The Taj Conspiracy Read online

  he echo faded away, no feet hurried to the mausoleum, the Taj returned to silence. Mehrunisa stood there, her heart hammering inside her. Was the murderer still around? She took a breath and tried to calm herself. The blood on the floor had congealed, which meant that the murder had probably been committed several hours back. It was unlikely that the murderer would still be lurking around. She should summon security, but she owed it to Arun to get closer, to see if there was any sign of life.... Even as she thought that, she knew it was futile. A deep breath and Mehrunisa opened the latch to the low gate. Gingerly, she stepped inside, the torchlight guiding her.

  She shone it on his face and immediately turned away, feeling nauseous. Whoever had done this to him had been violent. The entire left side of his face, beneath his beard, was bruised and swollen. She forced herself to look again, and noticed, this time, that there appeared to be something on his forehead. What she saw her mind registered at once but refused to comprehend. Shaking her head as if to clear it, she studied the drawing in red—blood?—on the lined skin above Arun’s brows. A vertical eye had been traced in the middle of Arun’s forehead: an oval with a central circle, the blood encrusted unevenly.

  A third eye?

  Mehrunisa, half-Persian, brought up in the Middle East and Europe, schooled in Renaissance art, was nevertheless familiar with her paternal heritage, thanks to her father’s insistence that young Mehr holiday in India every year. Mehrunisa’s favourite time was with her godfather, where an average day could include an exploration of a world wonder, a camel ride through a desert hamlet, or a shadow puppet performance of stories from the Mahabharata.

  Mehrunisa pondered the third eye, the mind’s eye, the inner eye.... A sign of enlightenment, it adorned the foreheads of Hindu sages as vermilion or sandal paste marks. But this drawing was more specific, the circle in the centre indicating an open eye. Shiva was usually depicted with his third eye closed, the opening of which was regarded as calamitous. Why had Arun drawn the eye on his forehead? Had he drawn it?

  Mehrunisa’s gaze fell on Arun’s left hand that lay on his chest, index finger crusted with blood. Had Arun used it to draw on his own forehead? But Arun was right-handed.... Her eyes trailed to the right arm prone beside the body. The white bandage that bound his right hand—he had accidentally cut his palm the previous week—was bloodied. A gash on the wrist from where blood had seeped was still open. His wrist slashed and left to die? Did people die from a slashed wrist?

  She bent down and peered. A thin trail of blood led to his right thigh where a penknife lay. Mehrunisa recognised the little folding knife Arun carried in his pocket; the perfect utility tool, he called it, as he used it to open letters, cut cardboard boxes, trim fingernails. Had Arun cut his right wrist to draw blood to write with his left hand because his right hand was bound? But why not draw blood from another part of the body that would be less painful?

  Mehrunisa bit her lip and moved the torch in a circular sweep around the body. The left pant leg had ridden up, revealing a swollen ankle and purplish flesh— Arun had taken a severe beating. She came to a pause near his feet, encased in white Nike sneakers, where she could see some writing on the marble floor. It was of uneven thickness, a scrawl, but legible. Three words in Hindi and the ink—blood—had exhausted twice, once after the first word and again at the third, for the last letter in each was faint.

  Chirag tale andhera.

  The dark beneath the lamp. Mehrunisa was a linguist, fluent in six languages—still, it was baffling. Which lamp? She glanced above at Lord Curzon’s bronze lamp beneath which were the two cenotaphs—the ‘dark’ being referred to?

  It was all so bizarre. A dying man sketching, using his blood as ink, his index finger as implement, trying to convey something. And convey what?

  As the riddle zapped through her mind, a putrid smell assailed her and the realisation that Arun Toor, her friend and the Taj’s caretaker, was dead hit her. She recoiled in horror, staggering.

  The next instant the entrance door was flung aside as a man darted in. In the shaky beam of her torch, Mehrunisa saw a luxuriant moustache unfurling outwards from under a slim nose, in stark contrast to the clean-shaven chin. The compact body was dressed in a policeman’s khaki uniform. The outstretched arm held a pistol levelled at her.

