Murder in Bollywood (3 page)

‘Where do you think you're going?' inquired a gruff-sounding bodyguard as Lucky approached the suite with the trolley.

‘Taking Mallika madam her dinner. Tiwariji instructed it to be delivered to her room by eleven-fifteen. You can call him to confirm this,' Lucky replied confidently. At this response, the bodyguards gathered around the trolley and began examining its contents. From the look on their faces it was obvious that everything seemed less Italian and more Greek to them, so after a quick word among themselves, one of the bodyguards turned around and knocked on Mallika's door, informing the superstar that her dinner had arrived. Lucky stood transfixed with bated breath, breaking out into a million beads of sweat, his heart beating ten times as fast inside his chest, but the beauty he so desperately seeked refused to reveal herself just yet. Anxious at getting no response from the other end, the bodyguard knocked on the door once more, calling out a little louder, but yet again there was no reply. Soon, the other bodyguards joined in as well, banging the door, their voices raised, while Lucky dashed off to the ballroom to fetch Tiwari, even as the other guests on the twenty-fifth floor began coming out of their rooms, one by one, to see what the racket was all about. By the time Lucky returned with Tiwari, accompanied by the hotel's chief of security, a large crowd had gathered outside the presidential suite, with some among them speaking in whispers, trying to make sense of the proceedings, while the rest looked on intently in the direction of the bodyguards, who were doing their level best to elicit some sort of response from Mallika, but all of it in vain. Finally, the chief of security stepped in with a master key, and the moment the door was flung open, Lucky charged into the room ahead of everyone else, because of which he was the first to scream in horror, but the only one to turn around and flee, screaming just the same. Can't blame the young man entirely. After all, it isn't every day that a lovesick fan discovers the woman of his dreams lying dead, with her face resting on an Egyptian-style centre table, buried in a small pile of pure white cocaine that she had probably carried in the mother-of-pearl-encrusted cigarette case, which lay open by her side. How ironic, one might say, for, in the background played that 70s' hit
I Will Survive
. No doubt, when Tiwari gathered himself and lifted her head, she was found with white eyes and foaming at the mouth. No doubt, everyone in that room believed that the ethereal Mallika Kapoor, Bollywood's reigning queen, had died of an accidental drug overdose. But no one in that room was aware that at the other end of town, in a place called Gulistan Studio, her equally celebrated husband, Nikhil Kapoor, also lay dead and, just like his wife, he, too, was felled by a tragic accident.

No doubt, superstars Mallika's and Nikhil Kapoor's funeral would have been the Bollywood event of the century, besieged by media from all across the globe and graced by the entire film fraternity, along with captains of industry, political bigwigs and even erstwhile maharajas. Without a doubt, their final journey from their palatial home in Pali Hill to the nearest crematorium would have unleashed a flood of humanity on the streets, bringing parts of the city to a grinding halt, causing buses and trains operating in that vicinity to be rerouted and rescheduled until the last rites of the power couple were performed, and the multitude in attendance, celebrities and commoners alike, had returned to their homes. But, alas, none of this came to be, as the funeral never took place. This was on account of a statement issued by the Mumbai Police, claiming that they suspected foul play in the deaths of both Mallika and Nikhil Kapoor, as the two of them ending up dead on the same night seemed highly suspicious and merited a thorough investigation, at the completion of which, their bodies, which were being counted as material evidence, would be released. In fact, owing to the high-profile nature of the case, it was awarded top-priority status, and instead of assigning it to the crime branch's newly formed Special Case Squad, the commissioner's office itself decided to look into the matter. During the course of their investigation, the police learnt that Mallika and Nikhil, who had married ten years ago, were both in their thirties and hailed from non-filmi families. They didn't have any children of their own, just an adopted son, Rohan, who was nineteen years old. As far as their friends were concerned, Mallika was often seen in the company of socialite Shanaya Raichand and fashion designer Kiki Fernandez. She was also very close to the much-respected doctor couple Bimal and Rushali Seth, whose fundraisers and charity events she would attend regularly. And yes, Mallika was very open about her dislike for the sensuous Nyra Oberoi, who in a very short span of time had become one of Bollywood's leading actresses and was widely regarded as the future number one. As far as Nikhil was concerned, his only friend in the entire film industry was his secretary, Ram Prasad Tiwari, perhaps because they were the same age and had started their careers at around the same time. And lastly, Nikhil was known to share a love–hate relationship with two famous gentlemen—Ishan Malhotra and Sameer Ali Khan. The former, one of the biggest film producers in the business, and the latter, Bollywood's reigning superstar. However, all of this information which the Mumbai Police gathered painstakingly could have been downloaded by anyone off the Internet, which meant it was all rather trivial and commonplace; therefore it came as no surprise that even after five days of the double tragedy, the investigation was going nowhere and the case itself, in the absence of any concrete leads, had all the makings of a mystery which would never be unravelled. Then, on the morning of 30 December, the police held a press conference at their headquarters in South Mumbai, during which their spokesperson read out this official statement: ‘After carefully examining all the evidence, we have reached the conclusion that the untimely deaths of both Mallika Kapoor and Nikhil Kapoor were tragic and unfortunate accidents, coincidentally transpiring on the same night and devoid of any foul play. The chief minister and deputy chief minister have already been briefed with regard to our findings; so with this, case number 27427, which was earlier thought to be a double homicide, is now closed.'

