The Taj Conspiracy (31 page)

Several gyrations later, the wedge separated from the notch and the lock lay limp. He removed it and assessed the heavy glass top and the door that would need to be eased off before they could open the trunk. On their haunches, they began to push the thick glass.

It took a few minutes of shoving and sliding before they eased the glass and the door to the ground. As Mehrunisa sat back, breathing heavily, R.P. Singh lifted the lid of the trunk. A warm musty odour assailed them before R.P. Singh swore, turned his face away and banged the lid down again.

‘What?’ Mehrunisa demanded, scrambling forward.

Singh laid a hand on her shoulder, his eyes concerned.

‘I have to see it, dammit!’

He gave a slight nod.

The contents hit her like a fist smashed into her belly. On a gasp Mehrunisa let the lid clatter back as she clutched her stomach and staggered. Nothing in the world could have prepared her for what she had just seen.

Inside the wooden trunk in the director-general’s living room, like some pièce de résistance, was the perfectly preserved body of a woman!

R.P. Singh grabbed Mehrunisa by the shoulders and helped her into an armchair. Then he opened the trunk again. Beside the body was a notebook. He picked it up and flicked it open.

The stiff leaves were pasted with typewritten pages.

Delhi

C
onfessions of a nefarious mind. That’s what the notebook sitting on the dresser in Mehrunisa’s room could be titled. Partially filled, it had kept her up all night.

Standing at the window of her room, Mehrunisa watched Mangat Ram water a flower bed. The day had kept the previous night’s promise, dawning bright and clear. The lush red lilies and plump white chrysanthemums against a backdrop of verdant green were beautiful, and Mehrunisa was happy to simply look at them. She needed the respite. It was February; an entire month of the new year had flown by, and she had barely registered it. Lately her life was like the weather: bleak and foggy. Was the bright day signalling a change in weather as well as her life?

Mehrunisa glanced at the diary, loath to touch it again. Inside its covers was evil, typed and pasted on the pages— the Devil had made sure not to reveal his handwriting.

The diarist was so fixated on his mother, he had killed a father competing for her affection, and upon his mother’s death preserved for himself her dead body. One facet of the writer’s identity was his Jat pride. Raj Bhushan was not a Jat. If Raj Bhushan had appropriated the coffee table, as she was convinced, then it rightfully belonged to Arun Toor. And Arun Toor was a Jat. He had once joked to Mehrunisa about the ransacking of the Taj Mahal in 1761 by the Jats of Bharatpur. Under their leader Suraj Mal, they had carried away the silver doors of the mausoleum that they contemplated converting into a Hindu temple. The irony, Arun had stated wryly, was that a modern-day Jat, himself, was the caretaker of the same Taj.

The occurrences thus far revealed a conspiracy to invalidate the Taj Mahal’s Muslim origin, and now, Mehrunisa had unearthed what could be a critical link in the chain of events. She stacked the facts in their right order:

Arun Toor was the Taj supervisor.

Arun Toor was a Jat.

A Jat leader had once broached the idea of converting the Taj to a Hindu temple.

The Taj conspiracy was centred on disputing the monument’s Muslim origin.

Arun Toor was murdered in the Taj.

No, no, no. It did not add up. If a conspiracy was afoot to discredit the Taj, and Arun was involved with it, why was
he
killed? And by whom?

But Mehrunisa was implicating Arun in the conspiracy because he was a Jat—what if that was just a coincidence? In which case the focus shifted to Raj Bhushan, in whose house the diary had been found. But Raj Bhushan was not a Jat, so the dairy couldn’t be his. What about the body? Had he stolen the coffee table from Arun’s house— after his demise—to conceal the body? Which begged the question: where had he hidden the body all along? R.P. Singh had said he’d ask for a DNA test on the woman’s body but with scarce resources at Forensics, a DNA test on the corpse recovered from the python was first priority.

Mehrunisa looked at the clear blue sky and hoped for illumination. The one thing she knew for sure was the diarist was a psychopath. The question to be answered was:
who
was the psychopath—Raj Bhushan or Arun Toor.

Mangat Ram barged in. ‘Sahib, he—he spoke—he asked for you—he—’

Mehrunisa started towards the professor’s room and the housekeeper fell in step. He recounted that he had been dusting Professor Kaul’s room when he felt his eyes on him. When he picked up the photo frame on the sideboard, the professor motioned for it. He stared at the picture and then started talking to it! When Mangat Ram tried to talk to the professor, he asked for her.

