The Perfect Crime — III

Inspector Sushil was sitting at his desk having his morning tea when he heard an old man approaching him with anger and asking him “How could you let him go? He killed my only daughter. How could you let him go? I need an explanation thundered the man as Sushant stood beside him and as Sushil looked towards him, he said “I tried to stop him, but he would not listen” displaying his helplessness.

“Sir, please have a seat” Sushil gestured politely through his hand. As the old man in his checks shirt and trousers took a seat adjusting his glasses. “May I ask who you are and whom you are talking about? He asked him.

“Myself, Vishnu Iyer and I am the bereaved father of Chaitra who was killed by Milind and you let him go knowing that he stabbed her with the knife three times!!” He thundered as Sushil looked at him.

“Sir, please calm down. I know that you are upset thinking we let your daughter’s killer go away but that’s not the case.” “Your daughter had died before he could kill her as per the forensics reports. He was not at home at that moment and we have witnesses and proof that corroborate that”

“Are you trying to say that my daughter killed herself?” he questioned him. “It does look that way but we are not ruling out murder as we could find any evidence of the poison in the house. The watchman of the society also confirmed that he had seen Chaitra going out and then coming back to her home. CCTV footage of the building also confirms it. We checked all the house items for poison and did not find any. In fact when we checked the house, there was no sign of food being prepared”

Tears had filled up in Mr. Iyer’s eyes as he looked towards Sushil and he offered him solace before leaving him outside the police station.

Milind was taking out clothes of Chaitra from her cupboard and putting it in the suitcase as was informed to him by her father to give away all that belonged to her to them.

He noticed the drawers and opened one of them to find it full of accessories to her clothes. There was another drawer wherein he found a dairy.

He found the letters that he had written during their courtship days which took him down the memory lane as he recalled the times of their blissful relationship. As he moved to keep it back in its place, the dairy slipped through his fingers and fell on the ground.

As he picked up the dairy, he noticed the scribbling of mobile number along with date mentioned against it which was a recent one

Chaitra had an unusual habit of writing down dates against anything she wrote so that it gave her a recollection of what it was intended for when she used to forget.

Milind dialed the number but he received the message that the number is out of service. He wondered to whom the number could have belonged and if it could have any connection to her death.

He called up Suhil and informed him about the mobile number scribbled in her dairy. Sushil made a note of it and informed he will get back to him.

Few days later Milind was informed to visit the police station. Sushil greeted him as he approached his desk and he gestured him to have a seat.

“We did a check on the mobile number provided and found that the number was registered under the name of Sumit Sadh but the residential address provided turned out to be fake. So do you know any one named Sumit Sadh? He asked Milind as he looked on.

The name did not ring a bell in his mind. “I don’t know it could be Chaitra’s friend, but I have never heard the name before”. “Not a problem. We are checking with her office, family and friends, I would suggest you also do and if you know her online accounts like Facebook then provide us the login details to check for details”.

“Yes, I will. I don’t remember her login details but the login details are saved in our browser. I’ll message them to you once I am at home”

Milind was looking at his laptop monitor screen as the webpage of the social network loaded. The autofill dropdown list provided him with her login details and as for the password they used to keep common passwords just in case. 

He tried the password and it worked. He went to the friend’s list and put up the name Sumit Sadh but there was no name reflecting. He tried putting the first name and then the last name but the result remained the same.

He tried other sites too but the result remained the same. He decided to get in touch with her friends from her school, college and at office but they were of no help. No one could recollect the name not even her closest friends.

Inspector Sushil also did his bit and was unable to find anyone who knew Sumit Sadh. The case had come to a dead end.

Sitting at his chair, Sushil was sipping his tea when the constable came in and said “Sir, this is Vivek Nair. Dressed in formal trousers with glasses over his eyes he moved forward to shake hands with Sushil and sat down.

Sushil explained Vivek, a computer hacker with skills about the mystery surrounding Chaitra’s death and informed him that they were unable to trace the person online and required his technical expertise to do so. “Would you be able to help if she knew anyone by that name online” asked Sushil.