  Agra

  M

  ehrunisa was in custody in a police station. She had been there for a couple of hours. Her back ached from sitting upright in a wooden chair and her backside was sore. Her stomach was queasy from lack of food and the worry gnawing her insides. In the eyes of SSP Raghav, the man who had barged into the mausoleum and brought her in for questioning, she was a suspect.

  He’d woken early that morning, he told her, and as he drove by the Taj Mahal, he’d seen a lone car parked in the complex. Suspicious, he’d headed inside when a scream shattered the air and he raced in to discover a bleeding corpse. And Mehrunisa standing over it.

  It took a lot of will for Mehrunisa to project calm, regurgitate the same answers to questions that had been repeated in one form or another since dawn. She licked her lips and reminded herself to breathe deeply even as she pretended not to notice the curious glances directed at her from the policemen lounging about. SSP Raghav headed an Anti-Terror Squad—the nameplate on his table said so—and he had hinted darkly about increasing terror attacks, and the Taj Mahal being a prime target.

  Leading her out of the mausoleum, he had shouted rapid-fire instructions to Inspector Javed who was watching the action from the door. ‘Call your constables and order them to guard the place. Also, delay the entry time to the Taj Mahal until noon—provide some official-sounding excuse. That will give us enough time to secure the crime site and gather evidence.’

  Deep breathing did not seem to be helping, for her senses were assailed by the stench of sweat and piss that permeated the police station. She was swivelling her neck slowly to relax the muscles when a voice behind made her head snap up.

  ‘I walk in and see you crouching over a dead body, blood spilled on the floor. It appears to be a crime scene.’ SSP Raghav rounded the table and stood in front of her, one thumb hooked in his belt loop. ‘If the body on the floor is the victim’s, who is this other person? Did the murderer disappear, or was she caught in the act?’

  Mehrunisa found herself shaking. Stay calm, she counselled herself, you have done nothing wrong. It was typical police behaviour—overbearing, dismissive, brutish. She couldn’t seriously be considered a suspect. Inspector Javed must have confirmed the time she’d arrived at the Taj, and the coagulated blood was clear indication that the murder had occurred some hours back. Reassured by her reasoning, she looked up, angled her chin, and regurgitated once more that she had arrived early to study the cenotaphs before the public was allowed in. Arun Toor was to meet her at the mausoleum. Instead she had found his corpse.

  ‘When was the meeting fixed?’

  ‘Two days back. I called yesterday—’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Eight p.m. I reconfirmed the appointment, we chatted briefly and then he excused himself. He said he was expecting a visitor and had to prepare for the meeting.’

  ‘A visitor? That late? Who was the supervisor expecting?’ The SSP furrowed his brow as if he had not heard the information previously from her.

  ‘Someone called Aurangzeb.’

  ‘Hmm. Aurangzeb. Are you sure you heard correctly?’

  ‘I think so.’

  SSP Raghav leaned over the table and spun a glass paperweight with trapped air bubbles inside. As it rattled on the table he peered at her closely. ‘I know one Aurangzeb related to the Taj Mahal. But he died three hundred years back. You know any modern one?’

  Mehrunisa gulped and shook her head.

  ‘Ever heard his name from the supervisor before? From anyone else at the Taj?’

  Mehrunisa shook her head again.

  SSP Raghav lifted his brows and blew air out of his mouth, making his moustache quiver. ‘Terrorist
, possible? One of the jihadis our neighbour exports routinely?’ With that he proceeded to pace the room, hands interlocked behind his back.

  A slap of slippers sounded as a peon came up to Mehrunisa, plucked a glass of tea from a wire rack and deposited it in front of her. A plate with a greasy omelette and toast appeared beside it.

  ‘Eat,’ the SSP barked. ‘I don’t want you fainting. I have more questions to ask.’

  To humour the SSP, Mehrunisa took a few sips and nibbled at the toast. The waft of fried egg mingled with the police station’s distinct vapours left her feeling like she had bitten into bread extracted from under an armpit. As she quelled nausea, a loud wail rent the air followed by thrashing sounds. Turning in her chair she saw a policeman walk in dragging a young man by his hair, his sweater ripped and blood trickling from his head. Mehrunisa felt her stomach heave. Clutching it, she doubled over a potted palm in one corner of the room and vomited.

  SSP Raghav let her use the bathroom. It was passably un-dirty. She quickly rinsed her mouth, splashed water on her face and darted out.