The crime branch's elite Special Case Squad, popularly known as the SCS, which was formed in 2014, specifically to investigate high-profile robberies and homicides, was the brainchild of Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Meeta Kashyap, who was also its chief. Hailing from Baroda and an officer of the IPS batch of eighty-four, Meeta Kashyap, maiden name Vora, had a reputation for being as hard as nails and a karate black belt to boot, besides having the uncanny ability of being able to spot great investigative talent from the tiniest of glimmers. For instance, around ten years ago, the gruesome murder of Malabar Hill resident and prominent industrialist Vidyut Tarachand sent shockwaves throughout the South Mumbai business community. The fifty-year-old businessman's body was found in the parking lot of his office building, shot twice at close range, and the ballistics report confirmed that the weapon used in the murder was the deceased's own gun which he himself had reported stolen the week before. When the crime branch took over the case, they discovered that when the late Vidyut Tarachand had filed the stolen weapon complaint with the Malabar Hill police station, he had named one Sahil Khanna as the person he suspected of the theft, which was interesting as the nineteen-year-old was his teenage daughter's boyfriend. Anyway, the police sprung into action the moment the complaint was lodged and after running a background check on Sahil, which revealed that he had been arrested before for theft and possession of drugs, went all out to apprehend him, but he was nowhere to be found. And after Vidyut Tarachand was killed, they intensified their search tenfold, but even then Sahil, along with the murder weapon, remained out of reach. Then late one night, two weeks after the murder, the Malabar Hill police station received a frantic call from Anita Tarachand, the thirty-five-year-old wife of the deceased, who claimed that she had shot and killed an intruder in her house. On reaching the Tarachand bungalow, the police found Sahil Khanna lying in the living room in a pool of blood, shot three times, and still clutched in his hand was the gun which had been used to kill Vidyut Tarachand. In her statement to the police, a visibly shaken Anita revealed that at around 2 a.m. when she was asleep upstairs in her bedroom, she was suddenly awakened by noises coming from the living room below, which was odd as all the servants had retired to their quarters for the night and her sixteen-year-old daughter Rhea was lying sedated in the adjoining room, having taken her father's death very badly; so she grabbed her licensed revolver that she kept by her bedside ever since her husband's murder and went downstairs to investigate. As she entered the living room, she saw a figure standing fifteen to twenty feet away with his back towards her, but since the entire floor was very dimly lit, she couldn't make out anything else about the intruder. She then pointed her gun in the man's direction and in a clear, loud voice told him that she was armed and if he didn't leave the way he came, she would open fire. But instead of walking away quietly, the man spun around sharply with his arm raised as if he, too, was carrying a gun, so she instinctively pulled the trigger and he dropped dead. Anita also claimed that she discovered the intruder was Sahil much later, and told the police that the reason Sahil killed her husband was because Vidyut thoroughly despised him and had even convinced Rhea to break off her relationship with him, in response to which Sahil decamped with silverware and other valuables from the Tarachand residence, including a gun. Anita believed that Sahil broke into her home the night he was killed to probably steal something else, as he always needed money to fuel his drug habit, or maybe even to kill Rhea for jilting him, after which he might've killed her too, because on a number of occasions even she had tried to get her daughter to end her relationship with him. So, all in all, it had all the makings of an open-and-shut case, with the shooting of Sahil at the hands of Anita coming across as an act of self-defence, not punishable by law. But Meeta Kashyap, who was assistant commissioner of police (crime branch) back then, had other ideas. In her capacity as lead investigator in the case, she had come to believe that it was Anita who had plotted Vidyut's murder with the help of Sahil, and after she got him to kill her husband, she lured Sahil to her home, where she eliminated him in cold blood, thereby taking care of all loose ends. However, the only problem with this theory was that she didn't have any evidence to back it up, and without concrete proof, she knew that if she went after Anita Tarachand, the lady's battery of high-powered attorneys would rip her allegations apart and make sure they didn't stand up in court. So, in desperation, ACP Kashyap gathered the crime branch's brightest officers in the briefing room and asked them to come up with ideas that could help unearth vital evidence and send Anita Tarachand to jail. While all the other officers turned silent and scratched their heads in wonderment, one among them smiled, with his eyes shining bright, and raised his hand with a logical solution. That officer was a young rookie sub-inspector, freshly transferred from the Lucknow crime branch, by the name of Hossain Shariyar Khan, who his fellow officers referred to as Nawab Saheb, because he hailed from an illustrious Awadhi family with deep pockets. But irrespective of the jibes made by his new teammates owing to their jealousy at his good fortune, one thing could not be denied, that when Sub-inspector Khan spoke, everybody listened.