‘“Mehr, Mehr”, he said, repeatedly.’ The disconsolate housekeeper watched from the doorway as Mehrunisa entered.

Professor Kaul was still holding the photo and in the midst of some narrative. Mehrunisa pulled a chair close to his bed and rested her head in his lap. In turn, he placed his palm over her hair. She could feel his hand, skeletal, brittle, as it lay on her head, making no attempt to pat her as he continued talking. He seemed to be repeating the same story. She sat up, removed the picture gently, and took both his hands in hers and listened intently.

Inder and his wife Indu were god-fearing. Once Indu’s brother Sunder visited them. All three went to Goddess Durga’s temple. First Sunder entered the temple. On seeing the idol of Durga, he was so overcome by devotion that he decided to sacrifice himself. Subsequently, he cut his head off in front of the idol. Then Inder entered the temple and saw his brother-in-law’s dead body. Gripped by a sense of self-sacrifice, he too cut his head off. Finally, Indu entered the temple and saw the two dead bodies. Overcome by grief, she wept loudly and prayed to the goddess Durga to give her the same husband and brother in her next life. As Indu prepared to give up her life, Durga appeared. She said she was pleased with their devotion and would bring the two men back to life. Then she asked Indu to join the two heads to the respective bodies. When Durga put life into the bodies, Indu realised she had mixed up the heads. Now, Inder’s body had her brother’s head and her brother Sunder had Inder’s head!

So, who would be Indu’s real husband now?

Professor Kaul turned to look at her. For an instant Mehrunisa thought she saw a sign of recognition in those tired eyes. Whatever it was, it vanished in an instant. However, the professor’s voice acquired urgency as he frantically repeated his query.

So, who would be Indu’s real husband now?

Mehrunisa shook her head. She wanted so much to jolt her uncle awake, so he would stop treating her like a twelve-year-old and talk to her. But the professor persisted. In a strange high-pitched voice, he kept repeating the question.

To quieten him she said, ‘The head is the body’s most important part since that’s where all thoughts and memories reside. The man with the husband’s head had all the memories of Indu as a wife. So he was her real husband.’

As she finished, Professor Kaul went quiet. She continued to speak with him, attempting to locate the trigger that had set him on the narrative, but he had once again retreated into the shadows of his mind.

As she took the photograph back to the sideboard, she studied it, wondering what about it had set off the story. A group of men stood in front of the Taj Mahal: Professor Kaul, Arun Toor, Raj Bhushan, and a couple of assistants. The professor stood in the middle, flanked by Toor and Bhushan with the assistants standing deferentially apart. Arun Toor, clean shaven for a change, was dressed in his habitually creased kurta, baggy trousers, slip-on sandals; Raj Bhushan, on the other side, was dapper in his neat boxed beard, tailored trousers, brogues, and Nehrucollared shirt.

As she replaced the photograph, she wondered why her uncle had chosen to tell that particular story. What was it R.P. Singh had said about the previous story her godfather had told her? That the crux of it was the escape ... Mehrunisa stopped in her tracks. Both stories were about the
impression
of death, when not dead.

Agra

I
t was midnight at Taj Ganj police station. SSP Raghav and R.P. Singh sat discussing the DNA result that had come in two hours back. A half-empty bottle of Old Monk, a partially-depleted plate of oily samosas, and a radio humming in the background gave the impression that the cops were letting their hair down.

The next instant R.P. Singh hurled a tennis ball at the opposite wall as he snarled, ‘He’s making a chutiya of us!’

Singh collected the ball on rebound, got up from the chair and said, ‘Let’s go over it again.’

SSP Raghav worked the ends of his luxuriant moustache and started. ‘We matched Arun Toor’s DNA, sourced from personal articles at home, to the DNA of the torso recovered from the python’s belly. And it didn’t match. However, it did match the DNA sample taken from the pink kurta. Which means, someone was poisoned, as the post-mortem has shown, dressed in Arun Toor’s kurta, and then fed to a snake!’

R.P. Singh paced the floor, juggling the ball in his hands. ‘This person approximated the Taj supervisor in height and build. But the relevant specs are those of an average Indian male,’ he shrugged. ‘It would be easy for Toor to lose himself in a crowd.’

Singh’s study of the notebook recovered from the trunk in Raj Bhushan’s house had revealed a psychopath with twin obsessions: his mother and his Jat heritage. He walked to a board that had seen some furious scribbling and turned to a new sheet. On it he wrote two words— Mother, Jat—and eyed Raghav.

‘Arun Toor was a Jat, Raj Bhushan is not.’

