How shocked she was hearing the chilling account of the killing and how scary it felt holding that blood-stained knife, held in those hand gloves, which, somehow, she managed to wrap in the scarf that she wore then.
‘Coinciding with her parents’ planned pilgrimage to Badrinath, Sudha wanted to pay her homage to Rawat’s soul with Trishna’s blood. Having obtained a week’s leave of absence to rest and recreate at Lonavala, two days back, she contrived to ensure one of her colleagues had seen her off at the CST. But for this cell-age that should have been a good enough alibi, and so, reaching Lonavala in three hours, she dropped her smart-phone at a street corner, and alerted Airtel to make it inoperative.
At the dead of night, last night, she sneaked out of her home with a pair of hand gloves and that knife, tucked under her reversible burka. Alighting at the CST before dawn, she walked her way to ‘Trishna’s Abode’; she avoided hiring a cab so as not to leave any trail for the police to track her down. Upon reaching the destination, she pressed the buzzer with glows on, and as the intended victim opened the door wide-eyed, she lost no time in slaying her with that knife. As Trishna lay dead, she left the place without raising an alarm, and wearing the burka by its reverse side on the way, she walked back to the CST, and having called her, waited there to entrust the incriminating stuff to her.’
Oh, how serene Sudha looked when they met and how animated she was in recounting the incident!
‘Handling the handbag that she gave her, Sudha said that after alighting the train at Lonavala, she could take a detour to exit the station before which she would transfer the burka into it for its suitable disposal thereafter, and that should bring the perfect murder to its legal closure.’
‘It could as well have been,’ she thought, and after reflecting for a while, she picked up her iPhone, to compose a message to Sudha for record, as anyway, her smart-phone was inoperative still.
‘Won’t my action amount to betrayal of trust?’ she thought pausing to press the ‘send’ button. ‘Could be, but law doesn’t have riders to it when it comes to complying with it. But had Sudha kept it all to herself, maybe for all that, she could have got away with it? Well, that is life in spite of law, and law regardless of love. But is it not ironical that she had acentuated mine own sense of duteousness, which would eventually undo her and me too thereby.’