Balan and Dheera - A Tale of Kaliyuga

There is a widespread belief that the hustle and bustle of a crowded city ensures that people are not victimized so easily. The solitude of a remote location, or the silence in open areas, often sends chills down the spine of a lone traveler. But what we forget is that misfortune creeps up on us when we least expect it to.

Delhi, the national capital of India and the place of origin for many industrial and political waves, is known for its dense population. People of many faiths and ethnicities live in this city, struggling every day to keep up with the pace of its development, and making ends meet. Some are fortunate to have all the luxuries they desire, while most keep fighting the uphill battle for survival.

The city has seen everything from political and communal riots, to world festival celebrations. You can find anything you desire at any time, with people roaming the streets even at the most unexpected hour. It is these reassurances the city gives you, which can make a person feel liberated and fearless.

But like every city it has a past, and today, it is most well-known for being the place where the events that led to the collapse of a civilization started.

It was a smog-laden winter morning. The light at dawn made things barely visible for the early risers and people had started coming out for their morning walks. The only traffic on roads was the occasional trucker passing through the city and the morning services being set into motion.

Dwarka had become a decent area to live in, with all the residential developments forcing new life into it. But this morning was to bring it historical significance.

On one of the back roads of the area, away from the center of the city, lies a park where people usually come in the morning for light exercise and group activities for good health.

Mr. Prakash was usually the first one to reach there as he was an early riser since his younger days. He tried to keep himself on a fixed schedule to keep himself active. Being in his 60’s, he did not have any other activity in his life. Both his children were well-settled, and he had enough money saved for the simple lifestyle he preferred.

8 lBalan and Dheera: A Tale of Kaliyuga Mayank Mahajan (mAx)

Every day at 5:00 am, he would reach the park and brisk walk for 30 minutes, followed by some light exercises and friendly chats with some acquaintances he had made there.

As he entered the park, he started to walk the track slowly raising his pace. It usually took him 10 minutes to make the whole track, which had a decent length, thanks to the rising awareness of the vitality of such places for the community.

He was almost at the half-way point of the track where the play area for children was situated. One of the reasons why he did not take walks in evening was that he preferred to spend his time in peace.

Just as the play area came into sight, he noticed something unusual. Someone was already there, making him wonder who could it be. He was surprised as nobody else usually came before 05:30.

When he was closer, he tried to get a good look at the person who for some reason appeared to be standing on a swing seat, holding onto the bars.

The morning fog was making it difficult to get a clear look. He kept walking and just as his eyes adjusted to the scene, his legs were suddenly paralyzed, and his eyes were wide open with fear of something unimaginable.

He fumbled as he reached for his phone and frantically reported the sight to the person on the other end of the call.

The park was filled with police and forensic teams, while Prakash was being handled by a doctor. He was in a state of frenzy which to everyone at the scene made perfect sense, as none of them present had seen something as horrible as this.

The inspector in charge of the case was Sathya, a reasonably tall man with a lean posture supported by a well-built body. He was a sincere officer who followed his orders to the letter.

He arrived after a few of the constables, who came first to barricade the park as they were near the area when the tragedy was reported. The way Prakash reported this on the call made the operator extremely anxious, and the response time was prioritized.

But the crime had been committed long before anyone could have helped. The forensics and medical team were requested by Sathya as a quick response, as there was no telling how long the victim had been there. The people were barricaded at the park entrance because the officer did not want to instigate panic amongst the locals.

Everything at the crime scene was carefully recorded, samples were taken and bagged, and the victim who was hung by the swing was dismounted. Even while carrying out the duties, the medical examiner’s team was filled with horror and fear. The sight of a headless body cut wide open would make even the most experienced forensic officer cringe.

The body was bagged and loaded in the ambulance, while Prakash was asked to come to the police station for his statement.

He understandingly agreed and went along. He was still not sure what he could contribute to the investigation, as he was just an unfortunate discoverer of someone’s horrendous actions.

Sathya knew that Prakash might not be of any help, but still even the slightest detail mattered. He had learnt that from experience.

Prakash was in the police station for a short while and was asked to leave, with an understanding that he would be called if needed.

At his return to the station, Sathya was still shocked from the morning scene and was trying to wrap his head around the idea, that a person existed who could muster the courage to commit an act of such atrocity.

He asked for a cup of tea and called the medical examiner’s office to request a copy of the report of what they knew so far, trying to work with what little information was at hand.

He was asked to send someone to collect it in an hour, and that he will be updated about the developments, if the examination of the body reveals more clues to the investigation. He waited for the tea and started working on his report of the incident with the hope that it was an isolated case.

The copy of the report reached him at around 08:30. As he read it, he found himself re-living the horror of the morning scene.

The victim was a male of age between 25 and 35. There was nothing known about his identity or lifestyle as there were no belongings on him, probably as a counter measure thought Sathya.

