghav Katoch!"

On call, a tall and broad-shouldered man immaculately dressed in civvies walked into the conference hall and raised his right hand up to make a formal salute to the I.G.

"Jai Hind, Sir!"

"Jai Hind." I.G. Sathe nodded back and beckoned the thirty-something officer to the chair of the second-in-command. "Settle down, officer."

Raghav adhered to his senior's orders.

"Officers, it has been duly informed to me that our previous criminal profiler, Mr. Chinmay Burman, has undergone serious injuries in the last operation conducted by the SIT. And, even though he is out of danger now, he still needs to recuperate. Hence, citing this as a reason, we have a temporary addition to the SIT in place of Mr. Burman. Please welcome Ms. Hinduja Rao. She has done both her bachelor's and master's in criminal psychology at the National Forensic Science College, Trivandrum, and she is also the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of NCR. But for this entire month, she has been discharged from all her duties as an SDM, especially for the purpose of this case. She will assist as the interim but main criminal profiler in this case."

The door opened once again as a woman of medium height, clothed in a pale pink linen saree, wended her way forward.

"Good morning, sir." A delicate yet firm voice resonated in the conference.

"Good morning, officer." He beckoned her to sit in the chair of the third-in-command. "Settle down."

Hinduja did as she was told.

Raghav Katoch examined the woman sitting in front of him with his perusing gaze as the other officers, both male and female, followed suit. Immediately, the hushed conversations in the conference room revolved around the newly appointed criminal profiler.

I.G. Neeraj Sathe cleared his throat, following which every officer had his or her focus diverted to the commanding man settled in the frontmost chair belonging to the first-in-command of the Special Investigation Team.

"Let's discuss the case now."

Immediately, the man seated on the chair of the second-in-command got up and asked one of the constables to switch on the projector screen.

"Officers, The 'Serial Abductions of Maia's Month' is not a new case, as we already know, since these serial abductions have been happening every year in the month of May for the last nine years, and the current year happens to be the tenth year. We have only been two days into the month of May, and the serial abductor has already executed the abductions of three adolescent girls, namely Snigdha Patil, who is seventeen, and then Shrushti Thackeray and Deepa Mondal, who are both fifteen and sixteen, respectively."

Hinduja had her onyx pools fixated on the projector screen on which DCP Raghav Katoch was writing and explaining the details of the case with a stylus while she noted down all the key points on her notepad.

"If we include all three girls who have been reported missing from yesterday and today, respectively, then, from 2014 to the 2nd of May 2023, that is, today, a total of four hundred and fifty-two girls have been abducted by that serial abductor to date." He paused, taking a brief look at the lady in a pale pink sari settled on the conference table before him. "And we still don't have any intel about what really happened with these girls. Whether they are alive or murdered is also a matter of uncertainty as of now. To date, all 452 victims were teenaged females; not a single male was included. The abductor has not even made a single ransom call to the parents or guardians of all these four hundred and fifty-two girls, so we can already rule out the possibility of kidnapping. Plus, the motive behind the abductions is unknown as well."

He then dropped the stylus on the podium and walked forward to face all eight disquieted faces of his juniors. What surprised him was the ninth phizog of the new criminal profiler. The lady sat thoroughly straight with a ramrod back and an absolutely impassive, unbothered, and inscrutable expression on her facial framework.

"In conventional criminal cases, we generally go through the CCTV footage of the surrounding areas and the spot in which the crime takes place, but the main hurdle of his serial abduction case is that all the abductions to date, even the three that were executed yesterday and today, were all carried out in areas that are either CCTV camera blind spots or areas with no CCTV supervision at all. That's all the information we have so far." He concluded just as his gaze collided with the obsidian irises of the lady in pale pink.

***

It was night time and she was at home. Shrouding the toddler's tubby body with a coverlet, she got up from the bed and sauntered out of the bedroom. "Yes, Yadav ji?"

"Yes, Madam?" Assistant Sub Inspector Maninder Yadav's voice rolled out from the other side.

"Can you please mail me the details of the victims? All 452 of them?"

"All the details, madam?"

"Yes, everything, including their pictures, if we have them in the records."

"Sure, madam, I'll try to email them all to you in half an hour, but there is a small issue, madam."

"What sort of issue?"

