Murder in Bollywood (18 page)

Rohan awoke at seven the following morning and stretched his legs. With the help of the night nurse, who was sitting close by, he got out of bed rather gingerly and hobbled to the bathroom to freshen up. Thirty minutes later he was back outside, just in time for his breakfast of steaming hot idlis and upma, served with spicy sambar and cool coconut chutney, all which he tucked into without a second invitation. In a particularly good mood was Rohan that morning, because in just a few hours he was to be discharged from the hospital, leaving him free to return to the comfort and luxury of his own home, which was something he had craved ever since being admitted a few days ago. Rohan then reached for the remote lying by his bedside and turned on the television for a bit of aimless channel surfing, and that's when a piece of breaking news on a popular news channel caught his eye and shook the very earth below his feet. ‘Tragedy in Karjat. Renowned doctor couple Bimal and Rushali Seth killed in a car crash during a high-speed police chase,' the special news report claimed. And along with those words were the images of a car completely smashed, lying at the bottom of a cliff, with a team of police officers extracting a couple of mangled, unrecognizable corpses from its remains. Rohan sat rooted to his bed, staring at that broadcast with a blank, expressionless face, then held his head and closed his eyes; he then requested the nurse in attendance to leave him alone for the next few minutes. Barely a few seconds after the nurse had left the room, Rohan heard a knock at the door, and as he inquired who it was, the door opened slowly to reveal Inspector Hoshiyar Khan standing in front of him, wearing his trademark smile and carrying a bouquet of flowers.

‘Oh, it's you, Inspector saheb! Please come in,' Rohan said, rather sombrely.

‘It seems you've heard the news,' Hoshiyar remarked, glancing at the television. He placed the flowers on a table nearby and then sat down on the chair by Rohan's bedside.

‘I just got to know when I turned on the television moments ago. What happened?' Rohan was almost inaudible.

‘We tracked down the doctor couple to an isolated farmhouse in Karjat last night. I guess they saw us coming from afar, but instead of talking to us, they got into their car and made a break for it, so needless to say, we gave chase. About fifteen minutes later, as both cars hit a steep, winding road, at breakneck speed, Dr Bimal, who was at the wheel of his Audi, lost control and his car went over the cliff and plummeted hundreds of feet below, killing him and his wife instantly. With their death, the Nikhil and Mallika murder case, along with the murder investigation of Mule and Tiwari, is now closed, as doctors Bimal and Rushali were the murderers, apart from being the ones who attacked you,' Hoshiyar revealed.

‘What! But why?' Rohan exclaimed in disbelief.

‘That we'll never know. You see, we were certain of their guilt, that's why we went to bring them in for questioning. But before we could speak to them and get to know the whole story, they made a run for it and got themselves killed,' Hoshiyar explained.

‘You mean, that's it? It's over?' Rohan asked.

‘Yes, Rohan. It's over,' Hoshiyar said.

Rohan let out a huge sigh and looked away, in the direction of the window overlooking the sea. A few moments later, he turned towards Hoshiyar once more. ‘You mean, I can get on with my life now?' he asked.

‘You are free to do whatever you want.' Hoshiyar smiled.

‘Whatever I want,' Rohan repeated, turning silent.

‘And what exactly do you want to do in life? Have you given it a thought?' Hoshiyar asked.

‘I don't know. I guess maybe one day, I, too, will be a great film-maker like Nikhil Kapoor,' Rohan smiled and said.

‘That's a wonderful idea. And if you ever need a great story for your first film, you must come to me,' Hoshiyar suggested playfully.

‘Oh my God! I didn't know you were also a writer, Inspector saheb,' Rohan remarked, surprised.

‘Well, it's something I do in my spare time, but only thrillers and murder mysteries, mind you, as my cop brain cannot come up with anything else. In fact, I've just finished working on a new story. I'd love to narrate it to you sometime,' Hoshiyar said.

‘Well, I've got a couple of hours to kill until I am discharged, so how about now?' Rohan suggested.

‘Perfect,' Hoshiyar said excitedly, then cleared his throat and began his story.

