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Word count - 3800

Audio Theme :

 1. When a snail falls in love (starting BGM) | Play it while reading Hinduja's office part |

https://youtu.be/-jbrjdj6vVc

2. Lights are On (Instrumental) | Play it while reading Mahadevan's part |

https://youtu.be/SnOMHRZdhLU

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16 | The Correlations

"Yes, Yadav ji?"

Shrouding the toddler's tubby body with a coverlet, she got up from the bed and sauntered out of the bedroom.

"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 stuff."

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 man 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 wedge a war between his Sahib and madam.

"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 blabbering figure of her husband. He was singing a song from some old Bollywood movie.

"Peele peele o more raja, peele peele o more jaani,

Peele Peele or more raja, Peele peele o more jaani,

Yaar ki hai yaari nibhani. . ." Mahadevan presented a boozy Indian idol performance.

God forbid, even Anu Malik's 'Garam chai ki pyali' would have shied away.

Karim tried to conquer the chortles that tried to escape his lips as he looked on at the funnily bewildered expression of his boss's wife. "Okay, madam, I'll take my leave then." He said.

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

His lips faintly tugged up at her considerate behaviour as he replied. "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.

"Soft--soft." He mumbled as he fondled her waist. "So soft, I want to bite it."

Her breath hitched as her eyes widened.

"How do you—you always smell so good? like, vanilla---vanilla yet so fruity? but it---citrusy at the same?!" His lips puckered, and his cheeks flushed as he sniffed her neck and her long black locks

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.

"Inu?" He slurred

"Ji?"

"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 out his words in a distorted tone. "But today you did, and that makes me feel happy. I feel worthy. 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

"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 for it 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 the 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-year 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 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's the common factor 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, rather exactly within the age scale of 14 to 18." She paused as she jotted down the same point on the smart board.

"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 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 colour of our hair, dark skin, and eyes! Black-coloured 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 brown and straight 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, isn't it? 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 a 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 b) 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 per cent 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 regardfully.

She nodded back and signalled 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 almost in all kidnapping or abduction cases, we do see visible signs of struggle on 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 struggled 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 saree 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 per cent 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 till 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 on to the next slide. "Which is why the previous investigators never found any indications of scuffle on the crime spot, nor would we ever find any signs of scuffle if we investigate 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 are more than one people 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 considered, 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 criteria 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 swivelled 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 are 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.

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