"Madam, these abductions have been occurring for the last ten years now, so although our department was sufficiently equipped in terms of technical prowess back in 2014 as well, I fear that the records of some girls are partially lost, like some photographs and other data."

She sighed as she sat down on the living room sofa. Her eyes automatically averted to the antique Howard Miller grandfather clock perched in the left quarter of the colossal family lounge.

"Alright, that's fine with me. Just email me whatever you get, okay?"

"Sure, madam, Jai Hind!"

"Jai Hind."

The familiar old melody of the Westminster chime reverberated in the living room as the clock struck twelve, and she immediately budged her gaze towards the door for the umpteenth time.

Exactly twenty-five minutes later, the notification of an incoming email popped up on her phone screen. Just as she was about to open the PDF file attached to it, the doorbell rang.

Tossing her phone back on the sofa, she got up in a hurry while her nimble fingers arranged the cotton dupatta properly around her sternum and shoulders. She then rushed towards the door.

As she unbolted the main door, her onyx eyes found Karim holding her husband's sturdily built frame in his arms. With his head inclined on Karim's shoulders and nearly closed eyes, the patriarch looked heavily intoxicated.

"Ma'am." Karim bowed his head.

She nodded back as she let them both in. "What has happened, Karim bhai?" She questioned, half worried, half perplexed.

"Ma'am, Sahib is drunk." He answered as he settled down Mahadevan on the sofa.

"But, why?"

"We had a client meeting with some foreign delegates at the office today, ma'am. After the meeting, all the senior executives went out for dinner and drinks, including Sahib. He generally doesn't drink, and even if he does, he always stays within his limits. But, today—" Karim gulped in hesitation.

He didn't want to wage a war.

"He drank too much." She completed his statement as she folded her arms across her chest and sighed in disappointment.

"No, madam. . ."

"Enough, Karim Bhai. You don't need to represent him and talk on his behalf." She paused as her gaze shifted to the quiet figure of her husband. 

Karim's gaze darted from the patriarch to the matriarch. "Okay, madam, I'll take my leave then." He said.

"Did you have your dinner?" Hinduja asked him.

His lips tugged up faintly. "Yes, madam."

"Okay."

Karim then bowed his head. "Then I'll take my leave, madam." He said.

"Alright." She nodded back.

Escorting the head bodyguard to the doorstep, she closed the door behind him and wended her way back into the hall.

She walked closer to her husband and wound her right arm around his waist, then she brought his left arm up to curve it around her shoulder. Supporting his body on her slender form, she got him up on his toes and slowly trudged her way into their bedroom with great difficulty.

"I am home." He mumbled as he fondled her waist. 

She mumbled. "You're."

He remained silent yet her cheeks flushed as he sniffed her neck and hair.

She tried to curb her uneven breathing as she gently plopped him down on the four-poster bed and crouched down to take off his shoes and socks.

She then got up and helped him out of his double-breasted blazer, watch, and tie.

Placing them all at their designated spots, she walked back to the bed. She found him sitting on the bed with his legs crossed, peering at her with his drowsy eyes and a wide smile etched on his visage.

As she stepped into his proximity, he lugged her next to himself by her arms.

She ensconced herself adjacent to him at a leisurely pace.

"Listen." He slurred.

"Yes?"

"I thought I would find myself alone at home when I come back, but it turns out I am not alone . . . anymore." He garbled as he tilted his head to the right side of his shoulder and gazed at her.

"I beg your pardon?" Confusion marred her face.

"You know, no one waited for me when I returned home late at night." He chuckled as he voiced his words in a distorted tone. "But today you did, and that makes me feel happy. I feel worthy. I feel . . . I feel cared for." He whispered.

He lifted his hands to caress her cheeks.

"I was a forlorn creature all my life." He slurred and tee-heed. "I had a family that was there, yet not there? . . .Wait, am I even making sense?" His inebriated self exhibited a chaotically jumbled bearing as he scratched his scalp. "I don't know." He shrugged his shoulders and then yawned.

Seconds passed in dulcifying silence as she kept on gazing at him, the soothing touch of her warm fingers holding on to his own.

All of a sudden, he dragged himself closer to her and locked his sleepy, amber eyes with her stygian ones. "Then you came, and suddenly I was not alone anymore." He gingerly breathed into her ears, then slowly descended his head onto her lap and snuggled his face into her stomach.

Her lithe frame went lax as her heart pulsated erratically.

