Poison (32 page)

The baby had not been buried in a coffin. Only a skeleton remained, wrapped in blankets made of something similar to wool which was decaying, crumbling, now a grayish brown. They saw bits of blue and red—the boy’s pajamas. The nylon material had not broken down. Dhinsa and Smith peered at what was left of the tiny body. There wasn’t much. The skeleton was intact but the flesh had mostly vanished; discolored brownish bones were packed with earth. To Smith’s chagrin there was no sign of any tissue from organs, no bits of liver or brain where poison would be most easily detected. Those organs break down the fastest.

Smith slid the remains onto the lid of the large plastic container they had brought from Canada. The doctor took a closer look and spotted a bit of black, sinewy tissue hanging from the hip bone. Perhaps it might offer something. He then placed the body and some samples of dirt that had surrounded it into a plastic bag and sealed them in the blue container. He labeled the container “twin A.”

Smith and Dhinsa moved six feet to one side and started digging for the other baby. Again they reached a layer of branches and thorns, some shards of brick and, at 76 centimeters, the body.
Gurmeet. Blue and red pajamas. The second skeleton resembled the first. It was sealed in the green container and labeled “twin B.” It was 6 o’clock and the sky was the color of polished ivory, the sun fighting to cut through the curtain of haze. Smith and Dhinsa placed the plastic containers in the lockable aluminum boxes, and the samples and equipment were loaded onto the van. The villagers offered them a drink. Dhinsa declined. He knew the rule. You don’t drink water in India unless it’s bottled.

“How about beer, then?” a villager asked.

Well, he thought, at least the beer will be in a sealed bottle.

“Yes, thank you.”

The man told another to run and fetch the beer. He returned a few minutes later, the beer sloshing in an open bucket. Dhinsa rolled his eyes. Manners and a massive thirst made him dip a glass into the bucket and drink. Politeness also forced him that evening to sit down and eat a meal of eggs and homemade bread in the courtyard of Sarabjit’s tiny home. Dhinsa knew his stomach would pay for accepting. And sure enough, he was sick later. Sarabjit, the boys’ mother, had stayed at home during the dig. She cried whenever she thought about her boys. Smith asked her for a blood sample so he could establish the remains were those of her sons. She agreed.

Dhinsa awoke the next morning in Chandigarh and it dawned on him—he needed another warrant, this time to get the babies’ bodies across state lines, from Punjab to New Delhi. Dhinsa and Smith visited the local coroner, an erudite Sikh man who sat behind a hulking desk eating chicken with his fingers. “You ... need,” he said between bites, “papers ... Yes ... In Faridkot.” They used up another day, driving four hours to the city to get a written order from the magistrate there. The next day Dhinsa was ready to take the remains to New Delhi but Subhash Kundu felt they needed authority from his supervisor, who was out of town.

“Enough already,” Dhinsa said. “I want to go home. Let’s get this done.”

Dhinsa phoned Pierre Carrier, who made some calls. Dhinsa, Kundu, and Smith were off to the capital within hours. They
arrived at the heavily guarded CBI building in New Delhi on Friday afternoon to transfer custody of the bodies. Now there was another hurdle. They met Carrier in the office of CBI superintendent H.C. Singh, a gray metal fan rattling on a table, an air conditioner humming in the window.

“Tea?” asked Singh’s assistant.

Singh spoke in formal English.

“The Ministry of Home Affairs must give authority to release the exhibits, including the videotapes, documents, and remains,” he said.

“I have no problem delaying the videotapes,” Dhinsa said, “but we need to expedite moving the remains. I’m concerned about the condition of them.”

“We will meet tomorrow with the minister to obtain his approval,” Singh said.

Carrier took temporary possession of the remains. That night he drove them home in the back of his white Trooper. They sat in the back of the vehicle overnight, watched by the guard who always manned a post at Carrier’s home. The next morning, Saturday, Carrier drove to the CBI office and met with Dhinsa, Smith, Kundu, and Singh. H.C. Singh looked at Dhinsa. “The minister of home affairs, Shiv Basant, is not available to facilitate the transfer at this time,” Singh said flatly.

“What?”

“Yesterday was Raksha Bandan. An Indian national holiday. The minister is out of the city today.”

“Why not just leave the bodies here,” Singh continued, “and we’ll take care of it on Monday.”

“Look,” Dhinsa said, “we must preserve the integrity of the remains. Pierre?”

Carrier knew the dance well. At the best of times, the Indian bureaucracy was glacial.

“The bodies aren’t keeping and if this evidence is lost, the Indian government will be held directly responsible,” Carrier said.

Singh said he would do what he could, but needed more time. The Canadians left. Carrier phoned the deputy minister of home affairs at home.

“I must tell you,” Carrier pressed, “that the whole case will be lost if the remains are not moved quickly.”

“I’ll call you back in 10 minutes,” the minister said.

Carrier waited. The phone rang.

“You have the okay.”

“That’s it, we can load the remains on the plane?”

“If you have any problems, just phone me from the airport.”