‘Many years ago, in the village of Padiabeda in Haryana, there were two teenagers named Sakshi and Ravindra who fell in love, and when the girl got pregnant, they panicked and decided to run away together, knowing fully well that if word of their union got out, their respective families would kill them and their unborn child, for although they weren't related by blood, in the eyes of their people, a man and a woman from the same village were considered brother and sister, therefore any romantic liaison between them was strictly forbidden. Sakshi and Ravindra, however, managed to escape and made their way to Goa, where the two of them got married, just before Sakshi gave birth to their son, who they named Manjeet. Things were going very well for the three of them. Ravindra drove a taxi, and managed to earn enough to keep his wife and child comfortable, as both husband and wife were simple people with simple needs. In fact, Sakshi believed that she was the luckiest woman in the world, because her husband simply doted on her in spite of her being ugly. She was a very large girl, you see, and even when she was growing up in her village, she was the butt of jokes and ridicule, hence she had got it in her head that she was too unattractive to be adored by any man. But Ravindra would insist that she was as beautiful as a queen, and one day the whole world would see how beautiful she really was. Then, on the 31st of December 1997, just a couple of hours before the New Year, Ravindra took his wife and one-year-old son for a drive in his taxi, and as the three of them drove along an empty stretch of road, they found themselves besieged by a group of rich kids racing against each other in their fancy cars, when suddenly one of the racers lost control of her BMW and, before Ravindra could react in any way, she rammed into his taxi with blinding speed, sending both cars cartwheeling more than a hundred feet to the opposite side of the road. By the time passers-by rushed the injured to the nearby King Edward Hospital, Chandni, the driver of the BMW, was already dead, while Sakshi and Ravindra were critical and battling for life, with the latter having sustained several head injuries, and the former rendered completely blind on account of the glass shards from the shattered windshield entering her eyes. But miraculously, Manjeet was left virtually unscratched, because he was flung out of the car on impact and only sustained minor cuts and bruises. Soon, the parents of Chandni, a doctor couple by the name of Bimal and Rushali Seth, rushed over to the hospital and were left completely devastated by the loss of their only child. But even in their grief, they had the presence of mind to do the right thing. So, Chandni's beautiful hazel eyes were donated to Sakshi, and while she made a full recovery, Ravindra's injuries were too severe to heal, and although he survived, the doctors said that he would remain a vegetable for as long as he lived. In the meantime, since Sakshi had their daughter's eyes, the Seths began to consider her their only connection to their dear, departed child, which was understandable, as a part of Chandni now lived through Sakshi. So they took Sakshi under their wing, and even took the responsibility of looking after Ravindra and Manjeet, because somewhere in their hearts they felt guilty since their late daughter was responsible for their misery. But if Sakshi was to have a bright future, like the one they had had in mind for their own daughter, it was imperative that all traces of her past life be buried and she be made to start afresh. So Dr Bimal used his considerable influence and had the King Edward Hospital release a false statement that all the three members of the Phogat family, namely Ravindra, Sakshi and Manjeet, had died in that accident. The couple then got the three of them to Mumbai, where they began to look after Sakshi like their own daughter and Manjeet as the grandchild they would've had, while Ravindra was shifted to the quiet and discreet Saint Mary's Hospital near Karjat to be looked after for all time. Meanwhile, back in Mumbai, the doctor couple began to groom Sakshi for all the great things Chandni had wanted to achieve in life. And the greatest prize in their late daughter's view was Bollywood superstardom, which both Bimal and Rushali believed was now Sakshi's destiny, for deep down below all those layers of ungainly weight, they could see a great beauty waiting to emerge. And Sakshi did not disappoint, for in just a couple of years, she whittled down to less than half her size, and with a little help from Dr Bimal, one of the finest cosmetic surgeons in the country, all traces of her ever being obese, along with any scars from that horrific car crash, were neatly wiped out, rendering the lady unrecognizable from before, and lo and behold, the ethereal Mallika was born. In the wake of that transformation came an overwhelming confidence, along with a clear understanding of her ability and destiny, after which Mallika entered and won the Miss India contest. That victory proved to be her stepping stone into Bollywood, and the moment she entered its world of glitz and glamour, Mallika became a rage and there was no looking back. With stardom and money, everything around her changed, but the one thing that didn't was Mallika herself, who deep down in her heart remained the same old Sakshi, very much in love with her husband, who she'd visit at Saint Mary's every single week, and spend hours by his side, talking and laughing all to herself, because ever since that accident, Ravindra was in no condition to respond. Then one day, right out of the blue, during the filming of her third film, Mallika inexplicably fell in love. The man in question was the debutant director Nikhil Kapoor, who had harboured the same feelings for his film's leading lady ever since he had set his eyes on her, and soon their attraction turned to such a deep love that they decided to throw caution to the wind and get married at the earliest, irrespective of the effect it might have on their careers. It was here that Mallika saw the opportunity to once again have a normal family, which was something that fate had cruelly taken away from her all those years ago, and in order to achieve this goal, she came up with a cunning plan. The film that Nikhil was directing, titled
Pyaar Kar Ke Dekho