‘In the heat of the moment, even seasoned contract killers are known to miss their mark from five feet away and that too in broad daylight,' he said, looking at ACP Kashyap. ‘But Mrs Tarachand, who by her own admission had never used a gun before and only started keeping one by her bedside after her husband's murder, managed to shoot the late Mr Khanna three times, once in the head and twice in the chest, from twenty feet away, in near darkness and that too in quick succession, before his body hit the floor. Now, to pull off such a feat in a matter of seconds when faced with an armed intruder, the lady was either very lucky, or else the intruder wasn't an intruder at all, and Mrs Tarachand had lots and lots of practice with her weapon of choice, all of it in preparation for that fateful night, when she called Mr Khanna home, probably on the pretext of helping him elude the police, even asking him to bring along the gun with which he had killed her husband so that she could dispose of it appropriately; then waiting for him downstairs in the living room and killing him in cold blood the moment he came in. She knew she only had that one chance to shoot him dead, thereby eliminating the one person who could have exposed her, and she knew that it had to be done from a distance, otherwise we'd get suspicious. She was well aware that if she missed her target, or failed to shoot him fatally and he survived, he would testify against her in court and take her down with him. Therefore, it became imperative that she did not fail. And for this, she had to have practised. But she didn't do that in her own backyard, as that would have attracted too much attention. And I am pretty certain that since every shooting range keeps a record of all those who enrol, she wouldn't have gone to one either. What we're looking for is a secluded place where she could have practised to her heart's content without being noticed. Once we find that place, we'll find all the evidence we need to put her away for life,' Khan concluded with certainty.

‘But what if she practised in some remote corner of Borivali National Park? Where does that leave us then?' Kashyap asked sceptically.

‘She wouldn't have, because every criminal makes at least one fatal mistake, for there is no such thing as the perfect crime,' Khan calmly stated.

ACP Kashyap responded by reflecting for a few moments, after which she handed over the Vidyut Tarachand as well as the Sahil Khanna murder case to Khan, telling him that she wanted to see results within a week. The rookie responded wonderfully to the challenge. By getting hold of Anita's credit card details, he discovered that she had stopped for gas on more than one occasion in the past one week, at a service station on the road to Karnala, just two hours away from Mumbai. On getting there, Khan paid a visit to the farmhouses located in areas that were secluded and after a four-hour-long search found the one that Anita had rented under the name Gauri, three days after her husband's death. Ramu, the caretaker of that property, who recognized Anita from her photograph, told Khan that she had paid cash to take the farmhouse on rent for a ten-day period, which coincidentally ended a day before Sahil's death, during which time she would arrive all by herself a little after lunchtime and ask him to leave her all alone for the next five hours. By the time Ramu would return, it would be past sunset and she'd be on her way out. On examining the farmhouse, Khan discovered shattered bottles of beer and empty shell casings in the backyard, indicative of the fact that he had found the place where Anita had honed her shooting skills for a full ten days before the night of Sahil's death, thus proving beyond doubt that his death had nothing to do with any act of self-defence, but was cold-blooded murder, prearranged and most foul.