‘But Mehrunisa is certain she saw the very same trunk in Toor’s house. So, what is Toor-the-Jat’s trunk doing in the house of his boss?’

R.P. Singh had tried to contact Raj Bhushan, but the office had informed him that the director-general was on tour in southern India for a few days and he wasn’t picking up his cell phone.

Singh paused to refill the glasses with rum. ‘Consider the possibility,’ he said, his eyes glittering, ‘this case started with a murder, yet the murdered man might be alive.’

‘And laughing at us all this while! Watching us run in circles as he hides—’ Raghav swore, dragging Toor’s grandmother into the melee of curses.

‘Hiding where, hiding where?’ R.P. Singh had resumed his perambulation. He had been asking that question every single day since Republic Day, a fortnight back. Meanwhile, the additional security at Taj Mahal had been lifted since he could find no further justification for extra security.

Singh grabbed a samosa and chomped on it as he walked about, the peas popping to the floor. The radio was playing a peppy Bollywood number, its notes pulsing through the stale air.

‘Boss,’ Raghav called, his voice slurring from the rum, ‘you realise we have a growing list of behrupiyas?’ He held up his fingers as he counted. ‘One: Kriplani. Two: Raj Bhushan. Three: Arun Toor.’

Singh nodded his head in assent. The home minister might have let Kriplani off, but he would follow every lead until he nailed the behrupiya. Then he chortled loudly. ‘The third behrupiya is technically dead!’ It turned into a snigger as he realised how ridiculous it sounded.

Raghav had started to sputter too, as he shook his head. When he couldn’t stop his head from shaking he realised dimly that he was drunk.

‘Boss!’ he hollered. ‘I think we are drunk. We should have a samosa each.’ He wobbled around the table and grabbed two samosas. ‘Some food helps reduce the a-aceta-acetal-de-hyde—got it!—in the stomach.’

‘You are the one who’s drunk!’ Singh protested as he demonstrated a straight walk.

It was as straight as the jagged skyline of Taj Ganj.

He noticed the bloodshot eyes of his colleague, paused, and stood akimbo. In Chhattisgarh there was a swathe of forest that the locals called ‘unknown jungle’. It was so impenetrable that even the government had not mapped it yet. During an operation a constable was kidnapped by the Maoists and secreted into the jungle. When he was released the Maoists sent a message on his person: every inch of his body was slashed with knives. The deep scars were meant to constantly remind the police not to venture into the unknown.

Since the murder in the mausoleum, the SSP had pursued the case with the zeal of one who had everything to lose. What scars was he carrying?

‘Tell me, SSP, why are you losing sleep over the Taj conspiracy?’

Raghav looked up, suddenly alert, as if someone had shone a torch on his face. His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘Remember Babri Masjid? I was on police duty when it was ravaged in front of my eyes—my orders were not to intervene. Never,’ he shook his head vehemently, ‘never before had I felt that helpless in life. Bas, after that I pledged to follow the path of right, regardless.’

On that he downed his glass of rum. In his mind’s eye Raghav saw a frenzied mob tearing at the pristine marble of the Taj Mahal; gouging out the lapis lazuli, agate and jasper; stabbing the Quranic inscriptions; hammering the cenotaphs. Marble dust clouded the air, sandstone splinters flew into the sky, shards of red, green, blue scattered like confetti.... Was that the fate of the monument of love in an age of hate?

Angrily, he said, ‘All it takes is a few mad men, the destruction of Babri Masjid has shown that.’

Singh nodded his head, his mouth pursed. He wasn’t the only one who felt this case of the Taj conspiracy alluded to the infamous Barbri demolition. The grim thought promptly sucked fumes of tipple out of his head.

Wiping his mouth Raghav asked Singh, ‘What made you such a dusht?’

‘A proper devil, hunh...’ R.P. Singh drawled and patted his bald pate. ‘See this? I shaved my head on my father’s death. After which I decided not to grow hair.’

Raghav was leaning on the table, face in his hand as he listened with interest.

‘My father, General Jai Singh Sisodia, was a decorated war hero. The ‘71 war. Then he was sidelined in the Army because he resisted the corruption he saw around him. He died a disillusioned man. And I vowed to myself that I would race right to the top of my career, whatever it takes. You see,’ Singh rested his palms on the table, ‘the general could fight the enemy across the border but how do you fight the enemy within—the corrupt politician and the self-serving bureaucrat? The home minister and director special ops want the conspirator. But they don’t want to go down the warrens that lead to such moles. So they call in pest control.’