Somehow, steadying the irregular throbbing in her thorax, she timidly ran her fingers through his hair.

"You'll never be alone ever again." She gently brushed her lips against the crown of his head.

Laying his body flat on the bed, she supported his head on the pillow and covered him with a thin quilt.

She then checked on the sleeping child next to his father and left the bedroom to advance into the living room once again. Settling down on the settee, she went through the PDF file that ASI Yadav had sent her around twenty minutes ago and started the work at hand.

***

| May 3, 2023 |

| Morning |

"What the fuck!"

A deafening thump resonated in the meeting room as I.G. Sathe slapped the case file acrimoniously on the conference table.

Three more adolescent girls had been reported missing this afternoon, and on top of that, Snigdha Patil's father, the Communications Minister Vaikunth Patil himself, was dancing vigorously on the I.G.'s head.

The media houses were hell-bent on adding more fuel to the fire by creating all sorts of misleading and weird theories, which in turn was causing the common folks to panic more, thereby giving rise to a situation of immense terror in the state.

And the bottom line was that the investigation team still had no clues or circumstantial evidence to work on.

Hinduja looked on as her senior gulped some of his B.P. medications with a glass of water while a constable rubbed his back from behind.

She then shifted her gaze back to her laptop and scrolled through the documents she had worked on.

"Officer Rao?" Hinduja immediately lifted her gaze to look at the source of the voice.

DCP Raghav Katoch scanned the quiet form of the lady sitting directly in front of him on the opposite side of the table.

"Yes, sir?" She replied.

"Do you want to say something? I feel you have something to share with the team." He probed with his left eyebrow quirked.

I.G. Sathe immediately whirled his synovial joint around to look expectantly at the newly appointed criminal profiler of the team.

Hinduja took a deep breath as she felt all ten pairs of eyes fixated on her. "Actually, yes. I have a few clues to share with the team, but I must warn you all that these are my deductions based on the pattern of these abductions."

"That's okay; just go ahead with whatever you want to say." I.G. Sathe desperately jumped in.

"Alright." Saying so, she got up from her chair and advanced towards the projection screen. Connecting the system to her laptop, she opened the documents she had prepared the previous night.

She then tightly gripped the stylus in her nimble fingers and started. "Officers, I went through all the past nine years details of this case that ASI Yadav ji had emailed yesterday. And based on that, my first deduction is that the culprit is psychologically unstable. I am sure about this."

"And why do you think so?" A lady officer perched at the end of the table questioned.

"May I know your name, officer?" Hinduja asked her instead.

"ASP Rukmini Desai, ma'am." She answered back respectfully.

"Alright, Officer Desai." Taking a pause, she ambled closer to the podium and clicked on something on her laptop. Instantly, the pictures of around sixty to seventy girls were set forth on the official silver screen. "Is it fine if I address you directly by your name?"

"No issues, madam."

"Okay, then, let's begin. Now, to answer your question, Rukmini, I need all the team members here to answer a few of my questions." Every face now looked at the dignified frame of the young officer with puzzlement. "Look at the images of these girls. Can any one of you tell me what the common factor is in all of these pictures?"

"They are all females." Rukmini herself responded.

"Yes, correct. Anything else? because my eyes see more similarities between all of these pictures." She shot back with a faint smile.

"Teenagers?" A male officer voiced out with a thoughtful mien on his visage. "I mean, all of them are teenage girls."

"Exactly! They are all teenage girls in the age range of 14 to 18, which is a point to ponder upon, because as per the age statistics of all the girls who have been reported missing to date from the year 2014, including the three girls who went missing today, which is exactly a total of 455 girls, all of them were 14, 15, 16, 17, or 18 years old, respectively, at the time of their abductions. Not a year more, not a year less, but rather exactly within the age scale of 14 to 18." She paused as she jotted down the same point on the smartboard.

"Now, these were pretty easy to look through. Coming to the next set of similarities, what is your opinion about the facial structures of these girls? the hair pattern is even; what do you think about them?" She tossed the next question on the table.

"Actually, yes, they all, kind of, have round faces." The ever-silent DCP finally put forward his opinion as he examined the pictures carefully.

"That's right! They all have round faces. Now, about the hair pattern—did you all notice that all of them either have black wavy or curly hair?"