When confronted with this evidence, Anita broke down and gave a full confession. According to her, she had been married off by her family to Vidyut, fifteen years her senior, when she was just eighteen, gave birth to her daughter Rhea the following year, and after all those years of marriage found herself feeling stifled and very angry. She knew she was a beautiful woman and the world was at her feet. But while other women, far less beautiful and intelligent than herself, were boldly stepping forth into the world, meeting interesting people and exploring all the wonderful, new-age opportunities, there she was, shackled in a sexless marriage to a dull, conservative bore, who she had suffered seventeen long years, and she wasn't going to take it any more. She knew that if she divorced Vidyut for these reasons, he'd throw her out without a penny and even society wouldn't support her point of view. Therefore he had to die if her dreams were to be realized. But what those dreams and ambitions were, she hadn't figured out. All she knew was that she wanted unlimited freedom, the tag of Mrs Tarachand, Vidyut's billions, but with Vidyut nowhere in the picture. Then as luck would have it, Rhea introduced her to her boyfriend Sahil, and that's when Anita saw her opportunity. It didn't take her long to figure out that he was undoubtedly a rotten egg, and once a quick background check confirmed his criminal record, Anita knew she had found the perfect person to get rid of her husband. She wasted no time in seducing the dim-witted teen, first turning him into her secret lover, then poisoning his mind against her husband, until the boy was convinced that killing him was the only way by which the two of them would be together. Anita then supplied Sahil with a gun, which she stole from her husband's private collection, and told him exactly when and where he should eliminate Vidyut. She then went back home and stole a few other things, hiding them in a safe place, after which she pretended that she had just discovered the theft of the valuables and the gun, informing her husband of the same, even telling him that she suspected Sahil of the crime, and getting him to lodge a complaint at the Malabar Hill police station. But in spite of acting instantly on Vidyut's complaint, the police was unable to find Sahil, because Anita had gotten to him first and led him to an effective hiding place, where she incited him against Vidyut some more. Then, after the deed was done and Vidyut was dead, Anita waited two full weeks, during which time she perfected her shooting skills, after which she contacted Sahil and asked him to come over to her place at around two that fateful night, telling him that she had a plan to help him elude the police for good. Importantly, she also told him to bring the murder weapon along so that she could dispose of it, assuring him as an afterthought that since the servants would be in their quarters and Rhea heavily sedated, no one would see him enter or leave. The rest, as they say, is history.

The solution to this sensational double murder made front-page news in all the national dailies, apart from being featured as ‘breaking news' on every news channel in the country, catapulting ACP Meeta Kashyap and her entire team to instant stardom, particularly one sub-inspector, Hossain Shariyar Khan, who got maximum credit for cracking the case, along with a catchy moniker, courtesy the press, who came out with the headline, ‘Hoshiyar Khan solves Malabar Hill homicide'. The Tarachand murder case also proved to be the catalyst in bringing Meeta Kashyap and Hoshiyar Khan together as a team; so a number of years down the line, when the Special Case Squad came about and she was made its chief, she made sure that Hoshiyar came on board. She gave him a free hand in selecting his team, and the first officer he selected was a hard-as-nails street cop, Sub-inspector Yashwant Zagde, who became Inspector Khan's trusted lieutenant. But the formation of the Special Case Squad was no mean feat, for there had been several obstacles along the way, which at times seemed insurmountable, and all of them created by a single person, namely T.L. Ghankar, Mumbai's commissioner of police and Meeta's boss. An officer of the IPS batch of eighty-four, just like Meeta, Tanaji Laxman Ghankar, or ‘Total Loss' Ghankar as he was popularly called behind his back, would have been a terrifying foe if he wasn't unbelievably incompetent. He was a portly figure, with a thick moustache and no more than five and a half feet in height, but his ego was ten times his size, and if ever bruised, he would unleash upon the offender his version of violent fury, which was nothing but one petty act of vindictiveness after another, with that sequence only coming to a halt when the object of his ire took the necessary steps to placate him, which at the end of the day made Commissioner Ghankar appear less frightening and more annoying to everyone around, not that he ever noticed. Now Total Loss had a long-standing axe to grind with the newly appointed ACP, Meeta Kashyap. It all began in the 1980s, when the two of them were together at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad, training to be officers of the law, for that's when Ghankar proposed to Meeta eleven times with a total of eleven red roses, and she turned him down each and every time. It was also back then that Ghankar's obvious lack of aptitude in his chosen field was exposed, making him the laughing stock of the academy, so much so that the other cadets, including Meeta, had nicknamed him Santri, because everyone believed that standing