Shiv had been transferred and a new inspector, Dev was appointed to take charge of the region. The team was like a family to Shiv and the parting was difficult. Transfers, injuries and deaths were frequent happenings in the lives of policemen and this was one such. However the adaptation to Dev’s system was quick as his ideology and working style were similar to Shiv’s.
Dev had divided his team into several sub teams each having a clearly delineated set of goals. Dev always cleared the latest set of files first and prioritized violent crimes. In a matter of few months his unit had solved a good number of cases and even reduced the crime rate. Dev’s work quickly gained recognition and his request for more officers was immediately approved by the commissioner which was quite a deal for an inspector. Equipped with a larger team, Dev was now in charge of two regions.
From the day Dev arrived, he had permanently moved his desk out of the well furnished inspector cabin and sat along with the constables in the adjoining room. However one evening he had received a call from the commissioner to contact him over video conference that night. This facility was only available in his original room and so he had managed to get it cleaned. The helper said that they had found a case file in his room and Dev asked him to keep it in the unsolved pile. It was quite unusual for the Commissioner of a city to call for a video conference personally with an inspector that too without asking him to make ready details about any particular case. The commissioner had also declined the inspector’s offer to meet him personally at his office. Dev had been contemplating for an hour and could come up with no logical explanation. Dev being a typical workaholic had become disgusted with himself for having let an hour of time flow into nothingness. At this point the only preparation feasible was to look through the set of solved and unsolved cases and come up with a report to present.
After segregating the files, a childish glee lit up Dev’s face on seeing the mountainous solved pile. However he had decided to look through the smaller pile first. As he looked closely through them he noticed that most of these cases were money cheating ones. Further most of these complaints had been recorded during Shiv’s tenure. Sixteen straight cases of the same kind was surely beyond coincidence. It was surprising that such a prominent pattern had missed Shiv’s attention. The culprits in the cases were firms that had promised large loans, taken an advance as collateral and made away. Dev asked his team to stay back late that night so that they could discuss the course of action. However, the officers did not agree with him as they had an ‘All constables’ meet at the commissioner’s place that evening. Dev was extremely confident that the cases were related and that looking at the similarities would help accelerate the journey towards the common source.
Dev looked through the list of officers who were on duty during Shiv’s reign and had retired soon after. He immediately made his way to Raj’s home. Raj said that he had only worked on the one night operation with Shiv and had lost his leg then. Dev being frank told Raj that Shiv had not informed him about his shooting and that no inquiry was conducted. On hearing this Raj’s face grew red with anger, then turned pale and emotionless and finally he sunk back in his chair deeply disappointed. Dev could understand the emotion of being betrayed by the department as it was one that had pricked him time and again and diverted his mind deep down the lane of self reflection. It was an emotion that had made him realize that everything was not black and white.
Out of pity, Dev asked Raj to describe the happenings on the night of the incident. After hearing the young man out for a while, Dev realized that he was getting late and had to talk to him about the money cheating cases, and told him that the case was closed as a suicide. Raj asked Dev if he knew the reason behind the suicide and whether it was documented. Dev said he didn’t exactly look through. Raj’s eyes seemed to nearly pop out of their sockets on hearing that the officers had turned a blind eye to so many dimensions of the case. “There had clearly been a struggle and there were blood marks at the site, I had seen them”, he exclaimed.
Were these mistakes genuine? Why were so many cases of the same kind unsolved? Could this be the questions that Dev could expect tonight when the commissioner calls?
Read on to last episode of The inversion to sleep question free!