He had severe signs of physical trauma as if he was hit either multiple times, or by many people at once. The victim also had defensive wounds which meant he had a brief chance to fight back.

The multiple offender theory seemed less likely to the officer.

The report further showed that the victim was restrained first, and probably decapitated after that. The torso had been moved to the park post mortem. His food pipe had traces of wood and had splinters stuck in them, meaning the victim was gagged with a piece of wood or something similar.

This hinted at premeditation and made Sathya concerned about the motives of the killer.

The real horror started when he read that the victim was brutally tortured before the beheading. A sharp instrument was then used to cut him open much like and animal being slaughtered by a butcher.

He was extremely shocked to learn the immeasurable agony the victim went through. A detail that caught his eye was that there were some odd bruises on the victim too.

It was on the back of what remained of his neck, where there were deep pores in a fashion that seemed to be forming a unique shape. There were no burn marks

around the pores, suggesting it to be the work of some kind of specifically designed tool.

His curiosity was peaked but he had nothing much to go on at that time. The medical examiner’s team was trying to figure out more details about the identity of the victim.

Meanwhile, the constables were assigned to enquire in the area around the park, especially at night, to learn if anyone saw anything last night. Additional patrolling units were also organized to discourage the perpetrator from harming anyone else.

Sathya was now only worried about the media, and hoped that they portray the news responsibly and not create a sense of fear in the community.

Fortunately for him, most popular media was busy fueling the insane debates over the political changes that the country was experiencing. He often wondered whether the fact, that people being ignorant about the actual dangers around them, had made the world more empowering to the criminal minded.

He had discovered that mostly people kept blaming those in sight, venting out the frustrations of their daily life at strangers. In doing so, their minds and senses tunneled away from the actual wrongdoers. Maybe he had become cynical deep down, but he did wish people would value life more.

He left early that day to take some rest, because he knew he had to wake up ahead of his schedule with the patrolling reports coming in early next day.

At 3:00 in the morning, Sathya was ready to leave for the station. He lived alone as his family was back in Patna where he was born. He was still not married as he wanted to fulfill his duties as an officer without any distractions. He always thought he will know when the right woman came along.

He rode his bike towards the station, feeling the rare silence of a city which is mostly buzzing with a multitude of noises. The power that gave the city it’s symphony was slightly at rest during that hour.

He reached the station at around 3:30 and found the constables sent on patrol already waiting. He thought they might take longer, but it might have been a short canvas.

As soon as he sat down, he asked about what they had learnt. One of the constables started to described the area.

It was mostly as he suspected, a deserted area at night time being away from the city. The rare people around that area were wayward drunkards, or cabs running to, or from, global customer support centers. It was hard to find anyone who could shed some light on the time or circumstances of the crime.

He arranged to put an advertisement in the local newspaper, and on some local media channels about missing 25 to 35-year-old males, who happened to live around the area of the crime. He knew that the probability of a methodical killer going out of his comfort zone to display such a scene was extremely low.

Meanwhile, he and his team started going through missing person cases reported over the past few weeks with the hope of catching a break.

It was in the afternoon that Sathya was asked by the medical examiner to visit the morgue. It was a fruitless day so far and he was hoping for a usable lead. He was not disappointed as Dr. Geeta, the veteran forensic autopsy specialist who had come through for the department on many difficult cases, had also called to provide the details of the identity of the victim.

The victim’s name was Ajay, a 27-year-old engineering graduate who worked in a call center, and lived in the sector close to the park, in an apartment building.

He was amazed by the information, and Dr Geeta explained that she was able to make a quick ID because the police database automatically pings names which match samples taken during any previous criminal convictions.

The victim was a decent man, who had been once arrested while partying with his friends on an open road when he was 23. It was Diwali and youngsters always act recklessly. There were also some other interesting things about the body that he needed to visually observe and help Dr. Geeta make sense of them.

Before leaving, he asked his junior Amit to take two constables and go seal the victim’s house, and instructed them to not touch anything until forensics had gone through it first. He left for the morgue.

When he arrived there, Dr Geeta was observing something under the microscope. He politely knocked on the door. She was pleased to see him, as she admired his chivalrous and courageous attitude towards life and his work. She asked him to take a seat, and started with the details of the case.

A few moments ago, she was taking a closer look at the spinal cord and found burn marks in the vertebrae, both above and below the C2 piece of the cord. It seemed like the C2 bone was somehow specifically charred, without the need to burn the whole body.

According to her theory, the victim was first subdued in a physical struggle, but unfortunately there was no DNA on the body to prove that. It did seem possible though as the victim seemed physically fit enough to at least put up a fight against a single assailant.

Then there were the pores on the back of his neck. At the moment, she could not explain how they got there, but she was sure that pores were due to burning. Sathya pointed out the contradiction to the preliminary report.

