Drishyam

I am an IT Professional, my husband works in Dubai, and I stay in my apartment with 2 lovely daughters. My daily schedule follows a busy working mom routine. In my free time, I love to participate in committee discussions to keep myself up to date on things happening and stay connected with society, I was quite active in my apartment society. As a single parent, I need to maintain a good relationship with society families and staff. One day morning around 7 am, the doorbell ranged, and security Ritesh at my door enquired about our sandals/shoes at the door being safe, after checking all I said yes all are there, why what happened?

He said: Madam the new cook at Mr Sharma's house, was stealing sandals, I caught her today morning, Chairman had called for the meeting in the evening, please do join.

I said : O My God, Now a days we can’t believe anyone, Mrs. Sharma was recommending me that cook as she cooks really well and nice lady. Let’s meet in the evening I told and continue with my work. Evening in the meeting all comity members, Sharma family, this lady along with her husband and all securities were present, chairman started the discussion, security explained what happened. Daily routine of shantamma is she comes with her husband around 3 am in the morning by walk, her husband will wait till she enters the building and leave after she signal back, this lady goes to 5th floor sharmaji's house, completes cooking and leaves by 4 am, before she comes out her husband will be waiting near gate. Today morning also as usual she came, went up and returned back within 10-15 mins only and she was hiding something in the bag, as she came back early I checked with her what happened, she told nothing and tried escaping, I stopped her and checked the bag and saw sandals in the bag, I grabbed the bag but somehow she managed to escape. I chased her till gate but her husband might be waiting near gate in auto she got in and escaped quickly. Then chairman turned towards shantamma and asked what do you want to say, she started crying and told I have not stolen anything and this security is lying. He actually tried harassing me and started crying. Ritesh started in louder voice, who am I lying or you, sir if you want look at the CCTV camera. Me and Mrs. Sharmaji started consoling her, we both felt something would have happen by looking at her face. We took her aside and asked what happened. She started explaining by consoling herself, after I get inside the gate my husband left, I tried entering from one door which was locked then this guy signaled to come from other door, I entered from their, this guy was sitting inside. I wanted to go to loo, asked this guy, he told it’s inside and I rushed towards it, their was no latch, I thought anyways nobody is their so went in, power went off, immediately in few seconds this guy pushed the door and tried getting in, I started shouting what are you doing bhaiyya, I pushed him hardly, somehow I escaped and ran away. Post running to some distance met my husband and explained, he got me back and fought with him, my husband told that we will go to police. May be for that reason he is creating all this story. We listened to her silently consoled her and then asked her to go home and if required we will call. After she left we explained to comity members, we felt real pain in her while she explaining, but still not in a position to decide without any proofs, we decided to end the meeting and meet again next day. We continued our discussions in the whatsApp group with other members also, we tried to collect some feedback from different people on Ritesh, all the feedback received were positive, even from sharma's family feedback on the lady also positive. She is a poor lady don’t bother anything other than her work, completes her work perfectly and leave. Next day Ritesh has met all the attendees individually and told I have not done anything she is lying, please check the cc TV footage if required. We also thought let’s check the footage and decide. It’s around 9 pm, we all met again, few other members also joined by looking at the seriousness. We got the cc TV footage and started watching carefully, we started from 3.00 am, around at 3.06 am this lady enters the building, tries opening the one door, Ritesh signaled her to get in from other door, she gets in from the other door, they both talk for a while and gets inside the passage. Next few minutes No footage available. Next footage starts at 3.18 am shows Ritesh standing with sandals in hand, he is roaming around the office and keep the sandals aside and sit on chair. Now Ritesh explains that have you seen the sandals in my hand. We all are in confusion now that who is lying, shantamma or ritesh. When we hear story from both of them both of them looks true. We watched it few more different footages from cc TV around corridor.

Becoming clueless chairman asked Ritesh to tell truth, let’s settle down the matter here only, I don’t want to entertain police in the society for this. Ritesh is saying sir I have not done anything, you also saw in the footage sandals which I took from her. We all discussed for sometime, clueless we wind up the meeting. We discussed in the group any other way to find out the matter. When we explained in the group about the confusion, Mrs. Reddy highlighted, her son is a law student may be he can give some inputs post watching the footage, currently he is busy with his exams, weekend he can find out something. We also thought it would be better idea and informed whomever can spend time please join the meeting on Saturday around 4 pm and sort this out. On Saturday we all met in the common place, this time we arranged for the big screen to watch the footage, there were many young people attended this time along with Sunil the law student. We started to go through the cc footages one by one, wherever needed we replayed also. After seeing all in detail we started discussing with whole group what they feel. Everybody were in doubtful on what would have happened in 10 min gap. Then one young techie asked to replay the footage of the camera in front of the lift and see can they get any clue, we played it again, after watching carefully Sunil pointed out there is something visible in the mirror of the car parked in front of the lift. As their was no power and lift door was opening and closing, light was on and off so we could see something in the mirror, we zoomed in the mirror and played it again, we could see around 3.12 am security is climbing the steps and at 3.15 am returning back with some sandals in hand. This was the break through for the story. We all discussed and concluded Ritesh is the culprit, meanwhile we called shantamma to come and we called Ritesh inside the room and enquired again. Chairman told him if you have done anything speak up now or else I have to call police. Ritesh is like no sir I have not done anything, chairman told him we got the proof that shantamma has not stolen the sandals, If you want to confess do it now or I will call police right now. Then by the fear of police he confessed that he tried harassing her, post she escaped and her husband fought he literally got scared and thought of proving her as thief and throw her out of the society. After she went into washroom by knowing their is no latch and no one wakes up usually at that time in the apartment, he took advantage of the situation and switched off the power. Post she escaped he got pissed off. After the fight with her husband he realized its going to take his job and planned for the thief story and collected some sandals from some floors and then switch on the power and created the story very nicely. He had strong feeling that no proofs available for the actual incident he created the false proofs. By then shantamma also reached along with her husband. Chairman told her we got to know that you are not thief and Ritesh tried to fix you to escape. He even mentioned that Ritesh had confessed also, if you would like to go to police we can do that, what you want to do. She told I belongs to respected middle class family, it’s just that due to some health issues my husband had to leave job and I am earning to support my family. I don’t want to go through the police and all, please don’t take my job away as it’s only source of income for my family of four of us. please make sure I don’t get any problem from this guy in future. Then chairman told her we will take some action against him, you don’t worry on the job and concluded the meeting. News spread in the society, before even committee takes some action against Ritesh, he himself left the job. Shantamma continued working in sharma's house and even she got few more leads to work also within society.

I hope now you all understood why I named this story Dhrashyam, how much Ritesh used his brain to create story and attempted to cover it up. We don’t even know how many such incidents go off the record due to many constraints. How many poor ladies should go through all such incidents.