  ‘Tell me again about what you saw.’ SSP Raghav was waiting outside the door and walked her back to his desk. A policeman watched her, his lips twisted in a smirk.

  Once again Mehrunisa recounted the three things she had noticed: the eye sketched on the forehead, the slashed wrist, the bloody scrawl.

  ‘What do you think they mean? The eye and the writing?’ The SSP probed his bushy moustache as he pinned her with his dark eyes.

  Mehrunisa shrugged. ‘If he was the one who was responsible for the writing—it could have been the murderer.’

  ‘Let’s assume it was the supervisor. Atleast we have some insight into what his motivations might have been. You knew him—what do you think he was trying to say?’

  ‘He was a Shiv bhakt—which is why the sketch on the forehead made me think of Shiva’s third eye. Otherwise ...’ she trailed off.

  ‘Hmm ...’ He joggled his brows at her. ‘And the slashed wrist?’

  Mehrunisa shrugged. ‘If we assume he slashed his wrist, then why? For blood to sketch and scrawl? Arun was a right-hander, why would he slash his right wrist and write with his left? Yes, his right hand was bandaged, so that might have forced him to use the left to write, but if his intention was to draw blood, why cut the right hand that was already injured, why not another part of the body that would be less painful.... No,’ Mehrunisa shook her head slowly, ‘the slash on the right wrist was meant as a clue as well.’

  Mehrunisa straightened as she continued, ‘And Arun did lay a lot of store by the number three. According to him it was an auspicious number: symbolic of the Hindu trinity, a symbol of Lord Shiva who is three-eyed— trinetra, with three braids of hair—trijata, carries a trishul ... In fact,’ she nodded at the recollection, ‘he was so caught up with the number that when he ordered tea for two people, there was always an extra cup.’

  ‘He was paranoid?’

  Mehrunisa shrugged. ‘Superstitious.’

  The SSP spun the paperweight again, a scowl on his face. ‘Well, anyway, the important thing is to find out how Toor was killed. A post-mortem will tell us that.’

  He nodded at the token woman cop who had been hanging around desultorily; she led Mehrunisa away to be fingerprinted. Finally Mehrunisa was permitted to make a phone call. An agitated Professor Kaul promised to contact the ASI director-general right away, after which he would proceed to Agra.

  It had been several hours of interrogation and Mehrunisa was so overcome with fatigue that her senses were numb. The SSP, trailed by the woman cop, led her to an adjacent room where two other women were being held. One was a complainant of dowry harassment, the other had beaten her drunk husband and fractured his ribs, she was informed. ‘Wait here until your uncle arrives. I have to return to the Taj Mahal. But remember, until we find the murderer, you’re on call,’ he added darkly.

  Agra

  H

  undreds of young men in khaki shorts and crisp white shirts stood to attention in the sprawling Sadar Bazaar stadium, their bamboo sticks at their sides. It was the final day at the training camp.

  The speaker was dressed in a muslin kurta and dhoti, despite the severe winter. ‘In the last twenty days you have learned to be Real Men. Real Men, proficient in the art of self-defence. And none too late. Anti-Hindu forces— national and international—are determined to finish off the Hindus ... and everything we can be proud of.’

  Shri Kriplani surveyed the audience, his toothbrush moustache quivering. A senior leader of the Bharatiya Hindu Party, the BHP, he was the popular face of resurgent Hinduism. He was also the chairman of BHP shakhas, the community camps for training Hindu youth. Its ostensible agenda was to sensitise the young people of India to its cultural heritage, which, they said, was endangered by the twin onslaughts of fundamentalist Islam and American hegemony.

  ‘The greatness of our motherland has never been in doubt. However, over the years, we, her weak-willed sons, have allowed her to be tainted and defiled. But,’ Shri Kriplani’s head arched over his audience, ‘better late than never. The time has come to re-establish Ram Rajya, the rule of Lord Rama, the golden age of India! You want to know why? Thousands of years ago, Ram Rajya was more advanced than today’s world. Listen.

  ‘Operation Desert Storm? Where Saddam Hussein and America went to war the first time. Saddam thought he would win the war with his Scud missiles. But the Americans with their Patriot missiles tracked the Scud’s trajectory and destroyed it in mid-air. Impressed? But haven’t we all seen this before in our historic land?’ His outstretched arm invited them to answer him.

