After Raghu’s death, as Madhu started taking Mala home, Pravar worked on a plan to eliminate them all without soiling his hands that developed the skill to tamper with bottle seals during his bootlegger days. Aware that under Madhu’s influence, Mala took to drinking, he presumed that Radha would like a drink as well, so he poisoned a bottle of Teacher’s Scotch, and waited for the day that Madhu and Mala gloated over as their Union Day. On that U-day, he presented the ‘bottle of death’, sans his fingerprints, to Mala for ‘celebrating’ with her lover and his wife. When Mala said that Radha was ‘no game for that’, Pravar suggested that they might as well leave the dregs for her to rue later, and true to his word, he sought to implicate Radha by poisoning Shakeel’s mind about her involvement in the double murder.

As Mala’s death ended Pravar’s emotional divide, so his passion for Natya came to rule his heart, and being bolder for the double murder, he plotted to kill Rajan to usurp his woman, and waited for the opportunity, which presented itself soon enough. That midnight, the three of them were at a secluded spot in Shamirpet to collect the ransom from a businessman, whose kid they kidnapped the day before. While Rajan and Pravar waited for the father at the agreed place, Natya stayed in the background holding the kid; when the dad came with the ransom, Pravar went to Natya to fetch the kid for barter. On their way back with the booty, Pravar shot Rajan dead and to mislead Natya, he fired from his as well as Rajan’s revolver to fake an encounter, which the police made out to be a real thing to score a few Brownie points of ‘law and order’.

Having thus gained an entry into Natya’s hapless life, Pravar doled out from the booty to worm his way into her enamored heart. After their marriage, though she wanted him to give up his bad ways, as he was too far down the road of crime; she had no choice but to keep pace with him. While he planned to kidnap Kavya, wiser for the hazards a secluded place posed in collecting the ransom, he conceived the ingenuous rendezvous on the Tank Bund. What with Natya playing her part to perfection, they almost pulled it off, but only almost. While Dhruva’s genius spoiled the party for Pravar, Natya gave the slip to Shakeel when he went to nab her in their den.

When Shakeel ended the remarkable tale saying that he was confident of seeing Pravar on the gallows for the double murder, Dhruva said that any novice of a lawyer could induce the courts to set him free for want of evidence. However, when Dhruva said that Pravar was too dangerous to be left alone, Shakeel agreed to put him under constant scanner.




Most Popular