Death in Mumbai (5 page)

She called her daughter to complain. ‘Ginni is not taking his calls.'

Separated by only two years, the brother and sister shared a special bond. Maybe he would be persuaded to answer Shikha's call. But as she soon informed her mother, he still wasn't picking up. Shikha next called her cousin who was living with Neeraj in Mumbai. He too had no news. ‘Ginni didn't come back home last night and he's not answering any calls either. He's also not at work, what's with him, yaar?' he complained instead.

Before leaving to collect her children from school, Shikha made another quick call to her mother, her fingers crossed behind her back. ‘Mummy, Neeraj shoot pe hai. His phone is on silent, you can talk to him at night.'

She kept dialling her brother's number, each unanswered call like a tentacle clamping around her heart. Determined not to worry her parents yet, she called her uncle, Satnam Arora. Her mother's brother was a resourceful man. ‘Ginni is not answering his phone, he's not at home, nor at work, and no one in Mumbai seems to know where he is. I haven't yet told mummy, papa.'

Satnam Arora promptly called his business associates in Mumbai and set them to work. ‘Tu worry mat kar, he'll be around somewhere, we'll soon find out.'

That day, May 7, 2008, the Grovers called Neeraj one hundred and thirty times. The phone was answered only once. Somewhere between 4 pm and 5 pm when Shikha called, the call connected after the fourth ring.

‘Ginni! Hello, Ginni, Can you hear me? Ginni, hello!' But all she heard was a muffled sound, and some voices talking far away.

‘Ginni,' she called out urgently. But there was just the fluttering invective of the wind before the phone went dead. This was the call that would eventually unravel the mystery of Neeraj's disappearance.

May 7, around noon, Nishant Lal's home

Nishant Lal was still at home when Maria called to say that Neeraj had left his phone at her house last night. ‘He left at 1.30 am to go to your place,' she said.

‘But he never turned up here,' Nishant told her. ‘In fact I got a call from his office this morning, asking me where he was, he has missed an important meeting.'

‘I don't know about that but his phone is here, and he hasn't called for it. Will you please collect it from me either at Café Coffee Day, or from my home, or if you speak to Neeraj, ask him to?'

So he was not with Maria. For the first time since the call from Neeraj's office, Nishant felt concern. Where the bloody hell was Neeraj? He checked with Deepak Kumar who had also not heard from Neeraj, though the friends spoke every day without fail. ‘Yeh saala ullu banaa raha hai humein. He's up to some juvenile prank,' said Deepak with uncertainty. ‘Let's meet Maria in the evening and find out what games Mr Neeraj Grover is playing.'

May 7, a little after 9 pm, Maria's new apartment

Instead of meeting at Café Coffee Day, Maria had asked Nishant Lal and Deepak Kumar to come over to her flat. ‘When you reach Dheeraj Solitaire call me and I'll come down with the phone.' They thought it distinctly odd that she had not invited them upstairs. They had been pacing the foyer for five minutes when she came down with Neeraj's phone. She was dressed smartly and looked freshly scrubbed.

Before she could say anything Deepak butted in. ‘Come on, Maria, show us your new flat.' As she baulked, taken aback by their directness, Deepak Kumar called for the elevator, his big bulky frame practically herding them into the small lift. Inside the tiny, skeletal flat, bereft of any furnishing, Deepak parodied Sherlock Holmes. He was convinced Neeraj would emerge grinning any second.

‘Hel-llo!' He snuck from the living room into the kitchen, shielding his eyes with his palms in the classic bumbling sleuth pose, before stopping short abruptly at the doorway to the bedroom.

Inside was a bare-chested man fiddling with a laptop. Feeling suddenly foolish Deepak returned to the living room.

‘Hey, Emile,' Maria called out.

Instead of Neeraj, a good-looking stranger with a serious demeanour and sooty eyes emerged. ‘This is Emile Jerome, my fiancé. He's with the navy, and he's just been posted to Mumbai.'

Deepak and Nishant stared at one another and in that split second, both men reached the same decision.

‘Maria, we are going to the police station from here to lodge a missing complaint for Neeraj. His cousin is coming to the police station as well, why don't you also come with us since you saw him last.'

Suddenly she looked distressed and teary-eyed. ‘Sure, I have been so worried myself, I care so much about Neeraj, just as much as you guys do.' Emile, who had been watching the three of them with a distant politeness, stepped forward to comfort her. He and Maria spoke rapidly in Kannada before Emile switched to English. ‘Do you want me to come along as well?' he asked in a perfunctory tone.

May 7, 11.15 pm

When the evening failed to yield Neeraj, Neelam Grover called his flatmate Haresh Sondarva. ‘I had no idea she didn't know,' Haresh was to say later. ‘I told her Neeraj
had not been traceable since morning and that a missing complaint had been lodged. I should have been more careful instead of just blurting that out.'

By the next morning Amarnath Grover and his brother-in-law Satnam Arora were on a JetLite flight from Lucknow to Mumbai.

May 8, Mumbai

Amarnath Grover had not expected to be back in Mumbai so soon. Just two months ago he and Neelam had visited Ginni during Holi. He had entertained them wonderfully, taking them on the set of his mother's favourite serial, introducing them to his friends, and also to his then girlfriend. She was a fashion designer and had studied with Haresh. Ginni told them he wanted to marry her. ‘After which both of you also come and live with me in Mumbai. You've worked long enough,' he'd said, accepting no argument.

