14 Encounters, Sir

31st January 2041

I was sipping tea in my balcony and reminiscing my old days while glancing through all my case files. 30 years of my life to the Crime Branch and had literally lived each and every moment to the fullest. Flipping through the files, I came across a note which caught my eye and a lot of events flashed before my eyes.

 19 Years Ago

The roads shimmered in the heat of the mid-day sun. It was a hot, grueling afternoon in Delhi. Even though we were done with COVID, the people on roads were relatively less. It seemed like a quiet day, but it wasn’t meant to be one!

“May I come in, sir? “a young voice came in while I was mailing the report of a case. I nodded my head in approval. “Senior Inspector Aashim reporting, sir.” There was a tall muscular guy with a grim look on his face. I told a junior officer to brief him about the proceedings as I pressed “Send”.

I was about to order my tea when the landline rang.” ACP Vikram Sharma speaking”. I was informed of a body found on NH8 and was told to investigate this case.

“Guys, we have a case. Tell the forensic expert to be prepared.” Aashim had the same grim face in the car as well. So, I casually asked “I have heard you are quite an encounter specialist yourself 8 encounters in 4 years, huh!” He sharply replied, “Eight on paper, total 11!” “Quite Interesting”, I said as I turned on the radio and the jockey read the news, “Amidst the Russia-Ukraine conflict the Russian Ambassador Vladmir Azerovich along with other Russian delegates will be visiting India to celebrate commissioning of INS Vikrant.” As the presenter read other news, we reached the crime scene.

I instructed Shreya and Ajith, two senior inspectors to check the body as well as the surroundings. I was told by the locals after my enquiry that this man was bleeding profusely when he came running from the woods and he fell on the ground. The dead man was looking to be in his 50s and had an overgrown beard. “Aashim, follow these blood drops and see if you can find anything”. “I saw the body’s hand and it seemed as if they had been tied for days. I received Aashim’s call, and he told me “Something is off in the forest”. When I went there I kind of understood what he meant. On the surface, nothing looked visibly wrong, but you could feel that this wasn’t normal. I contacted the forest department and told them to have a look.

When the forensics checked the body, we got to know that the bullet wound was of a sniper which is very difficult for non-military people to procure. We were also told that the person had been tortured a lot. The man killed was a scientist Dr. Digvijay, whose license of research had been cancelled 5 years ago by the Association as his experiments were dangerous for society. I told Aashim and Shreya to search his house for any clues whereas me and Ajith went to the lab where he used to work earlier. In the lab all his research papers were already discarded, and we could get any help from the other staff members of the lab. But when Aashim and Shreya reached his house, they realised that it had already been searched by some people as the lock of the house had been already broken and all of the furniture was scattered. His bungalow was in a relatively secluded location where there were no homes in a 1 km radius. So, they asked a grocery shop owner in the vicinity if he had seen anything. He said he hadn’t seen doctor since a month. Now the only way to know more about Digvijay was to meet with the association committee which had suspended his license as to know the problems with his research.

“Good morning, Dr Mehra”, I said as I entered his cabin. He acknowledged”. Hello ACP Sharma, nice to meet you. As you wanted to enquire about Dr Digvijay, here is his file. Well, I think it was his obsession with experimenting that caused his downfall. He was willing to go any extent for his experiments. He wanted to create a gas which could destroy the stones within the body. But while for experimentation he put lives of a lot of people in danger out of which one died. He was tried legally as well but due to his contacts he got his bail in six months”. Ajith asked, “How fatal can this gas be?” “That was the issue. If you come in contact with highly concentrated gas, we don’t even know how fatal the damage can be”, Dr Mehra replied. At that moment I got a call from Aashim who told me that the soil test of that forest showed dilute presence of the same gas mixture which was created by Digvijay. Dr Mehra cautioned me to use a special PPE kit while investigating that area otherwise it could be lethal.

One thing was pretty clear, somebody was planning to use the gas mixture in “not the most productive way”. We went to the forest area along with our forensic team to find all possible traces. “Sir, the traces of the gas are increasing as we are going towards south”, said the expert. The concentration was increasing steadily but suddenly it started decreasing as we kept moving ahead. We figured out the spot where the concentration was at its maximum. “Sir, here is a pothole,” shouted Aashim. I alerted the guys as we started to descend in the pothole. The gas was all over the place, destroying the evidence. “Collect all the things you possibly can, quickly”, I said as they hurriedly started collecting everything that was left.

