‘What did he say?’
‘Only a few weeks before, he had been carrying out one of his operations when he began to suspect some of his confederates of cheating him. So he got the men together at one of his
locations, and using the excuse of a party, began plying them with booze. He drank very little himself, waiting instead for them all to become talli before he questioned them. Though at first they
denied the accusations, they were drunk and did not have their wits about them. Soon they began to make mistakes and the truth started coming out. The chain snatcher discovered they had cheated him
out of nearly twenty thousand rupees, basically half the loot.
‘When he heard this, he stabbed the men in several places, killing them on the spot. But he was not satisfied. Taking rocks, he smashed in their faces. He didn’t want anyone to
recognize them, you see. But still he was not satisfied. He had the bodies burnt to a cinder so that there would not be the smallest possibility of identifying them. But, Rehan saab, God is Great
and when we finally found the remains of the bodies, in one of the pockets of the deceased we came upon an unburnt scrap of paper, on which a mobile phone number had been scrawled. It had gone out
of use, but through the mobile phone company’s records, we were able to trace it to the previous owner. That man turned out to be the uncle of one of the men who had been killed. When we
tracked him down, he told us that his nephew had gone missing the month before. Then, by piecing together his movements – and it wasn’t easy: the gang changed locations several times
– we traced him to the chain snatcher.
‘He was an amazing character, Rehan saab,’ Sharma said with admiration, ‘fearless and ingenious. Gold chains, you see, are very difficult to sell. But this guy hit upon a
system, by which he would pawn the chains to a company, taking a loan in return. It’s the kind of loan, which if you don’t pay back in two years, the company gets ownership of the
chain. This was what he did with each one. For years we had been getting reports of chain snatching incidents and they all originated from this one guy. We even arrested him once and broke up his
group. But in court, a victim, who only days before had helped us identify the man, lost his nerve and said it wasn’t him.’
‘Why?’
‘He’d received threats from the gang. He was a young man, at the beginning of his life; he didn’t want to take a panga with such a big gangster. Can you believe, Rehan saab,
that even in jail, this guy picked up time?’
‘How?’
‘He had taken a mobile phone into the jail with him. Naturally this is not allowed so when one of the other inmates saw him using it, he reported him to the warden. There and then, the man
smashes the phone. But that night, he caught hold of the guy who had reported on him and,’ Sharma explained, his eyes widening, ‘screwed him. He had unnatural sex with him. What did he
care? We could book him under 377, the unnatural sex act, but we couldn’t hang him twice.’
Surinder Sharma had a strange admiration for the criminals he had known. It was as if he saw himself as a small sad impediment in their depraved, but for at least a while, pleasure-filled
existence. And almost like someone confessing to having wasted his life ruining the fun of others, he reported that he had been passed over for promotion for the tenth year running. ‘Even the
position I would have been promoted to was no big deal. I would have had it for a while, then it would have been time to retire me.’
‘What about the sleeping girls?’ I asked abruptly, hoping to change the doleful direction the conversation was taking.
‘Keep girls,’ he replied, and again with relish: ‘keep girls for screwing purposes.’
At that precise moment there was some commotion near the gates of the station. An elderly woman dressed in an off-white kurta and a red dupatta appeared out of a police vehicle. A lock of silver
hair had fallen over her lined and distressed face.
‘She’s to be arrested,’ Surinder Sharma said and chuckled.
‘Why?’
‘She’s been accused by her daughter-in-law of violence and harassment. Then a few days ago the girl drank poison.’
‘Did she die?’
‘No, no, that’s the funny thing. It’s a false case. The daughter-in-law is the one who has been harassing her mother-in-law, forcing her to put their family plot in her name.
Her husband, you see, is an alcoholic and does nothing all day. When the mother-in-law refused, the girl drank poison. But she didn’t drink very much. She drank just enough to be
hospitalized. She was discharged the next day. We had to go because it was a poisoning case, but we knew instantly that it was false.’
‘How did you know it was false?’
‘The girl refused to put blame on anyone except her mother-in-law. When we questioned her, saying that it was strange that no one else should have participated in the harassment, the
answer she gave was that her father-in-law was a heart patient and her sister-in-law an asthma patient.’