guard outside some police station gate armed with a rifle from the days of the Raj was the only thing he was good for. Needless to say, this nickname irked him no end. The last and final reason why Meeta had landed in Ghankar's cross hairs was that she hailed from a family of highly respected police officers; that, according to him, made her a child of privilege, which was a breed he thoroughly detested, since he himself came from a simple hut made of mud, somewhere in Shirud, a little-known Maharashtrian village. Anyway, once the training at the academy ended and the cadets disappeared to different parts of the country as per their postings, Meeta found herself as sub-inspector in Pune, from where began her meteoric rise, purely on the strength of her ability, which ultimately led her to the big, bad city of Mumbai, and the post of additional commissioner of police (crime branch). Ghankar, on the other hand, found himself posted in Nagpur, and within the first few weeks of duty itself realized beyond doubt that he had neither the toughness, nor the intelligence to reach the top in his profession, so he decided to fall back on the one skill that he possessed—his ability to shamelessly butter up all the right people to get ahead. Soon, he was a regular fixture at all the prominent events and soirees frequented by men in khaki and khadi, with the power to make or break destinies with a single word, for or against. He was the one who would laugh the loudest when a distinguished member of that gathering cracked a joke or told a funny tale. And at award functions, his cheering and clapping was the most vociferous, if a well-networked senior received a medal or an honour in some way. It was this apple-polishing trait that endeared him to the powers that be, who carried their favourite sycophant forward by leaps and bounds, and installed him in one of the most coveted law enforcement offices in the country, which was a station far beyond the stratosphere of his ability. To put it in simpler words, the unspectacular T.L. Ghankar became Mumbai's commissioner of police. It was here that he ran into Meeta once again, who, by now, was happily married to her college sweetheart, and was a mother of two teenage daughters. But Ghankar hadn't forgotten how she had spurned him all those years ago, along with the fact that she and the other cadets at the academy had made fun of him by calling him Santri; now that he was in a position of great strength, he decided it was time to have his long-awaited revenge. Therefore, he used his considerable influence to make sure that the proposal to form the SCS was blocked. But when that scheme failed, he not only attempted to poach a number of their high-profile cases by having them transferred to his office, he would also interfere in the investigation of the cases which the SCS had on hand, apart from making sure that the newly formed squad was never comfortable in its new space. For example, Ghankar pulled a few strings and had the SCS shunted far away from the nerve centre of the Mumbai Police in South Mumbai, to a lesser-known police building in the city's western suburb, located along Bandra's famous Carter Road, where they had to share office space with the city's passport renewal department. They also had to make repeated calls and requests for the manpower they needed. Apart from Meeta Kashyap, Ghankar also bore intense dislike and jealousy towards Hoshiyar Khan, not only because Khan's case-solving exploits featured regularly in the city's dailies, but also because Khan belonged to a moneyed family, which in the eyes of the commissioner was an unpardonable sin. Another reason for his hostility was the fact that he had tried his best to convince Khan to break away from Meeta Kashyap's team and join him at the headquarters, but the good inspector had politely declined, which badly bruised Ghankar's ego. Moreover, as he was afraid of Khan's family connections, he had decided against using his influence, which made him feel even more helpless and infuriated. Meanwhile, in his spare time, when he wasn't trying to come up with schemes to decimate the SCS, Ghankar would indulge in other ridiculous things. Take, for instance, his juvenile method of trying to strike fear in the hearts of hardened criminals. He would regularly summon history-sheeters to his office at the headquarters, and the moment they entered, they would be greeted by the sight of Commissioner Ghankar sitting behind his desk, surrounded by three to four burly policemen. Ghankar would then hand out a coconut to one of his officers, who would hold it in one hand and strike it hard with the other, breaking it into two. Ghankar would then smile menacingly at the history-sheeters and advise them to mend their crooked ways, or else he would hand them over to his officers and then their fate would be very similar to that of the coconut. Needless to say, this act of his made him the laughing stock of the Mumbai underworld. Another thing he loved doing was to give people around him the impression that he was the quintessential son of the soil. To project this image, he would visit the officers' canteen during lunchtime and, in full view of everyone present, order a bowl of dal, two paos, one raw onion and a couple of green chillies. And those who were not familiar with his shenanigans would approach him in awe and wonderment, exclaiming that they were stunned to see the commissioner of police indulging in such simple fare; to this, he would throw back his head and fake a hearty laugh and reply,
‘Mein garib kisan ka beta hoon. Yeh sab kha ke hi toh yahan tak pahooncha hoon.'