  Not getting a reply, he shook his head dolefully. ‘You know, each one of you knows. The problem is—you have chosen to forget. Had not Lord Ram’s arrows similarly destroyed those fired by the evil demon Ravan?’

  Vigorous nodding and whispers disrupted the order.

  ‘Satellite pictures have shown that between Rameswaram in southern India and northern Sri Lanka exists a bridge. It is presently beneath sea level. People talk of London Bridge, Golden Gate, so on. Yet, we constructed an engineering marvel across the sea two millennia ago!’

  Noticing the impact on his audience, Shri Kriplani puffed his chest, his neck stretching thin like a turkey. He surveyed the gathering.

  ‘Want to know more? Shivling! The mark of Lord Shiva! Do you know that the Shivling is shaped like the dome of a nuclear reactor?’

  A collective gasp emanated from the stunned trainees.

  ‘That’s why I say: don’t forget the Vedas of our ancestors. They contain all the information you and I and the world will ever need. Ram Rajya! Vedic Shastra! These will take us forward. Always remember. I congratulate you on your graduation. Go forward, spread the light. And never forget: the defence of Mother India rests with her original inhabitants, her real children. The foreigners in our midst are sons of Babur. They are not us.’

  Deep inside Chhattisgarh forest

  T

  he cop reclined against his jeep as he smoked and studied the clearing in front of him. Tall sal trees towered over him. Enmeshed with lush bamboo, they choked daylight and at dusk it was pitch dark. The only light was from the vehicle’s headlights and the glowing cigarette end.

  The man listened, his ears attuned to the various sounds filtering through the forest. Venturing into the dense jungle at night was fraught with danger—even the roads were reclaimed as panthers prowled, reptiles crawled, sloth bears hunted and the deep cawing of the jungle crow signalled a tiger kill. However, predators in the forest came from more than just wildlife—and this other sort liked to hunt policemen for their heads.

  Nothing in the man’s seemingly relaxed bearing revealed his coiled readiness. Tense as a cat, his ears picked up a rustle of bamboo apart from the sporadic bird twitter and flapping of wings.

  A shadow peeled itself from a tree across and noiselessly approached the clearing. The man was dressed in fatigues, a gun slung on one shoulder and h
is eyes, visible through a black shroud, were fixed on the cop who blew smoke into the night air. He had the stealth of a wild animal as he loped forward, one hand holding the gun in place, the other visible across his abdomen.

  Something about the angle of the visible hand was not right—the cop had only seconds to register that thought.

  The man was five metres away; the cop whipped out his pistol and shot him point-blank. The shot rang out in the forest. Vigorous flapping sounded as birds took flight amidst alarmed trilling. The man slumped to the ground.

  A frantic head bobbed out of the jeep on a wail. ‘But our instructions were to take him alive!’

  The cop, R.P. Singh, approached the fallen man, his pistol ready. Satisfied, he bent down and searched the man’s shirt pockets. The wailing man now stood behind him, flailing his arms in protest about government talks planned with the Naxal leader, craning his neck as he furtively eyed the dead body.

  Straightening up, Singh grabbed the aggrieved man’s palm and deposited something on it. ‘Gift for the party from your Maoist friend!’

  The man scrutinised the oblong greenish metallic object in his palm, his eyes widening in panic. ‘G-ggrenade,’ he sputtered, gulped and rapidly emptied his hand.

  R.P. Singh snorted, grabbed the grenade and, turning to the shocked man, patted his shirtfront before depositing it in his upper pocket. ‘It’s not live,’ he said with a brief smile. ‘But your Naxal friend meant to roast us alive with it even as he pretended to surrender.’ He motioned for the man to collect the body.

  ‘Rule number one: never negotiate with terrorists.’

  Delhi

  M

  ehrunisa curled her feet beneath her as she sat cross-legged in a leather armchair, dug her hands under her armpits and wondered when she would stop shivering. It was not that cold. Besides, a heater—albeit inefficient— was glowing red in one corner of the room. It reminded her in some ways of her Florence apartment, a frigid en suite she rented in an old stone house on the banks of the Arno.