‘How should that make any difference?’ I asked in complete confusion.
‘Exactly!’ Surinder Sharma said, now laughing. ‘That’s the point. She was afraid that if they were arrested and something happened to them, then she was in for it. So she
chose her mother-in-law to blame.’
‘But then why is the mother-in-law being arrested?’
‘Procedure, Rehan saab, procedure.’
Robin, who had been standing over the photocopying machine, taking an inexplicably long time, drifted over.
‘Everything ready?’ Surinder Sharma asked.
‘Everything set.’
‘Then drop saab home and I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes or so?’
‘Drop me home? Why? What’s happening?’
Robin, his face hardly visible in the dark, whispered, ‘We’re going to search Santosh’s house.’
‘Would you like to come?’ Surinder Sharma said recklessly.
‘No, no, absolutely not,’ Robin answered for me.
‘Why?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.
‘You know, even if there’s one per cent risk you should not be there.’
‘Risk of what?’
‘Bas, “the police is harassing us,” a riot-shiot breaks out . . .’
I agreed and we said goodbye to Surinder Sharma, who was going inside to change into his uniform.
On the way to the car, I casually asked Robin why the same reasons for not going didn’t apply to him. Though it was not said, I think the idea was that my privilege and English-speaking
background would single me out for some special brand of resentment. But now Robin wondered if he was not so unprivileged himself. And though not a fickle man, he suddenly changed his mind. Not
just this; he asked if I would go back into the police station and tell Surinder Sharma that I had forbidden him from going. What strange and unprofessed fears we were all living with!
I did as Robin asked; went back inside and excused him from having to go. Surinder Sharma, now in olive-green trousers and a white vest, smiled knowingly.
That night Sharma and Vijay Singh paid us a final visit in Steeple Hall. Dheeraj had arrived a few hours before, suntanned and freckled from the hills. My mother had called him
in, assuring him that though her suspicions rested on his brother-in-law, he would be spared if he confessed.
‘I know you know who did it,’ she said.
A smile appeared on his round handsome face. It could at once have been a smile of utter incredulity or malevolence.
‘I wasn’t even here . . .’
‘Don’t try that with me, Dheeraj. I know that the safe was taken well before you left for holiday. And what were you doing calling . . .’
‘Ah, ah, ah, Ma. Stop it,’ I said in English. ‘Remember the surprise element.’
We both thought we saw him pale.
‘I can’t stop the investigation,’ my mother said threateningly, ‘but if you come clean, I promise you there will be no danger.’
Leaving the room, he said that he more than anyone wanted to make sure the thief was caught. But this of course was not enough.
Then security experts, a retired colonel and a silent Sikh gentleman, arrived. They brought with them three bouncers in dark-blue shirts and trousers, plus three armed guards. They filled my
mother with new fears and futilities.
‘Your security was definitely in on it, madam. Otherwise, it is inconceivable that they should not have made their rounds on the night of the theft.’ Then breaking off, they said the
worst thing of all: ‘The problem is that, now that the police know the size of the heist, even if they catch the guys, it will only be so that they can get the loot for themselves and
they’ll give the thieves a cut to keep them quiet.’
This last bit of information brought home the full reality of the charade the investigation had been: a rite of mutual degradation, where evil – as with the Sanskrit word for it –
was one with futility.
‘But rest assured,’ the security experts continued, ‘I have brought, for your peace of mind, three guards and three bouncers who will take rounds all night till this thing is
resolved. No one will enter or leave the premises without their permission. I should say, however, that the bouncers are extraneous. They are there only for your peace of mind. Because though they
look fearsome, they are unarmed and can stand no chance against armed robbers.’
Soon after they had gone, Vijay Singh and Sharma arrived. My mother called them into the drawing room and they came in diffidently. I could see she was trying to sweeten them into doing
something about the robbery, telling them that she was a lawyer and wanted to know about their lives.
‘Our lives,’ Vijay Singh said, ‘are miserable. Ask Sharma. I haven’t been home to see my wife for three days. We work fourteen hours without a break. I’m not saying
I don’t want to work, but it should be proportionate.’
‘It’s a terrible job,’ Sharma affirmed, ‘the hours are terrible. We feel so stretched.’
