THE BUTCHER OF BENARES Read online

  Hawa Singh ran through Vishwanath Gali and tore his way through the humongous crowd of devotees. Above him soared the three domes of the temple— two of them golden—shrouded by fog.

  It was in 1839 that two domes of the temple were covered in gold donated by Maharaja Ranjeet Singh of Punjab. The state government was taking a keen interest in gold-plating the third. There would probably now be a dome scam.

  Baba Ramtirath spotted Hawa Singh and came up to him. ‘You planning to open the doors yourself?’ he asked him sarcastically.

  Hawa Singh looked back at the mass of men, women, children and the elderly, all of whom were carrying vessels filled with milk and sweets to be offered to the linga. The SSP looked furious. Helpless.

  Hawa Singh knew there was a deep-seated hatred and mistrust of the police in all classes of society. It didn’t need much to trigger it off. This could be that trigger-moment.

  Yes, prevention was better than curing a situation. But then society itself didn’t own up to its crimes. Policing would never solve the problem. The media would be quick to label the area a ‘police state’.

  Hawa Singh realized what he had to do. He would have to play the devil.

  Hawa Singh pushed at the door in front of him. It felt like something was stuck on the other side to prevent it from opening. Another, stronger, push and he glimpsed a horizontal wooden bar between the two handles on either side of the door inside. There was no way out. They would have to break in.

  Baba Ramtirath urged his people on. ‘It seems Lord Shiva wishes the Naga sadhus to push open the door. We are the closest to the lord. We’ll have to do it.’

  There was pin-drop silence.

  ***

  Maharaj Abhay Narayan Singh, the king of Benares, had been woken from sleep. He stood on the rampart of his fort, watching the commotion through a telescope, one he used at night to observe the stars and their constellations. The kings of Benares have always been lovers of astronomy and astrology. In the day time he would observe his citizens

  Baba Ramtirath, along with the heaviest-built of the Naga sadhus, came forward. Hawa Singh winked at the SSP and they started to push at the doors.

  The heavy door creaked and groaned in protest. There was a cracking sound.

  Silence.

  The crowd bit its tongue to ward off bad luck. The breaking down of the door could spell doom for all humankind. It could anger Lord Shiva, the destroyer of the universe. They waited.

  The naked sadhus pushed with all their strength. The wooden obstruction inside tensed. There was a growling sound, and then it started to crack under the joint force. The wooden bar inside broke, and the door to the jyotirlinga was flung open. The crowd erupted in cheers—‘Har! Har! Mahadev!

  They didn’t see what Hawa Singh and the other Naga sadhus saw. The body of a naked man, smeared with ash, was bent over the linga. Blood flowed onto the silver altar.

  A wooden cross protruded from his back.

  ***

  Kashi Vishwanath temple, through the ages, had been visited by great saints like Adi Shankaracharya, Ramkrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekanand, Goswami Tulsidas, Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati, Guru Nanak and several other such spiritual personalities. This time, it was visited by death.

  A bloody murder.

  The SSP made a public announcement that the temple would be closed to all visitors till further notice. It was something that had never happened over the last several centuries. Slowly, the crowd parted and vacated the temple premises.

  ‘I don’t want the police inside. Let only the forensics team come. Till they do, no one else is allowed inside.’ Hawa Singh’s orders were clear.

  But an exception was made for FBI agent Ruby Malik. When she arrived, Hawa Singh said grimly, ‘It has happened again.’

  The body was that of a foreigner, white. He was lean but not in an athletic way.

  Ruby looked at the body and spoke out, ‘Again, the Holy Cross. It seems we have a serial-killer in our hands. He seems to be targeting only the whites.’

  Hawa Singh examined the inner sanctum. Right ahead of the jyotirlinga was a solid wall. There was no other door or window through which the killer could have escaped after killing him.

  He looked up at the domes but there were no windows, no openings. ‘He locked the door from the inside. Then where did he go?’ Hawa Singh puzzled over the matter.

  It looked like a magic trick. The way a magician disappears from inside a locked trunk in front of the audience and appears somewhere else. ‘Is it possible that the killer is a magician?’ wondered Hawa Singh.

