Decoding the Crime

When Simon led Kavya back to 9, Castle Hills, finding Dhruva in the portico, she rushed to him as though to dispel his pensiveness, and the cop, handing him a copy of Radha’s confessional statement, went into the anteroom to allow them a free reign on their emotions.

Discerning myriad emotions in his demeanor as he read it, as if to share his feelings, Kavya nestled her head on his shoulder. Sensing that he was overcome with grief as he had finished with it, she exhorted him to be strong, so that he could be of strength to the hapless woman. Thanking her for reminding him of his duty, as he wished that she pleaded Radha’s case in the court as well, she said that though she would have loved to be her lawyer, yet she felt that besides making herself tense for it involved her rival’s life and death, it could cause unease in the arraigned for the same reason. Patting her in apparent appreciation, he rang up Prativadi, the feted defense lawyer, after which he fetched Simon to join them.

As Simon wanted to know how he came to suspect Radha, Kavya said that the recap might as well help him unwind himself. Dhruva said that his narrative might embarrass her as well but she assured him that there was no way she would be sore on that score as she came to treat her past as a bad dream. Dhruva began the recap saying that he felt guilty when he heard that Kavya developed a soft spot for Pravar, believing that Ranjit was hand in glove with Shakeel in foisting the fake-notes case on him. When Ranjit said that he suspected she became close to the criminal, he realized that she was a victim of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ induced psyche, and he suffered from remorse, as the misfired idea was his.

Pausing to have a look at her and seeing her surprised look, his demeanor became dull, but as she laid her hand on him with love-filled eyes, holding her hand, he resumed the recap. His focus had always been to wean Kavya away from Pravar before his inimical influence proved to be her undoing. But what made it worse for him was he had no way to prevent her anticipated fall in that brat’s company, and the murder of her husband, in which, possibly, she might have had a hand, only added to his misery.

When she came to seek his help to nab her husband’s killer, he was not sure whether she came with a red herring or not, but when he saw her sense of purpose, he was inclined to believe her, (he looked at Kavya as she fondly caressed his hand) in spite of Radha’s averments about her likely guilt. While Kavya’s remorseful confession, in the wake of Shakeel’s death, reinforced his belief in her innocence, Radha’s pointers to Kavya’s guilt tended to dent her credibility though he was unable to see how Shakeel could have eaten from either Natya’s or Kavya’s hand, not to speak Pravar’s. Why, it would have been far more easy for Pravar to bring in his, or Rajan’s, revolver into play, and that seemingly ruled out his involvement in Shakeel’s murder and Kavya’s too by extension.




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