"What rubbish! India is situated near the equator, where the sunlight falls directly. To protect our hair from the intense heat, our body produces melanin, which in turn is responsible for the color of our hair, dark skin, and eyes! Black-colored hair is a very common genetic trait in our country." Raghav retorted.

Passing a faint smile at him, Hinduja turned to the next slide. In a flash, the image of a familiar-looking girl appeared on the screen.

"Isn't she Snigdha Patil? Vaikunth Patil's daughter and the first victim of this year?" Inspector Nakul Verma pointed out, gazing at the picture of the young girl.

The rest of the officers assented as well.

With a placid smile still intact on her face, she said, "Here is where you people are wrong. The girl in this picture is not Snigdha Patil. It's her twin sister, Smitha Patil."

Collective gasps were heard as she continued with her speech: "Confused, are we? But there is a slight difference through which we can differentiate between the two sisters. Snigdha has black curly hair; on the other hand, Smitha has straight brown hair." She said while projecting her index finger at the thick, straight, brown mane of the young girl, and then, as she moved on to the next slide, a picture of the same feminine face popped up on the projection screen, but this time there was a visible difference because the girl in the photograph had thick, black curls instead of straight, brown hair. "This is Snigdha, our first victim." She added.

"And mind you, both the sisters study at the same school and also commute together in the same car, along with two bodyguards assigned by their father. Then, how come Snigdha was abducted but Smitha was not?" She paused as she took a sip of the water kept in a borosilicate glass nearby. "I mean, come on, think about this theory in this way: had the culprit abducted both the sisters at the same time, wouldn't it have been easier for him? He or she would have saved a lot of time and effort by not wasting his time on abducting Deepa Mondal or Shrushti Thackeray yesterday, wouldn't he or she? Just easily abduct two sisters at the same time; why squander your own time by searching for more girls and then abducting them?"

"What do you exactly mean, Hinduja?" I.G. Sathe asked while massaging his forehead.

"Sir, I am trying to say that the culprit is not searching for just any random person to be his next victim; rather, he has particular criteria based on which he is abducting these girls. The criteria here are a) gender must be female; b) age should range from 14 to 18; c) the girl should have a round facial structure; and d) she should have black hair, either wavy or curly". She paused and scanned the faces of all the people in the meeting room. "These are the correlations I can put my hundred percent bet on as of now because I believe that there will be more correlations between these girls that we will come across in the coming days."

She then came a bit forward and asked, "Anyone here who was a part of the team that was investigating this case last year or any of the previous years?"

One hand was raised promptly.

"May I know your name, sir?" She asked as she looked at the man in a crisply ironed khaki uniform.

"ASP Patwardhan Singh, madam." He stood up and replied respectfully.

She nodded back and signaled him to settle down. "Officer Singh, tell me one thing: in conventional kidnapping cases, if a person is being kidnapped, what is his or her first reaction towards the unknown entity?" She questioned.

"A scuffle would ensue, madam. Sometimes even a fight might occur, and in almost all kidnapping or abduction cases, we do see visible signs of struggle at the crime scene. For example, disarrayed or multiple clutter of footwear impressions on the soil nearby, the slightly ploughed soil due to the force applied while trying to get away from supposed kidnappers, or sometimes even broken pieces of the victim's belongings lying around on the ground, etcetera." He answered back prudently.

"Perfect! Now that you were a part of the investigating team that was working on this case previously, what were your observations of the crime scenes in this particular case? Is there anything similar that you noticed in the spots?" She probed further as she snapped her fingers.

"Ma'am, there were not exactly any crime spots that we could determine, as we already know that all these abductions that have happened to date have all been executed in areas with no CCTV coverage, but still, based on the location from which the victims went missing, we searched and thoroughly scanned all those areas for any sign of struggle or fight to get some evidence, but nothing could be determined because there were no indications of scuffle at all." He voiced out as he gazed at the senior administrative officer standing confidently beyond the long conference table.

"And that's my bloody point, officers! That's the bloody point." She slammed her right palm on the table. "There were no signs of struggle at the abduction scenes or the locations around them because all these 455 girls already knew the culprit! They didn't put up a fight or struggle against the supposed abductor because they were all well acquainted with him but not aware of his motive."

"What?"

"How?!"

All the people occupying the meeting room looked startled; their gazes locked on the feminine figure in a saree standing next to the podium, their eyes enlarged in a stupefying manner.

