New Delhi: The famous detective ‘Feluda’ or Pradosh Chandra Mitter was pacing up and down the marbled floor of his drawing room while his assistant ‘Topshe’ was anxiously watching the street outside from a Venetian window.
The detective known for solving such remarkable cases as the theft of a Mughal emperor’s ring, cracking the smuggling of Indian artefacts by an international gang, and the horrendous murder in Gangtok which recently hit the headlines, was waiting for his old friend Chief Inspector PN Mukherjee from Calcutta Police’s detective branch. While Topshe or Tapesh Ranjan was waiting for the duo’s old friend and accomplice - the writer Lal Mohan Ganguly better known by his penname ‘Jatayu’. PN as he is fondly called by all his colleagues at Lalbazar, headquarters of the city’s police force, arrived at almost the same time at 21 Rajani Sen Road, in the city's upmarket Ballygunge area, as did ‘Jatayu’.
“Good Lord! You are here? What a state of affairs! What a horrible way for a young girl to die!” Jatayu exclaimed as he bumped into the moustachioed chief inspector. “Mmm … that’s why I am here really. I need to consult Mr Mitter urgently,” mumbled PN.
A 31-year-old lady doctor doing her post-graduation at the R.G.Kar Medical College was found strangled to death on August 9 in the hospital where she was on duty for 36 long hours. The entire city had since come out in protest against what the newspapers headlined as the second Nirbhaya-style rape in a city billed as a safe metropolis for women. Feluda lit a Charminar cigarette and said, “Of course, I will gladly try and help. Topshe will you tell Banshi, the cook to bring some tea as we listen?” As PN settled down in the ancient Burma teak sofa set, he wiped his brow and began: “Everything in the investigation has gone wrong. Though all the clues are there. We know the girl went in to sleep in a seminar room, a little away from the ward where she was on duty as a junior doctor. The post-mortem shows she was violently attacked … there are some 14 wound signs on her body. Rape by multiple persons cannot be ruled out, though only a forensic test can confirm that, as also whether the man whom we have arrested is the sole rapist.”
“Etho sanghatik case moshai! 14 ta gha and you say there is a sole rapist? (It’s an extraordinary case, my dear inspector, there are 14 wounds on the body and yet you claim there is just one rapist?), asked Jatayu, leaning forward so as not to miss any part of the conversation. The Darjeeling tea arrived and Topshe poured it out in bone china cups. An embarrassed PN looked at Feluda and said, “No, no, we are not saying sole rapist. The problem is that we have CCTV footage of only one man coming out of that zone …”.
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“That’s ok, we can look into the arrests later … tell us about the victim and the crime scene,” said Feluda, tapping cigarette ash into an ivory ashtray. “Well, she was found lying in the seminar room, covered in a coloured blanket with her hand on her head as if she was sleeping. We cordoned off the crime scene of course,” the chief inspector said.
“Good lord! Then why did some labourers come and break the toilet adjacent to the seminar room? Half the clues must have disappeared! Didn’t it occur to you that it was unnatural that a dead girl has been covered with a blanket in a hot and humid city?,” asked Feluda with a frown.
“Etho bhishon gondogol bhai! (This is terrible mismanagement brother),” interrupted Jatayu.
“If it was one of my detective stories, my hero would have started questioning all those present in the building, the moment the body was found.”
An even more embarrassed chief inspector mumbled, “Actually we started all that after the body was cremated!” “What? Why did you cremate the girl? We could have done another round of post-mortem at a different hospital. And why did the probe start after the cremation? Probes start the moment a body is found. Post mortem, cremation all come much later,” Feluda asked as his frown deepened.
By now PN was visibly sweating. In all his 30 years of detective work, he never had to face such grilling. “Well, I really don’t know. I was called in after the body was cremated …,” he admitted. “You should take DNA samples of all people present in that building, and match them with DNA samples found on clothing, blankets and other objects at the crime scene. A girl cannot be killed by one man without other people hearing her screams or struggle. The fact that the body was lying in a staged angle and covered up again suggests many people were involved in tampering with the crime scene,” said Feluda in one breath.
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“Anything else?” Feluda asked dryly, sipping tea. “Her dairy shows she was under stress … but there is a page missing. So we don’t really know if there was something else in it which could give us some clue of what really could have happened,” PN said in a low voice. “Huh! You are hopeless! The least your force should have done is at least read Lalmohan Babu’s detective flicks. Or watched Eken Babu, the detective who appears on Hoichoi OTT channel. How can a force which used to describe itself as the Scotland Yard of the East be so unprofessional?,” asked a visibly upset Feluda.
“Ami hoye ei rahasya solve korbo, nahale goendagiri chere debo (Either I will personally solve this case or I shall give up being a detective),” wowed Feluda as he grimly rose to show an ashen-faced chief detective Mukherjee out of his flat. (With apologies to Satyajit Ray
