The Nidhi Kapoor Story by Saurabh Garg Read Free Book Online Page A

note had no sign, no name at the bottom. There were no other marks on the paper. The letter would be sent for forensic examination eventually.
    After she read the letter, Rujuta was sick to the gut again. It had elaborated on how the killer had gone about doing this job. She did not know what to do. She had a million questions. Her head was beginning to throb. Shelooked up at Prakash, but he had left by then. She looked around and found Tambe grinning at her. “Madam, Saab got a call from the commissioner’s office and had to leave. He has asked me to drop you home. Shall we go?”
    Rujuta nodded.“Something is not quite right here,” she murmured.
    Tambe just nodded. It was beyond his pay grade to think. He was a mere constable. His duties started and ended with assisting the ACP. It definitely did not include thinking. Pravin Tambe was very proud and content about his position in the hierarchy at the police station, and had no plans to disturb the equanimity.
    Rujuta was riding shotgun again and the police jeep was zipping through the uncharacteristically empty Mumbai roads. Most Sundays it was like that. Unless it was important, people tended to stay indoors on Sundays and recuperate from the miseries that Mumbai inflicted on them in the other six days of the week.
    The wind through the open jeep was making Rujuta’s long tresses caress her face, obscuring her vision. She used her fingers mindlessly to remove hair from her face and was soon lost in thought.
    For Tambe, this simple act of Rujuta’s hands running though her hair was the prettiest sight ever. To him, Rujuta looked like a princess. He slurred under his breath, “Prakash Saab, you don’t know what you are missing. Hope God gives you wisdom and opens your eyes to Rujuta Ma’am.”

5. Day 1, Evening. Ronak.
    After the incident, Nidhi and Naveen decided to get Nishant back at Ronak as a precaution. A driver had been dispatched to get him back. He was expected to be back by late night.
    Nishant Kapoor had been sent to Moksha after he almost killed himself by binging on a cocktail of drugs, sleeping pills and alcohol. It took expensive doctors long, uneasy months to confirm that he would indeed survive. However, because of the fall, he injured his spine and was paralyzed from the waist down. And as a result of the drug overdose, he had started to hallucinate. Although they were reluctant at first, Nidhi, Payal and Verma decided to send Nishant away to the private medical facility tucked away in the hills of Panchgani, renowned for treating mental ailments.
    Malti and Shankar, the domestic helps of the Kapoors, were busy preparing the guest room for Nishant’s homecoming after almost seven years. His erstwhile bedroom was now occupied by Nidhi. The other room where he spent a lot of time was now Nidhi’s office, where the pets were discovered.
    “Saheb would be really angry to know that Nidhi baby is using his bedroom. He was always very possessive,” Malti said to Shankar while draping the room with Nishant’s favorite red curtains. The couple had worked for Nishantfor almost thirty years and yet they could not decide if they were happy or sad to see him back at Ronak. They had bumped into Nishant at Marine Drive one evening; and when Nishant learnt that they had just come from Aurangabad, homeless and jobless, he immediately offered them work. It was unheard of filmwallahs to accost commoners and help them with their troubles like that. When Nishant hired them, he himself did not have a steady stream of work. But even then, he was confident of his success and he had told Malti and Shankar that one day he’d be a superstar and then they could go back to their village and announce that they worked for the great Nishant Kapoor. When he finally got Ronak, he asked Shankar and Malti to move in with him. Since then, they had been living at Ronak.
    Although Malti and Shankar were gainfully employed at the Kapoor household, they weren’t really happy with