"Are you even registering your own words, Officer Rao?" DCP Katoch's hardened tone echoed in the confines of the conference room.

Back stiff and stance erect, the lady in a grey linen sari locked her twilight eyes intrepidly with the eyes of her immediate senior. "I am well aware of what I am saying, sir. I can say with a hundred percent surety that all these girls were not only correlated to each other through certain common factors but also that these 455 girls and the ones who would be abducted from tomorrow onwards as well—every victim who has been abducted to date or is going to be abducted in the coming days—they are all acquainted with the abductor or his accomplices." She sighed and then switched to the next slide. "Which is why the previous investigators never found any indications of a scuffle at the crime spot, nor would we ever find any signs of a scuffle if we investigated the crime locations."

"Wait a minute, I get your point about the victims already knowing the abductor part. But did you just say 'the abductor or his accomplices'? Do you mean there is more than one person involved in this?" I.G. Sathe finally broke his silence, double-quoting the terms 'abductor' and 'accomplices' in the air, with his eyebrows knitted together.

Hinduja smirked, "More than one? Sir, judging from the timeline and the pace with which this abductor is executing his plans, I fear it's not just one, two, five, or even ten people who are involved in this. I dread that the culprit that we are behind is not just a single criminal involved in this entire fiasco but an entire criminal syndicate with one psychotic leader and one common ideology and goal. And this unknown goal is perhaps the motive behind all these abductions."

Again, a collective set of puffs and pants reverberated in the official space.

"Are you sure about your deductions, Officer Rao?" DCP Katoch tried to clarify once more.

"These are my deductions after a thorough consideration of all the intel and whatever little evidence was present at hand, sir." She shot back firmly. "And as far as the psychological profile of the main head of this entire criminal syndicate is concerned, I believe it is a male above the age of forty with an intense sense of loathing or abomination towards teen girls with round facial structures and curly black hair. There might be other aspects involved in this criterion as well, but I am unaware of those as of now. Another point to notice is that these abductions happen every year only in May. Every year in May, exactly fifty girls are abducted—neither forty-nine nor fifty-one, but exactly fifty. Isn't that suspicious? Why only fifty girls? Why only in May?" She drummed the digits of her right hand on the table while her left hand adjusted her specs with the tip of her index finger.

"No---I mean, yes, every year, fifty girls were abducted in May, but there was an exception as well. In the year 2014, which also happens to be the year in which these abductions took place for the first time, the total number of girls that were abducted that year was not fifty but rather forty-nine. Isn't it?" ASP Rukmini Desai counter-questioned as a contemplative expression crossed her visage.

"Or perhaps that year also fifty teen girls were abducted, but we only have forty-nine registered in our records because the guardians, parents, or close ones of the fiftieth victim that year didn't file a missing report altogether?" Raghav Katoch put forward a possibility.

"Yes, reasonable enough. I mean, it's a possibility; it could be that the parents of the fiftieth victim didn't file a missing report at all." I.G. Sathe added.

"All of this seems so ritualistic, as if the syndicate is following some sort of ritual." Another officer voiced his opinions.

"Fair enough." Saying so, I.G. Sathe finally swiveled his head around to look at his junior officer. "But Hinduja, why did you say that it's someone above the age of forty?"

"First of all, sir, these crimes have been happening since 2014, so definitely the main culprit is above the age of thirty, but if I were to speak from the knowledge of psychological parameters—to run such a big and organized syndicate with an iron fist and to execute such perfectly clean abductions with no circumstantial evidence left behind—one needs an upper hand in the power dynamics involved within the syndicate, and that comes with experience." A lopsided smile emerged on her face. "Sounds weird, but even a perfect crime needs experience in terms of age. That's why I think it's someone over the age of forty. But, honestly, sir, I could be wrong here because I am not sure about this particular inference of mine. This age range is just my hunch."

"That's fine; at least we have something to begin with now. And since you are the one who has provided us with this hypothesis, what do you think our next step should be?" The first-in-command asked for her suggestion.

Clasping her fingers together, the young lady met her senior's gaze and said, "I think we should first start with questioning the parents and try to connect the dots to find out all the remaining correlations, if any. Secondly, the sooner the department activates its patrolling jeeps in all the areas of the state, the better it would be."

Everyone conjointly agreed.

***

Target : 300

***