The Courier Boy

He almost bumped into Radha Srinivasan when she was returning from the beauty spa, where she had taken some beauty services for the month. She was immediately suspicious of the man. The man, who was a courier boy, was hurrying out of her building. Did she see some drops of red on his white shirt?
Otherwise staying in a hostel, Radha’s parents being in town, she was staying with them in their home during that time. The moment she saw the man, her crime reporter instincts awakened and she asked him what had happened. He just shook his head and went off hurriedly. Radha realized where he had been before coming out of the building. It was the ground floor flat of her friend, Rekha, who worked at the spa, she was returning from.
“Only her mother would be there at this time,” she said to herself and ran to flat, when she discovered the elderly lady, in the hall laying in a small pool of blood. She had a large wound in her belly. There was a pair of scissors nearby covered in blood laying nearby. Radha immediately called her brother Kartik, who was a senior police officer.
Within minutes an ambulance and right behind it, Kartik, in his motorbike, arrived. The woman was alive and was taken away to the nearest hospital. Radha called her friend, who also came to her home, so that both the girls left for the hospital together in Radha’s scooty. Kartik joined them there. Soon the treatment helped Rekha’s mother and she became stable, though she had not gained consciousness.
Kartik took his sister to the police artist in his police station, so that she could describe the courier boy and he could make a sketch. When he was done, the brother and sister went to the particular courier office, where she knew the man was employed to enquire about him.
At the office, they got to know that the courier boy, Raju, had been thrown out for fraud!
Kartik immediately informed his superior ACP Kiran Kaur and she ordered a red alert for the man.
The man was caught, when he was about to board a train in an attempt to leave the city at Dadar Railway Station. Under pressure he told the police that he was given Rs. 50000/- to kill the woman by someone. He wouldn’t say who. But the police increased the strength of his treatment and he told them more about the other man. He said that he had told him if he would tell the police about the man, he would kill him. He also said that he did not know the person’s name. The police artist again helped them to prepare the sketch of the other man. They took Raju’s photo to show Rekha and her mother.
When the sketch was shown to Rekha, she did not recognize him. Thus the police had to send the sketch to all the police stations in Mumbai to spread the dragnet. They even posted his picture online and published snippets about him in the newspapers. The broadcast on the different TV channels also did not help.
Kartik then thought maybe the man was lying about the man behind the murder attempt. He once again visited the man in the lockup and talked to him. This time the police officer assured him that Raju would be shielded from the other man. This time the courier boy agreed to give the right description to the police artist to make the correct sketch of the other man.
It was first shown to Radha, who said that she knew the man. He lived in their building. “He is a kind of bully. But, why would he try to kill Rekha’s mother?” Radha asked.
“That question can only be answered by Rekha and her mother,” Kartik replied. “Find out where she is now and let’s go and ask her. In the meantime, I will inform ACP Ma’am regarding the man.”
The ACP told Kartik to hold on and not to take any decision regarding the man as yet. She had decided to send a plainclothes man to keep an eye on the man. At the same time, she issued another red alert for this man now.
When the brother and sister met Rekha to show the picture of the courier boy, she said that she would order many products online and most of the time that was the man who would come to deliver them.
Rekha was shown the other man’s sketch and she told them that he had been to her unisex spa a couple of times and had misbehaved with her. The spa was a decent outfit and the issue had been taken to the police.
“We are not really sure if that is our man, Rekha. But every lead has to be investigated,” Kartik told her.
Just then the plainclothesman called Kartik and ACP Ma’am in a conference call and told them that the man did not seem to be at home. ACP Ma’am immediately told Kartik to go find if any member of the family was present at there.
The girls and Kartik were just in time to catch the man’s wife leaving the flat hurriedly. The woman was taken to ACP Ma’am, who used her own tactics to get her to talk. The man was caught waiting for his wife at the domestic airport to leave the city together.
Kartik had a tough time to break him and make him talk. But when he started speaking, he revealed everything. He had an eye on all the young girls in the building. When he got to know that Rekha worked in a beauty spa, he thought that it was a sleazy joint and started touching her inappropriately when he had visited the place.
When it was made an issue and they went to the police, he decided to take a revenge on her. With her mother, her only relative alive out of the way, he would easily molest her sexually in the privacy of her home and thus nobody would know. Or so he thought. That is why he had hired the ex-courier boy to murder the mother.
When Rekha’s mother came to, she told the police that the courier boy had come to deliver a packet and had asked for some water. Later they found that the packet contained only packing materials and nothing else.
With the case solved, Radha reported the incident in her newspaper, The True Story, with a couple of suggestions from the ACP. She had said that whenever courier boys ask for water, either you should not leave the door open while getting the same or tell them to go to the security guard instead for the water. And another very important thing was everybody needs to have a proper safety door with the main door.
Both the unconnected incidents really happened. The Thane police told us about the courier boy matter and told us to create awareness via our website. We decided to give it a fictional twist to make it interesting. We hope not only the story is interesting, but also people will be careful at least from now on.