Having struck upon a word he liked, Vijay Singh said again, ‘Proportionate. It needs to be proportionate.’
For some moments they spoke of police reform, then gently, my mother steered the conversation toward the case.
‘Ninety-nine per cent inside job, ma’am.’
My mother looked grave.
‘But let’s see,’ Sharma said, ‘we’ll haul in a few people. That fellow Santosh is still with us. Tonight you’re sending someone else across.’
‘Yes, Dheeraj,’ I said.
‘Good. Perhaps something will come out. I see that you have new security.’
‘Yes,’ I said, following my mother’s lead, ‘times are such that we now have security to watch our security.’
The men laughed. And then to my great surprise Vijay Singh asked my mother, as if this were a Sunday night ritual between them, if she might lend him something to read.
‘Happily,’ she said, feeling perhaps this would help our cause, ‘Hindi or English?’
‘English,’ the policeman replied.
‘Fiction or non-fiction?’
‘Something about history or politics perhaps.’
My mother rose and returned a few minutes later with a copy of
An Area of Darkness
.
Before leaving, Sharma, clearly still thinking of our earlier conversation, said, ‘Yes, a terrible job. Everyone comes out tainted.’
The next day Santosh had been too badly beaten to come to work. Dheeraj, with only one bad night behind him, came in though, his suntanned face red and washed with tears. He
had no idea who took this safe. The police had slapped him and abused him and kept him there all night. Please; he wanted to be spared, he had nothing to do with all this business. You can ask
Kalyan; I came back last night and had a fight with him; I said if you know anything please tell madam. I can’t go in there again.’
‘Then what were you doing speaking to Amit for fifteen minutes?’ I intervened.
‘There was a problem with the Internet. You told me to get it fixed. I knew he knew how to fix it so I called him.’
‘For fifteen minutes you spoke about the Internet?’
‘No,’ he said and suddenly became sheepish. ‘There was something else.’
‘What?’ my mother and I said in one voice.
‘He’d just been for a pilgrimage to Vaishnodevi and I wanted to know what it was like. We spoke about that.’
I felt what last strength I had drain from me. I couldn’t take any more of these details, alongside these casual brutalities. I saw my mother’s face fill with grief. As a last hope
that he might be lying, I glanced quickly at the copy of the Airtel statement. In the column listing the service provider, it said next to the fifteen minute call, Airtel–J&K. Jammu and
Kashmir, the state where Vaishnodevi was.
And seeing him now in this condition, we were like people who, speaking a foreign language, are surprised to find the words having their effect on people to whom they are not foreign. Had our
permitting the police to thrash him really resulted in him being thrashed? There would be no more, my mother assured him. Let them do what they like, but Dheeraj would not be beaten any more. We
were sure of his innocence. Kalyan, on the other hand, was seeming guiltier than ever.
And yet, neither my mother nor I was able to remain in the house while the thrashings continued. We left Steeple Hall together the following day. She went back to Calcutta and I to the Sethia
company bungalow in town.
Before leaving, Kalyan approached me to say that he wanted to speak to me about something, but preferred to do it in town. He came a few days later. With Dheeraj’s
beating curtailed, the police had come full circle to him. He had his second appointment with them that night.
He was, as he had been on that first morning, when he reported the robbery, his eyes clear and black, as if kohled, his long-nailed hands hanging by his side. He had no definite idea who had
done it, but he had recently developed some suspicions. Did I know that Narender, the electrician, was in a legal case in his village? And he had had to shell out some four or five lakhs in
damages? Now where would someone like him get that kind of money? Coming home after his thrashing the night before, Kalyan said someone had driven past him on a bike/ scooter, and slapping him on
the back of the head, said, ‘Blab and you’re dead.’
Poor Kalyan, I thought. There were no depths to his stupidity after all; he was simply stupid. And at the end of this ten-day trauma, he had learnt very crudely to lie. The information about
Narender was old and known to everyone. He told me one story about the threat made to him and another to the police. This was all the deceit that had forced its way out of him after his ordeal.
This was the best he could do as far as survival instincts went. I dismissed him and turned my gaze back to the television where – of far greater interest to me than Kalyan’s pathetic
story – the London bombers’ friends and relations were being interviewed. It was the last time I saw him.