Episode 35
Biting a big chunk of the cake, Ritesh said,
"Yes Sir, I completely agree with Ma'am! This is a global agency, Sir. They have all the cutting age technologies, all the manpower and all the resources in the world to nab the criminals. Give them some time Sir, they will click."
That's what Suresh had been consoling himself for the last few days. Still, he said,
"That may be right Ritesh, but when will they click, man? The lives of my friend and his wife are in great danger. Every second is precious, and they have taken 7 long days! Who knows whether those two poor chaps are still alive or not!"
Maya was going to say something, but suddenly the ringtone "Maghuba Maghuba" on Suresh's phone rang. For the last seven days, every time the ringtone rang, Suresh expected that it was from Somnath. But, he was so disappointed that this time he had no expectations. So, he thought it must have been some advertisement call. Reluctantly, he looked at his iPhone. Indeed, it was not a number that was saved in his contact list. Some unknown person was calling him. Very reluctantly, he received the phone.
"Hello, Mr Suresh! I am Roy. I am the head of the eastern region of the Ravenous Eagles in India."
Suresh was slightly perplexed. He got off from his couch, and said,
"Yes, I am Suresh!"
"You have been in contact with Somnath, the head of southern zone of this organisation in India so far. But, now onwards, I shall be calling you, because the crime is happening under my jurisdiction." Roy paused for a moment. But, Suresh was too curious to ask,
"That means you have traced them?"
He said that quite loudly, as passions were running high inside him. Hearing that Maya and Ritesh came closer to Suresh with curious face.
"Of course Sir. But, that was not an easy task to locate them. This frigging criminal agency does not leave any evidence. Most of their staff members are masked. Their web hosting technology in the dark net was almost impossible to penetrate. The best techies in the world tried their best in vain."
Roy again paused for a second. Then he continued,
"Our ground workers in India have been working day and night to find where such kind of activities are taking place. They have knocked every police station and the every informer in the suspected areas. But, they couldn't find any lead."
Roy again paused. Suresh was getting anxious, so he shot,
"Then how did you find their location?"
"Pure luck Sir, pure luck! A guy of that criminal agency got overconfident, and took off his mask for quite long time. You know what? Our face recognition software is the bestest in the world. It recognised him as Ranjan Sen, who graduated from IIT Chennai in 2000. He hailed from Burdwan district in West Benngal. When we enquired about his whereabouts, we were taken for a surprise.
His father said that he had perished long ago in an accident. We are not fools. We enquired about the so-called accident, which happened 10 years ago. Our investigation team came to the conclusion that the accident was fake. So, we tried for couple of days to find the truth.
Fortunately, Ranjan's younger brother works as a guard of an ATM of a private bank. From our experience, we knew that he was the most vulnerable member of the family. So, we pampered him. Fortunately, he was too poor to negate the lure of 5 lakh rupees. When we paid him that amount and treated him with best of whiskies, he sang like a canary."
"Please tell us where are they, and how are you going to rescue them?" Suresh was anxious.
"Yes Sir, I am coming to the point. From his call records, we found that Ranjan is on the outskirts of Barrackpore, which is in North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. We have found that there is a huge property of at least 20 acres surrounded by a 10 feet wall. This property belongs to a non-Bengali businessman, Mr Lakhotia. There are two armed-guards who patrol the front gate. There are three more gates, but they are permanently closed. The stone-faced Gurkha guards don't talk to anyone. They don't let anyone enter the house.
We have gathered information that a man servant of Mr Lakhotia comes out of the gate twice in week for marketing. He does not mingle with anyone. But, he buys huge amount of food items. When we enquired about Mr Lakhotia, we came to know that he has 5 members in his family. If we add 5 attendants, we get 10. But, the amount of food he purchases has to be for at least 50 people.
When we enquired about Mr Lakhotia, we came to know that he is a man of 50 years age having his mother, wife, a son and a daughter-in-law. But, no one has communicated with them for the last 10 years. Mr Lakhotia's relatives told us that he cut off relationships with them. He had a business of exports and imports. But, he had sold it to someone ten years ago. This had made us come to the conclusion that this is the property where lies the key to the riddle.
After pinpointing our target location, we thought it would be very easy for us to find evidence against them. We don't have our own satellite, but we have contracts with a private organisation of a very powerful country. They have been providing us with very high-resolution pictures, and we have solved many complicated cases with the help of these images.
"Have you rescued them?" Suresh was impatient. He had no intention of listening to the working method of the organisation at that moment, as his main concern was rescuing the abducted Rajan couple.
"No, Sir! There is a problem."
"Problem! What problem?"
"We haven't been able to get any actionable proof, Sir. The private satellite could get pictures of only one day. There was not much in them. We saw a few foreigners working in the fields and in the garden. They are probably held as slaves. But, we couldn't see the Rajan couple.
But from the next day, the private satellite agency reported us, an unprecedented incident happened. They could not get any clear picture then onwards. It appeared to them that the sky surrounding the property was covered with thick smog. But, they could get clear pictures outside the property."
"What are you saying? How is it possible?"
"We don't know Sir! The matter is under investigation by them. But, what happened at night was more inexplicable. When they were snooping at night, there was no smog. The picture was clear, but there was no one outside. Lights were on on many floors. The satellite was trying to get pictures inside the house. Unfortunately, this house has not many windows. The handful of windows that the house has are made of one-way thick glass and have thick curtains behind them. So, there was not much of luck there.
Suddenly, there were laser lights from the roof. The lights showed some messages in some unknown language. When the private satellite agency had decoded them they were in a shock. It showed the exact position of the spying satellite and threatened it to destroy with ASAT. That might be just gimmick, but our private partner got scared, and stopped working on this project. So, we had to think about more traditional ways. But, there has been not much of luck there, either.
This criminal agency seemed to have greased the local OC's palm. We concocted a case of finding Mr Lakhotia, on the basis of a missing daiary by one of his distant relative in Kolkata. But, the officer-in-charge (OC) of the local police station said that he had seen Mr Lakhotia a month ago, and Mr Lakhotia sometimes rings him. In other words, we are not going to get much help from the local police, unless you help us."
"Me? How can I help? Please tell me."
To be continued on Tuesday night
No comments:
Post a Comment