“Surely we would, provided you have her login details of various social sites. I can run a check on her list of friends and their friends to check if anyone knew him and that way we would be able to know if they were directly linked to her or she came to know him through common friends”

“How long would it take to find out?” “Give me a couple of days, as I will have to do create an application to do the search. You share with me her login ids and I will let you know”.

A few days later, Milind was summoned to the police station. Vivek was already there with Sushil as he joined them in the midst of their conversation.

“Have a seat, Milind. We were discussing about the results that Vivek has filtered out”. “Have we got the killer?” Milind asked anxiously. “Not yet but we have narrowed down the suspects. Vivek, if you could explain”.

“As per the login details that you shared, I created a crawl search that would check for two attributes that in this case would be the first name and the last name. It will check for social network friends and then search if their friends list includes the name. That way we will come to know if she knew anyone by that name through common friends”

Both Vivek and Sushil were trying to read Milind when he asked “Any luck then….” Vivek looked at Sushil who nodded his head and then he said “The search has narrowed down four names that needs to be looked into”. “We need to have them checked. Meanwhile we decided to show you the list first in case if you know any of them” Sushil said looking towards Vivek. Vivek showed Milind the profile and photos on his laptop. “You think, you know any of them?” Sushil asked.

“No. I have not seen them” Milind retorted. Sushil gave a grim look and said “That put us in a tight spot as we were hoping that you will be able to identify at least one of them that would lead us to the killer”

“I would have if I had seen them but never saw them once” Milind replied even as Sushil looked at him taking a note of his response. As Milind looked at Sushil, he looked back moved back on his chair and said “I guess we will have to then question her friends. Thank you for your time. You can leave”

Vivek saw Milind leave and then turned towards Sushil and asked “Do you really think that he is not the killer?” He looked at him and said “In our profession, everyone is a suspect, till we find the culprit”.

“Yes, he used to live here but a few months back he left as we gave the place to rent to another family” said the moustache bald guy who looked at the photo shown by the constable. “Do you know where he stays now?” he asked. “No, he was living with a friend but never gave the address but I do have his number you can check with him. The constable made a note of the mobile number read out by the landlord reading out through his handset.

He called up Sushil “Sir, Constable Shankar here. I have checked with the landlord with regard to the details of Sumit Sadh. He does not live here anymore but he has his number which he has given to me.” “Good job, sms the number to me” Sushil said and hung up the phone.

Sushil looked at the two details of  Sumit Sadh kept on his table and kept spinning the paper weight in his fingers as he wondered who the real culprit would be.

“Can you please let me know why I was asked to come down here?” a guy in spectacles in a blue shirt asks the constable as he sat on one of the side benches inside the police station. “Wait for sir to call you” the constable said and went away.

A short guy with a protruding belly walked in wearing a black t-shirt and jeans. He had a word with the constable nearby and was guided towards the man sitting on the bench. As he approached, the other guy sitting watched him coming over and sits next to him. 

He looked here and there for a while and saw the guy in spectacles next to him. “You are here to file a complaint?” he asked. “No” he replied. “What are you doing then?” he queried as he kept shaking his left leg. “I was summoned here but don’t know why.” “Me too” pat came the reply. “I am Sumit Sadh” sad the guy in spectacles as he move his hand to shake hands. The short gut stared into him and said “my name is also sumit sadh as he slowly moved his hand to meet him mid-way.

Time had come to a standstill as they both wondered if they were there for the same reason. One by one, they both went in Sushil’s cabin and came out after spending quite a time inside.

Constable Shanker stepped inside his cabin and said “Sir, this file of the theft case that you wanted” as he handed over the file. As Sushil looked into the file, Shanker said “Sir, who do you think is the killer among the two?”

“They both say they don’t know her but every killer makes a mistake and we just need to find that. If they did not make any then they will now” replied Sushil as he looked over Shanker.