  He knew that behind every magic trick there is a set-up. You just had to look for it.

  It was then that he saw a round hole in the floor. It was around four-and-half feet in diameter.

  He called in the priest and asked, ‘What is this?’

  ‘That’s a well and it has been here for many centuries. It is called the Gyana Vapi, or the “wisdom well”,’ he said. ‘It is believed that the Jyotirlinga was hidden in the well to protect it at the time of invasions by the Mughals, and other invaders. Once, the head priest had jumped into the well with the Shiv-ling to hide it from desecrators of the temple.’

  ‘So the killer could have escaped via this well. Therefore, it must be connected to a tunnel to the outside. I’ll have to check it out,’ said Hawa Singh thoughtfully.

  He removed his jacket, and said to Ruby, ‘I have to inspect this well. Just make sure those policemen don’t disturb the scene of the crime.’

  Hawa Singh looked in the direction of the SSP and Baba Ramtirath, who were standing outside, nodded to them and jumped into the well.

  The well was not too deep. The walls were cracked. He couldn’t see any way out from there. He went down and almost hit the bottom. He came out of the water gasping for air. There was no way out.

  He took another deep breath and dived in. He started to feel around the broken walls with his hands. The water was ice-cold and he was not able to hold his breath for long. He had to come up constantly and fill his lungs with fresh air each time.

  Finally, his hands touched what looked like an iron lid against the wall. A trapdoor, rusted and heavy. He had to use all his strength to pull it open.

  As he opened it, water gushed inside and he went with it. Hawa Singh swam through a channel and, after almost fifty metres, discovered that it opened out into a wider tunnel. The water had receded and Hawa Singh could stand up and walk through it.

  It looked like an ancient passageway, built for the royal family and priests to move out safely if an attack took place. It was a long one, and there was the sound of water on all sides. It was also dark. Hawa Singh started to run.

  A little ahead, he saw a gate on one side, jammed from years and years of rust and sand. At some places, water dripped from the ceiling. He couldn’t understand what was above it and where the tunnel was leading to.

  He started to run again. It took him a good fifteen minutes in the tunnel, and he knew that was pretty long. Finally, he came to an opening in the ground, gated with bars. He pushed it and, slowly, it opened. There was an incline that led up towards the ground.

  The ground was wet. There was no chance they would get any footprints there. Pebbles from the river strewed his way. Nothing could be made out in that darkness.

  He encountered another heavy iron grille, which he also removed. Beyond it, he found himself on solid ground. And then he saw that he was standing on the opposite bank of the Ganges. The tunnel had run under the Ganges all through the river’s breadth. He looked behind him and saw Ramnagar Fort.

  *

  Hawa Singh took a boat to the ghats and it took him another twenty minutes to return to the temple.

  Ruby, wearing latex gloves, was examining the body. She looked up at him and sighed with relief. Hawa Singh called out to the SSP, ‘Inside the well there is a way that connects to a tunnel that runs right underneath the Ganges to the opposite bank.’

  The SSP and the other policeme
n stared at him astonished.

  ‘Yes, the killer used it to escape. That makes one thing clear—that the killer knows all the secret passages in this city pretty well. He has to be someone from Benares itself.’

  ‘Someone who hates foreigners coming to his city,’ added Ruby by his side.

  Hawa Singh nodded, ‘It could be. I want a team of forensics to go down into the tunnel and look for any prints, signs or clues we can get from there.’

  ‘I’ll get it done,’ said the SSP.

  Nobody else seemed to care that Hawa Singh was soaking wet and was shivering in the cold. Ruby got his jacket and put it around him. He shot her a grateful look. ‘Thanks.’

  The outpourings from his heart, just hours ago, had brought them together. They could communicate through their eyes.

  Ruby pointed a gloved hand at the body and said, ‘It’s a similar cross. The body is smeared with ashes. It looks like a ritual. Apart from that, I don’t see any signs of struggle on the corpse.’

  ‘This time,’ Hawa Singh reflected, ‘the killer brought him right here, and killed him on the altar. It’s like he was sacrificed to Lord Shiva.’