After delivering this dialogue, he'd get up from his seat and leave, saying he was getting late for a meeting, then dash over to the Delhi Durbar restaurant nearby and tuck into his favourite chicken biryani, mutton korma and kebab paratha, washing it all down with a tall glass of sugarcane juice. The fact that Commissioner Ghankar was a petty, vindictive individual who hated the SCS was no secret, but Hoshiyar Khan did not let such a thing get to him. He wasn't bothered when the commissioner's office would call, informing his squad that one of their cases was being taken away from them; neither did he lose his composure when the office of the SCS was shifted from Crawford Market to Carter Road. On the contrary, Hoshiyar welcomed any reduction in his considerable workload and considered the shifting of his office to the sea-facing Carter Road a blessing. This was not because that particular stretch of road had transformed into one of Mumbai's leading hubs of leisure and activity, with its numerous restaurants and cafes, apart from a bustling promenade, and the famous Jogger's Park, dedicated to the good health and well-being of the citizens of Bandra, frequented by everyday folks and celebrities alike; the reason Hoshiyar was very content with the location of his new office was that it was less than five minutes away from his home, which was a small, but charming bungalow, located at the end of Sherly Rajan Road, gifted to him by his family the day he got married, making it the only gift he ever accepted and purely for the sake of the enchanting Rumi begum, his incessantly inquisitive but well-meaning better half, because he knew well enough that she would have found it very difficult to adjust to his one-bedroom police quarters, never mind how hard she tried. In fact, it was immediately after the honeymoon that Hoshiyar discovered he had been right about his wife, when Rumi begum moved into their new home in Mumbai, accompanied by her cook, Kamru mian, her chauffeur, Sharf-ud-din, and her personal maids, Shabbo, Najjo and Bano, all of them from her family home in Lucknow, who had tagged along to look after her every need. However, this particular arrangement ended up working in Hoshiyar's favour, because he could go to work every day secure in the knowledge that his wife was able to carry on with her day-to-day routine just as efficiently and without any hindrance as she did back home in Lucknow before their wedding. For instance, while Hoshiyar's day would begin with a brisk walk along Carter Road at around 6 a.m., followed by breakfast and the morning paper, after which he would leave for the SCS headquarters literally down the road, a little before nine, Rumi begum would see her husband off, then go back to bed and wake up at around eleven, after which she would have her breakfast outside in the lawn, then instruct Kamru mian what to make for her husband's tiffin, which she would supervise and have it delivered to him by two o'clock, by when it was time for her to indulge in a bit of social work by holding her daily durbar in the lawn over lunch, when domestic helps from the neighbourhood and even their acquaintances would come to her with their problems that would keep her occupied for the next few hours; then she would catch up with her best friend Minoo Dadichand over a cup of coffee, and finally finish her day with a workout at the local gym or a walk around the busy neighbourhood, taking in the evening sights and sounds, before heading back home, just in time for her husband's return after a long, hard day. And yes, along with all of this, she would also find time to surf the Net for the latest gossip on her favourite Bollywood stars, which she would excitedly share with Minoo over the telephone, and even dance to the most happening Kareena Kapoor songs which she would put on full volume in the privacy of her bedroom, mimicking all of Bebo's dance moves to a T. In fact, last year in December, Rumi begum got a chance to perform to Kareena's ‘Fevicol' number from
Dabangg 2
, at her younger brother's sangeet, which was the highlight of a week of celebrations, culminating in the young man's wedding, in preparation for which both she and Hoshiyar spent more than a month in Lucknow. And so well received was her performance that she had been requested to do an encore at her cousin's wedding in the capital, which the whole family was gearing up to attend for the next one week, minus Hoshiyar Khan, who, having just returned from his brother-in-law's wedding, found himself saddled with a backlog of cases that had piled up in his more than thirty-day-long absence. But even as the good inspector put his wife on the plane to Delhi and bid her farewell, little did he know that all his plans of settling into an expected routine were about to go to seed, as sinister forces were at work once more, and blood that had been shed a month before, but carefully washed away, refused to remain invisible any longer.