Kartik Khandelwal

Yet another new day, and I was walking down the stairway of the DPHQ. I had my blue coat-suit on, upon my black boots, like I usually wear. Suddenly, I saw a man walking up the stairs towards me. He wore a white shirt upon a pair of black trousers. It was Prakash. “Hey, Kartik!” He screamed from a floor below. Seeing him running towards me with a sense of urgency on his face, I started walking kinda fast towards him. We met in the middle of the stairway, where he asked me, “Hey, d’ya know what’s up the whole station lately?”

“Uh, is it something important?” I asked him. “I’m not into social network, as you know. So, what’s going on lately?”

“Well, I guess you must not like it,” He said. “I-It’s… creepy.”

“Say it clearly.”

“A video,” He quickly squeaked out. “A video’s going viral on the internet, and it’s something related to the Delhi Police.”

“What’s it about?”

“It-It can be something related to our case too, as I feel, but it’s not important for now. See, I-I--”

“C’mon, Prakash,” I told him. “I’m your friend first, then your boss. Don’t feel hesitant with me.”

“O-Okay, okay,” He tried to calm himself down a little. “I, uh, saw this video last night on the news.” He breathed hard. “In that video, a-a man… what does he do… he, uh, he takes out a pistol from his pocket, a-and murder another man, for some unknown reason.” He takes out his mobile phone and then clicks on a thumbnail of a video. After loading for a second, the video shows a bulgy fat man, wearing a black hoodie, standing on the corner of a dark street, with just a little light to provide by the streetlight on which the camera was hung. The man stood there with his back on the wall behind, like posing as a model, with a cigarette in his mouth. For the first thirty seconds, nothing happened in the video, just the man standing there and lighting his cigarette. “Now, see. The minister’s son comes late in the night after partying with his friends.”

“What’s the name of the minister?”

“Mr. Amitabh Murty.”

“Oh,” I said slowly and nodded my head while attentively watching on the screen of the mobile. Suddenly, a young college-going man comes, who was unable to stand up correctly due to his drunkenness, and so his body moved here and there as he walked. “Hey,” The college-going young man said. “Who the hell are you, and why’re you here, in front of my house, huh?” Then, the cigarette-smoking man took out a pistol from his pocket, and then aims it at the man. “He-Hey, I, uh…”

BANG BANG!

Two shots, straight into the head, were shot. The young fellow’s corpse is lying on the ground, with his head upwards, facing the camera. The head was bleeding and a large amount of blood was coming out of the three holes which were made by the bullets. The man started running towards the left of the screen, from where the young man was coming. “That’s it,” Prakash said and kept the phone back inside his pocket. “The pistol used for this murder is expected to be Point Forty-Eight HC (.48-HC), the one which is used only by Delhi Police.”

“So, the whole Delhi Police is like a prime suspect for this case, right?”

“Yep,” He nodded, still in fright. “But, I guess that it’s connected to our case, right?”

“How do you feel this?”

He shrugged and replied, “Just an intuition.”

Manuel Levi

“The idea of stealing wiretaps was a good one, Levi!” Kritika patted my head as I sat down on the floor in front of the laptop.

“Thank you, Kriti,” I replied back. “So, let’s get started.” I rubbed my hands and clicked a button on the keyboard as Kritika sat beside me and stared at the computer screen.

“I… It’s not good… We shou…” The laptop was unable to receive clear signals for some time. Therefore, all we heard for that minute were keywords of their conversation. “Let’s…”

“What’s happening?” She asked me.

“The laptop can’t receive clear signals. That sometimes happens when the wiretaps are used for the first time.”

“Let’s then head over to the other update,” someone said on the laptop.

“It’s working!” Kriti screamed in between.

“So, uh, there has been a very viral video on the net lately, Mr. Vikram, and we’d like to show a clip of a news channel to demonstrate the same.”

“But what’s the use of showing a viral video in here?” Someone asked.

“Because it’s related to Delhi Police, and more importantly, our organization. Therefore, I guess it’s important for you all to at least see this.”

“Okay,” Vikram replied.

“Sir,” The man replied, and then a video clipping of a news channel starts playing in the hall.

“Welcome to Bharat News Twenty-four-Seven, and I, Neha Sharma, comes up with yet viral news from around the world. The clipping that you all have seen before this, where a man shot a young lad, is going famous around the world and making rounds the whole internet. The police have said…”

“See, sir, this video being played as the anchor speaks.”

“The police have said that the pistol used here is confirmed to be Point Forty-Eight HC, used by the investigators of the Delhi Police. It means that there probably is a mole inside the police. What can we think of through this case? Are the police corrupted? Are there moles inside the police? Are the police to secure the citizens from threats or now are they threats themselves?”

Then, the video stops playing. “Sir, it’s done by the other faction’s members. The mole in the police has recently joined the faction and now they’re up on giving hints to police that something’s wrong. They ask for--”

“Wait, the other faction means us, right?” I asked to confirm.

With a dominating and evil smile, Kritika replied, “Surely it is. How many factions are there in TES anyways?”