  ‘Why did he close the door from inside? He could have easily walked away after killing him,’ asked Ruby.

  ‘He wanted to make a show of it. He wanted the entire crowd here, so they would get to know of the killing. Also, the body has been arranged. He is mocking us, taunting us.’

  ‘According to FBI research, most killers return to the scene of the crime, to observe the police working. It could be that they want to see them helpless, and want to gloat over their act. It gives them a sense of power. Do you think this killer could also be here in the crowd watching us?’

  Hawa Singh turned to look back at the massive crowd still standing at a distance. They were hoping that the body would be taken away and that they would be allowed their darshan.

  ‘In this crowd, it could be almost anyone,’ he replied to Ruby’s question.

  Ruby turned back towards the body and said, ‘There is one more thing. The blood has not yet dried up.’

  ‘The temple closes at 11 pm and opens at 2.30 am. The killer had enough time to play his game and arrange a spectacle for us,’ said Hawa Singh.

  The forensics team arrived. They went about their job—taking photographs, looking for finger- and fooprints, strands of hair, fibres from cloth, tissue samples or dust carried by feet.

  Hawa Singh knew that they wouldn’t find anything. Thousands came in here every day. The temple was more like an amphitheatre.

  Ruby found that rigor mortis had already set in, in-the body. They picked up the bent-over body, the Cross sticking out from the back.

  Hawa Singh called out to Gaya Prasad Sharma, the sub-inspector, and told him, ‘Look around and see if anyone had ever met this man or knew him. Take his picture on your cell phone.’

  Gaya Prasad looked shaken as he nervously took out his cell phone. Hawa Singh asked the forensics team to place the body on the stretcher. ‘But let Gaya Prasad first take a picture of his face.’

  As they laid the body face up on the stretcher, they saw a cavity in the region of the heart. The killer had again removed that organ. Under that a design had been drawn lower on the chest. Gaya Prasad was too nervous to notice it. He had not seen many faces of death. He took the picture with shaking hands and scurried off.

  ‘What kind of pattern is that?’ asked Ruby.

  Hawa Singh looked at it and recognition hit him. It was probably drawn with a black marker. It was a kind of square below the chest of the victim. There were two diagonal lines inside the square and the middle points of each line were joined to the other, creating smaller blocks or houses.

  ‘It’s a horoscope chart,’ said Hawa Singh.

  But a greater horror awaited them.

  CHAPTER 12

  The air inside the SSP’s office was heavy with smoke and nervous tension. Outside, the fog seemed to have cemented itself into a thick wall. A group of media persons had camped in the corridor waiting anxiously for the police to update them on their investigation.

  SSP Neeraj Thakur had beads of sweat on his face. He was facing the toughest situation in his entire career.

  ‘What are we going to tell these reporters?’ asked the SSP agitatedly.

  Hawa Singh, who was leaning calmly against a wall, said laconically, ‘We’ll tell them the usual—that the matter is under investigation, and that at this stage, everything cannot be divulged, for reasons of security.’

  It was the standard police formula for extricating themselves from any sticky situation: half-truths.

  The SSP nodded nervously and appeared to look appealingly at the large team of local police present in the room. ‘The killer has struck again. He has created a spectacle for the entire city and media to watch. He seems to be a madman.’

  Ruby took a step forward. ‘Sir, according to FBI research, these are the signs of a serial-killer. There is a pattern in which he kills, and if he has struck twice, he will do so again.’

  ‘What do you mean? That it will happen again? What are we doing here?’ the SSP raised his voice in exasperation.

  ‘While serial-killers take great care to conceal their identities by working in complete secrecy, they cannot resist showing off their strength and invincibility—and believe they can get away with it all. They could be anyone supposedly “normal”—an office worker popular with his colleagues, who laughs and jokes with them, takes them out to lunch, and then disappears on a killing spree. It’s difficult to profile a serial-killer. They can range from being mentally deranged or be individuals who are motivated by everything from extreme hatred, to a desire to execute their own warped idea of justice and revenge—or pure fun,’ said the experienced Ruby.