When we took all of that for examination, there were some half-burnt blueprints, a calendar as well as a few photographs. The laptop had been completely destroyed. There were only a few days visible on the calendar. “See, there is an arc made with a red pen on the corner where 29th is written, if my guess is correct a circle was there on 21st, i.e., today. Guys today’s the D- day. If something hasn’t happened yet, we still have time to stop it. Quick, find something more, Damn it!” “Sir, this note has a number written on it “9144151821191991”. This could either be some hidden phone number, coordinates, pin code anything”, said Aashim. “Ajith, please check what are the major events happening in the city today? Did you guys understand what this code is.” Ajith told me there were 11 major functions in the city today which consisted of businessmen, politicians, foreign delegates, influencers as well as film stars. I wrote the code on sheet of page and started to make sense of it while fiddling with my pen. “Wait, I see something, just de-construct the numbers the write the alphabet corresponding to the number. It would be “IADDAE…”. No, this isn’t making sense. Take two numbers together and make all possible combinations. Megha, our computer expert, told us” Sir if we do it like “9-14-4-15-18-21-19-19-9-1”, it means Indo-Russia. “Sir, there is the commissioning of INS Vikrant today where Russian delegates are coming”, Ajith said. “That’s the target guys. Megha, inform the commissioner as well as the nearest police station to send backup immediately, let’s go”, I shouted.

When we reached there the commissioning was about to start in 15 minutes and the commissioner called me and said it wasn’t possible to postpone or cancel the event at this moment. “Damn it, they need everyone to die for the sake of a minister’s reputation”, I remarked. “Here’s the plan Aashim and Ajith you both go in.Take the security guards in confidence, check the CCTV or whatever it takes to find that Bastard. Megha, I need info on all the numbers that were active in the forest in the past few weeks.” “Sir, 5 of those numbers are deactivated. But interestingly one of those numbers are present here today”, Megha said. “That is our guy. Where is the exact location?”, I asked. “It’s in the parking lot, Sir.” I asked Shreya and three police officers in plain clothes to come along. Megha was there on the call. I asked her if the suspicious van was the one in front of me. As we went closer, they got suspicious and started firing at us. Four of us started firing rounds at them from different directions. I wanted to catch them alive but one of Shreya’s bullets aimed at them hit the petrol tank and there was a sudden blast. “Damn it, we had to get them alive”, I shouted at Shreya. I called Ajith and told him that we had saved the day. When Aashim and Ajith retuned, I noticed that Aashim was a bit uneasy. When I enquired, he told me that if they had come to release the gas in the building, why were they still waiting in the van. “It is obvious as the function starts the security is going to tighten up.” When he said this, something struck me, and I asked him to tell me the about the outsiders present in the meeting today. He said that there were caterers, cleaners and AC maintenance people present in the meeting. I ordered Aashim and Ajith to verify AC maintenance people and the cleaners. I myself went to check on the caterers and waiters. “Shreya and Megha, please check the CCTV cams”, I said as I ran towards the entrance.

I was quietly brisking all the waiters when I realised if someone has to release a gas, the best way is an AC vent. I told everyone to rush on the terrace and cautioned Aashim. When Aashim reached the terrace, he saw three people fiddling with the vent. When he asked them to turn around, they ran to different parts of the terrace and started firing. As I heard the gun shots, I told Megha to cut the electric supply of the building. Ajith and Aashim were taking on the perpetrators. As I reached the top floor I heard Aashim’s voice, “threat neutralised”. I took a deep breath and relaxed for a second as I heard a sound of 3-gunshots, and I ran ahead. As I reached the terrace Aashim had fell down and he shot one guy on his forehead.

Ajith’s shoulder was bleeding too but when I went near Aashim he had 3 shots on his back. I tried to lift him up. But while doing so, he smiled at me and said, “14 encounters, Sir!” and then collapsed.

And today that note with the number reminded me of all of that, and my eyes got teary. He was maybe not the best officer I had worked with, but he was probably the one who I will never forget in my entire life. I closed the file and stood up to get few whiskeys for my farewell party today.