So this was how power shifted centre. Their boy had become his own man. That night, talking in whispers as they lay next to each other, the Grovers planned for the future. They'd sell the Kanpur house—Shikha was already well settled and happy with her family—and move to Mumbai. ‘Maybe we can look at a wedding date in December,' suggested Neelam.

On their return to Kanpur, at his wife's insistence, Amarnath Grover had spoken to a buyer for the bungalow. But now Ginni had gone missing, and he was headed to
the police station to locate his child. Power may be deft, but responsibility was leaden-footed; it would always be his.

They went straight from the airport to the Malad police station where he met Neeraj's friends Nishant Lal and Deepak Kumar, and his flatmates Haresh and Sushant, all of whom he had been introduced to during his last trip. A missing complaint had been registered the previous day, the inspector-in-charge told him. He also heard that his son had last been to a flat belonging to one of his friends, a girl called Maria Susairaj. ‘She lives close by,' said Haresh. ‘She had called Neeraj at night to help her shift.'

‘Let's go to her house then,' he said to Neeraj's flatmates. ‘I'd like to meet and talk to her.'

Ginni had never mentioned this girl. When he asked Haresh about her, he mumbled something, clearly uncomfortable. Maria's flat was completely empty. ‘That's strange,' Amarnath Grover thought to himself. ‘Hadn't the girl called Ginni to help in the shifting? If so, where was her stuff?'

There was also evidence of some wet paint, which struck Haresh as odd. Normally tenants always ensured a house was painted before they took possession. But all those thoughts vanished as Maria started to weep. ‘Why are you guys questioning me like this? I am also upset about Neeraj. If you want I'll come with you to the police station again.' Sushant tried to console her. ‘It's okay, Maria, take it easy, we're all a little on the…' He stopped short when a stranger walked into the room and stood behind Maria, holding her shoulder comfortingly.

‘Uh, this is Emile, my fiancé,' she said sniffling.

Neeraj's two flatmates gaped at one another, and after a hurried goodbye, shepherded Amarnath Grover out of the house.

May 9, morning

All of Neeraj's friends—Amarnath Grover hadn't realized just how popular his son was—eddied around him; their youthful energy, optimism, and determination inuring him against the anxiety that threatened to seep into his bones. ‘Uncle, we'll keep up the pressure on the police, don't worry, we won't rest till they find Neeraj,' Deepak Kumar assured him as they got into the autorickshaw to go to Malad police station again for an update. At the police station Amarnath Grover spotted a familiar face. ‘I see you on television every night, I like your style of reporting,' he told IBN7 reporter Nishat Shamsi, and then asked, ‘Are the police telling you something that they're keeping from us?'

‘They'll say something only if they make any progress. I think they're just playing the wait-and-watch game for now, and not doing much to locate Neeraj. Sir, why don't you go to Rakesh Maria instead?' Nishat Shamsi suggested helpfully.

May 9, 5.30 pm

In his imposing office at the Mumbai police headquarters at Crawford Market, the Joint Commissioner and head of
the elite Crime Branch, had just been debriefed on an exasperating murder case that his boys from Unit IX had solved. The unidentified body of a young man had been found inside Joggers' Park at Lokhandwala in North Mumbai. The Crime Branch had traced it back to Chandigarh and found that the deceased, looking to emigrate to Canada, had paid a Mumbai-based travel agent for his services. When he found no progress on his travel papers he had come to Mumbai to demand the money back, only to be murdered by the fraudulent agent.

Rakesh Maria was talking to journalists about the killing and the surge in white-collar crime at his daily media briefing, dubbed ‘The Durbar' by cheeky reporters, for his imperious style of communication, when his aide brought in a chit from a visitor.

In place of the name of the visitor it read: ‘Father of Missing Boy.'

Intrigued, Maria summoned the visitor. ‘There was something moving and dignified about Mr Grover, and as I heard the details of how his son had gone missing, an instinct told me this was not a simple case,' he was to later say in an interview.

Rakesh Maria, who saw the rise and decimation of the Mumbai underworld at close hand, is one of the most high-profile officers in the Mumbai police. He is a tall, burly man of middle age with a brisk, energetic manner and large eyes that miss little. His instinct, renowned in the criminal world, is extraordinary. One such hunch had led him to unravel the Mumbai blasts case in 1993, and is well documented in both Hussain S. Zaidi's book
Black Friday
and Suketu Mehta's
Maximum City
.

On March 12, 1993 a series of blasts had ripped through Mumbai. It was the biggest case in Mumbai's crime history and the police commissioner had asked Rakesh Maria to investigate it. He was then the deputy commissioner of police, Traffic. Two days after the commissioner called him in, his men had defused a bomb found in a scooter abandoned at Dadar railway station.

Maria held a late night meeting with twenty of the best police investigators in town and set them to work. Within five hours he had his first suspect. A Maruti van had been found abandoned with detonators near the Siemens office at Worli. The policemen who found the car had not paid heed to it, thinking the driver had abandoned the vehicle just before the checkpoint. Maria asked for the van to be checked, and to see its papers. The registration papers showed the van belonged to Mushtaq ‘Tiger' Memon. When a team of investigators reached Memon's house in Mahim, they found the house was empty, and the cops found nothing except the key to a Bajaj scooter. As Rakesh Maria stared at that key, something clicked. He remembered the scooter bomb that had been defused at Dadar station two days ago. One of his men was asked to go and try the key on that scooter. It fit—nailing the little-known mastermind of the Mumbai blasts.