  Sub-inspector Gaya Prasad Sharma, standing on the sidelines, softly interjected, ‘But sir, the murder of Aghori Baba Tailanga Swami doesn’t fit in with this.’

  ‘Who the hell cares about the murder of an Aghori? We have two foreigners killed in our city. Their embassies and governments will hound us till we catch their killer—or killers. Right now I want all of you to concentrate only on the foreigners. The Aghori can wait,’ said the SSP.

  Hawa Singh, who had been listening intently, said, ‘Okay, let’s first look at what we have. In both the murders, the killer used a Cross. He took out both the victims’ hearts and left the bodies where the public could see them.’

  Ruby found a black marker, and made a short summary on a white board hanging on the wall. ‘Holy Cross.’ ‘Hearts removed.’ ‘Bodies dumped at public places.’

  ‘I want you all to come up with anything that comes to your head. Anything you think could connect to the murders,’ said Hawa Singh.

  ‘Ritual or sacrifice,’ volunteered Ruby. Hawa Singh nodded and she added the point to the board.

  ‘Sir, no fingerprints,’ offered the sub-inspector, Gaya Prasad.

  ‘Good, that’s important. It shows the killer is not an ordinary madman, not a raving lunatic, but someone who plans things carefully.’

  Ruby wrote it down. ‘Like you said,’ she reminded him, ‘he could be a local, familiar with the city and the many holy sites’.

  ‘Yes, definitely he is a local man.’

  To this the SSP objected. ‘What makes you so sure the murderer is a man?’ he demanded to know. ‘What if the killer is a female?’

  Everyone turned to look at Hawa Singh. ‘For me it has to be a man,’ Hawa Singh replied, unperturbed. ‘One thing is clear. The killer has to be physically very strong to carry out such murders. It would require a lot of strength to cut open the rib-cage, pull out the heart and then to stab the Cross into the body. Also, the killer arranged the body in both cases. Again, that would require physical strength.’

  ‘The way the killer escaped from the well into the tunnel, and traversed the bottom of a wide river,’ added Ruby. ‘It has to be a man.’

  Sub-inspector Gaya Prasad nervously raised his hand saying, �
��The killer could be a Christian. After all, he used a Cross to kill.’

  ‘Bloody idiot,’ the SSP shot back. ‘He drew a horoscope chart on the foreigner’s chest! He has to be a Hindu.’

  ‘He could very well be trying to deceive us, or mislead us in different directions,’ put in Ruby. ‘We should look into that possibility.’

  Hawa Singh thoughtfully rubbed at his cold nose. ‘In the first murder there was only a Cross, but in the second he added the horoscope chart. He is deliberately leaving contradictory clues for us. I believe him to be a Hindu.’

  ‘What do you mean he is deliberately leaving clues?’ asked the SSP, sharply.

  Ruby indicated to Hawa Singh that she would do the explaining. ‘The FBI have found that most serial-killers want to be found out. They want, in the end, for their faces to be revealed as the brains behind crimes that shook the population of an entire city, sometimes the nation. They take pride in these acts. They feel that they are smarter, far more intelligent than police detectives. For them it’s like a game: “Catch me if you can!” Our killer has just started his game.’

  ‘Don’t keep saying that. I will not have any more murders here in Benares,’ the SSP shouted in exasperation.

  Hawa Singh felt one of his legs going to sleep. He had been standing in one place for too long. He shook it, and said, ‘There’s one more similarity we’ve missed out on. Both the victims are white foreigners.’

  ‘We have still not identified the male victim,’ Ruby reminded them. ‘We don’t even know who he is.’

  Hawa Singh glanced at Gaya Prasad enquiringly.

  ‘Sir, I have circulated the picture to all policemen on duty throughout the city,’ the younger policeman spoke nervously.

  ‘He must be staying at some hotel, guesthouse or a lodge. Just get cracking on all such places. There will be people who must have seen him in Benares. We have to identify him or we won’t be able to move forward at all,’ said Hawa Singh.

  ‘We’ll do our best, sir,’ Gaya Prasad said meekly.

  The SSP didn’t relent. ‘I don’t want your best, Sharma!’ he roared. ‘I want information. Or consider yourself dismissed!’