The Secret Weapon

Here’s The Secret Weapon, for today. I wrote this story for a course, I was doing in the 1990s.

The Secret Weapon

Inspector Kartik Srinivasan arrived with his crew to the Srinagar slum area in Saki Naka, Andheri, Mumbai. The man was lying on the stairway face down. His right arm was stretched out above him. His left arm was pulled back behind him. His skull was broken from behind and the brain was lying nearby! The fingers were missing from both the hands. The flesh from within his right calf was exposed below the Bermuda shorts, he was wearing. All in all, it was a gruesome sight!

After the photographer had done his job and the body was sent for post-mortem. Kartik started looking around, wearing his gloves. He saw a pair of slippers nearby, which he picked up, gingerly and asked one of the constables to save them in an evidence bag. He then started asking questions. Everybody was there to watch the fun rather than help the police. By then, wailing sounds started emanating from the dead man’s house. Kartik was walking toward the house when his eyes detected something in an open drain nearby.

It was morning and the women in the slum area had been busy collecting water from the single tap when the dead body was discovered. All the water collection exercise had cleared the water. There was a piece of metal lying in the clear water. Kartik put his gloved hand into it and picked up a walking stick. Experience told him that it was a gupti. When he opened it, there were bloodstains on the knife!

To be continued…