, required a small child for a pivotal role, so Mallika got Manjeet into the picture, who was eight years old by then, passing him off as some child she had seen near the Haji Ali signal, even as she changed his name to Rohan. On the basis of her recommendation, Nikhil instantly cast little Rohan in his film, who had been coached by his mother to go along with her charade, which finally culminated in Mallika brainwashing her soon-to-be husband into adopting the eight-year-old boy from his pavement-dweller parents, who, in reality, were just a couple of small-time actors playing a part, while the entire adoption process, cent per cent fake with phony papers, was handled by Dr Rushali herself, through her NGO Bal Kalyan. For the next ten years, her deception was a success and the three of them were a happy family. But then, one day, Nikhil got suspicious that something wasn't right. Perhaps what triggered his doubt was the fact that even after all those years of marriage, Mallika didn't want a child. Or, maybe, her disappearing for a day every week on some pretext or the other began to strike him as odd after ten long years. So he followed her one day, quietly and discreetly, all the way to Saint Mary's, where he witnessed with his own eyes Mallika, Rohan and Ravindra, the real family of three. And in that moment, Nikhil realized that Rohan was Mallika's own flesh and blood, while the invalid who sat drooling in front of him as if half asleep was Mallika's own husband and he, Bollywood's biggest film director, was nothing but a fool, their very own private jester for ten full years. He felt betrayed. It filled him with a terrifying amount of rage. Probably the same amount of anger that he had felt when he burnt down the orphanage known as Green Manor as a sixteen-year-old boy, solely to kill its warden Monty Singh, a cruel and sadistic man. Loyalty is everything, disloyalty is death, Nikhil always said. No doubt it was the same sense of loyalty that prompted him to rescue his closest friends from Green Manor that night, even as he left everyone else to perish in its flames. But for the traitor Mallika, his love had turned to hate, for in his book, she had committed the greatest crime through her deception and betrayal, the punishment for which was just one thing: death. Nikhil then devised a plan that involved mixing Dreamer's Dust with Mallika's cocaine, to which he had easy access, knowing fully well what the outcome would be of that concoction. He ordered the Dreamer's Dust off the Internet using TOR so that there was no proof of purchase. However, in spite of all his planning and calculation, Nikhil made one mistake. He got drunk and as per his usual habit, couldn't hold his tongue. This costly slip took place at an after-party card game, in the presence of eight special guests, for that's when Nikhil proudly proclaimed, ‘Someone at this table has killed before and someone at this table will kill again. I know the killer by name and I know the killer by face.' He was, in fact, referring to himself, with regard to what he did at Green Manor, and in the same breath, he was also referring to Mallika's impending doom, but neither of his insinuations his childhood friends were able to understand. But Bimal and Rushali did, and they warned Mallika of Nikhil's terrifying past, for in all those years they had had enough time to realize that Nikhil was the one responsible for the carnage at Green Manor. But Mallika did not believe a word of what they told her, for on her part, she had taken every precaution to ensure that Nikhil never found out about Ravindra, or about Rohan being her own son. Moreover, in all these years, Nikhil had never exhibited even a hint of violence, so the idea of him being a mass murderer was preposterous. However, if he had found out about Saint Mary's somehow, Mallika insisted there was nothing to worry about, for she was more than capable of handling her husband. But Rohan overheard this entire conversation, and although his mother was blinded by love, and therefore unable to see imminent danger, he suffered from no such malady; he instantly realized that the doctor couple had spoken the truth, and his foster father, who he was truly fond of, had suddenly become a threat to his mother's life; so the only way to save the person he loved the most was to eliminate that threat altogether, meaning Nikhil Kapoor had to die. So Rohan rigged the light switch inside Gulistan Studio's Stage 7, knowing fully well that Nikhil, who was writing his script in that place, had a habit of tinkering with the light switch, in spite of being warned about the archaic wiring being completely frayed. So if he was found electrocuted by that very switch, his death would appear to be an accident, and not murder. But alas, both Nikhil and Rohan chose the night of the fifteenth of December to execute their plans. While Nikhil had spiked Mallika's cocaine with Dreamer's Dust a little while before she left for The Crown Palace Hotel, Rohan had tampered with the light switch inside Stage 7 on that very night. That's the reason why, instead of tinkering with the light switch, Nikhil sat motionless in his chair inside Stage 7 on the night of December the fifteenth, which forced Rohan to improvise. He had just set into motion his wife's execution, you see, and was trying to come to terms with that heartbreaking act. It was only after Nikhil's and Mallika's death that Rohan probably conducted a thorough search of Nikhil's room and that's when he found the Dreamer's Dust and put two and two together. Just when he thought it was all over, Tiwari arrived into the picture, demanding a proper investigation into Nikhil's death and even discreetly hired a detective to do the same. Rohan, no doubt, had had his eye on Tiwari ever since he got to know of his outburst at Ishan's Lonavla farmhouse, so the moment his hired detective began to unravel Nikhil's and Mallika's past, which would have eventually turned the spotlight on to Rohan, the nineteen-year-old tracked him down to Shimla and eliminated him. After this, he eliminated Tiwari, the man who had hired Mule, trying to pass his murder off as an accident. Then he posted a misleading letter to the SCS, after which he faked an attack on himself. But how did young Rohan prevent Bimal and Rushali, who obviously knew he was the killer all along, from handing him over to the police? Do you have any ideas, Rohan? Or, would you rather I call you Manjeet?' Hoshiyar asked the cold-blooded killer sitting in front of him.