As the clock struck midnight, Dhinsa and Smith arrived at Indira Gandhi Airport with the two aluminum boxes holding the remains. Dhinsa felt like kissing the woman behind the Air Canada counter beside the sign that said Flight 863, London-Toronto. Dhinsa watched the boxes loaded on board. The plane took off at 2 a.m. Indian time. They arrived six hours later in London, at 2:30 in the morning local time. At Heathrow Airport, Dhinsa observed on the tarmac as the remains were transported between planes for the flight to Toronto. Korol met them at the airport when they touched down back home.

Containers holding the twins’ remains being loaded on the flight to Toronto

In Hamilton, Korol needed to shore up the case against Dhillon in the Ranjit Khela homicide before he could move forward on arresting. The key witness was Lakhwinder Sekhon, Ranjit’s widow. He learned that she was now living in a women’s shelter, having
been ostracized by the Khela family. Korol knew that, in court, the family might well point the finger directly at Lakhwinder as the one who killed Ranjit. Korol and Dhinsa drove to the Khelas’ home on Gainsborough Road. They talked strategy in the car. Just tell the Khelas they are still investigating, ask them if they know anything more about Ranjit’s death. And then ask them if they know where Lakhwinder is. If the family passed up the chance to implicate her now, any later attempt to do so in court will lack credibility. At the house, Dhinsa spoke with Makhan Khela, Ranjit’s father. Makhan had no new information. He said nothing more about Lakhwinder.

The next day, Monday, August 25, Korol and Dhinsa picked up Lakhwinder at the shelter and took her to the police station to obtain a new statement on videotape. She had given two previous interviews under oath, but had not told everything she knew. She feared reprisals from the family, feared she would lose her son Ranjoda, who was living with the Khelas at that time. The family wouldn’t let her see him. Korol told her he just wanted the truth. And this was her last chance.

A Punjabi interpreter was on hand this time. Dhinsa spoke the language, but it was important that this translation be done by somebody clearly independent of the police. The questions began. She gave a long introductory statement. Then she dropped the bomb. “I know this much about Ranjit,” she said in Punjabi. “He didn’t die. He was killed.”

Korol kept his expression flat. Just let her go.

“Ranjit received a tablet from Dhillon,” she continued. “Dhillon had two pills, and Ranjit was told to take one, it will make him feel so good, will make him fly. Ranjit told me that Dhillon gave him the pill.”

Finally, Korol thought, the truth. He let out a sigh of relief. The case was far from over, but they needed this break. She talked for several more minutes, then Korol interjected.

“What did Ranjit say to you exactly?”

“He was crying and I asked what happened and at first he said nothing. Then he told me that he had taken a pill that he had got from Dhillon and that something was happening to him.”

“Was that the first time Ranjit told you about this pill?”

“When he got sick, that’s when he told me, and I told the family and they didn’t believe me.”

She described the mistrust between herself and Ranjit’s family. They wouldn’t eat food she prepared, and she refused to eat theirs, too.

“People I talk to here and there, they tell me the other pill is for me,” Lakhwinder said.

Korol knew that Lakhwinder was not the perfect star witness. But she was the one person who could, under oath, put the murder weapon directly in Dhillon’s hand. That, in turn, would help link him to the circumstantial evidence surrounding the death of Parvesh Dhillon. That evidence, he hoped, together with Lakhwinder’s testimony, could be presented in the context of evidence of Dhillon’s murderous reign of terror in India.

The next day, Korol and Detective Gary Bishop, the officer in charge of witness relocation, met the director of the women’s shelter. They talked about the threat to Lakhwinder, and her desire to be with her son.

“If Dhillon and the Khelas learn that she has told police about who gave Ranjit a pill, she is in danger,” Korol said. “That fact cannot get back to them.”

Two days later three police officers with the family crisis unit escorted Lakhwinder to the Khela home to take Ranjoda back. Ranjit’s grandparents seemed confused when Lakhwinder and the police arrived. Their confusion turned to hostility. Lakhwinder searched the house for documents such as Ranjoda’s birth certificate and her passport. Family members stepped in her way. Police told them to let her pass. Then Lakhwinder took her boy by the hand.

“You can’t do this,” said one of the grandparents. “You watch, we’ll get him back through court. You’ll never have him. We’ll get him back.”

It was a chaotic scene: people shouting in Punjabi and broken English, a police interpreter trying to translate what was being said to the other officers. One of the family sneered at Lakhwinder.

“You have made a big mistake in how you went about this.”

“Don’t worry,” said another. “We’ll tell the judge that she killed her husband.”

Lakhwinder, Ranjit Khela’s widow

The police led Lakhwinder and Ranjoda out of the house.

“Mom,” Ranjoda said to Lakhwinder, “they told me you had left me and gone back to India.”

The Khelas hired a lawyer to seek legal return of Ranjoda. The claim filed in family court said Lakhwinder was a suspect in the murder of Ranjit, that she had played no part in raising Ranjoda and over the past year had not cared for his needs, and that she had “mysteriously” abandoned the house.