She explained that during the autopsy, she found that the skin on the inside of the pores was burnt as if something extremely hot passed through his neck. Not only that, the skin in the area of whatever flesh remained in the front of the neck was also burnt from the outside.

Finally, the most confusing part for her was the missing C2 vertebra of the spinal cord. Geeta had never come across or heard of any weapon or piece of

equipment that allowed such precise removal of a vertebra, passing through the neck leaving nothing but burn marks and pores in the exact shape of it.

Sathya was befuddled, as the killer’s motives and methods were more unclear than ever.

Apart from the bone, there was nothing missing or meddled with inside the body. He asked if the C2 vertebra was of any medical significance. She could only tell that it was the axis point of the body, and had a major role in allowing the movement of the head, by connecting it to the neck region of the spinal cord. But nothing special enough to have caused this kind of madness.

He pointed out that as it was a headless body it could be possible that the damage to the vertebra was collateral. But still, to Dr Geeta, it didn’t seem to sit right and that was why she wanted to keep him in the loop for this.

Sathya’s phone rang and it was Amit who by now had the apartment under a forensic lockdown.

Just when the officer had been thinking that the case was leading nowhere, it took another turn, as the actual scene of crime was found.

According to Amit, the victim was killed in his apartment and they found his head, which was a whole other horror sight. The head was on the floor in a pool of blood. The victim had lost almost all his blood, probably allowed to drain after his decapitation.

The forensic team bagged the head and were sending it right away to Dr. Geeta.

Sathya informed her, and left for the crime scene in a hurry, asking the doctor to keep him apprised.

When he arrived at the scene, he noticed a familiar face near the entrance. It was Anant, the infamous journalist who had been at the center of many breaking news, controversies and exposés.

Sathya approached him and greeted him with a friendly smile.

It seemed like Anant had already figured out about the death in the park after talking to Mr. Prakash, based on some rumor about the barricading of a public park. Being in his line of work, he had people in every department who owed him favors, so obtaining superficial details like name of the victim or location of the crime scene was easy. He never depended on the details given by anyone. He was a true journalist and only reported things he had verified personally.

Anant wasted no time in asking about the details of the investigation so far. It seemed as though Prakash had told him enough about the state of the body to raise his interest manifolds, but the reporter did not want to run with only half a story.

Sathya allowed him to go ahead and report the details of the murder, but requested him to keep the most gruesome details out, as fear and panic could be caused due to the complete description.

The reporter agreed, but on a condition that he gets exclusive access to the investigation throughout.

The officer promised to keep him in the loop, unless told otherwise by someone with more authority.

Anant was again impressed as he had never seen any officer being so helpful towards the journalists. He appreciated the fact that Sathya understood the responsibility of public awareness, and that he trusted him to deliver the information in the least damaging way.

He asked if he could observe the crime scene, but the officer refused saying it was against regulations and that he already knew that very well.

Sathya had never seen a pool of blood so large, and imagined the horror of seeing a cut off head lying in it, making him more certain of the killer being a pure psychopath, who had separated himself from every speck of compassion for life.

The apartment was in a disarray. It was clear that the victim was attacked and subdued in the living area. He immediately went to see if the neighbors’ statement were recorded as it could give them an idea of the event timeline. A struggle, like the one that occurred in the house, should have attracted attention he thought.

Amit had already spoken to the people living in the two other flats on the floor. They both said the same thing that, it was not uncommon for the victim to have friends over for parties, and he usually played loud music late into the night.

The day before the victim was found was no exception, the music started at around 7:30 in the evening, with some loud thumping and yelling noises which calmed down after a while, and went on till 3:00 am and then the apartment went silent.

Both of the witnesses seemed sure, as one of them could not sleep because of the noise, using the time to finish some office work. While the other had woken up to feed her baby. They assumed that Ajay and his friends went to sleep after that, and so did they.

Ajay was quite short-tempered and that tended to make people cautious around him. But since he also fought many times for the provisions and facilities in the building, the neighbors had accepted him as a good person who was sometimes hard to live with, so they never complained officially.

Sathya asked Amit to call the neighbors once again, and tell them that there was something else he wanted to ask.

They all gathered in one of the other two apartments and Sathya asked them to relax and think carefully about the events of last night.

“Did any one of you see any stranger, or even a familiar face, come or go from the apartment?”

They all thought for a while and none of them remembered seeing Ajay much the previous day. However, one of them had seen him leave at noon. He was talking on the phone and it sounded like he was telling someone to wait as he was on his way.

They added that Ajay was a private person, and would immediately pounce in anger at anyone who tried to pry too much into his personal life.

Sathya finally asked if any of them knew if Ajay had any family members to contact, or name of any of his friends. A lot of people came and went from his place, but no one was sure if there were any long-term friends.

The officer later learnt that despite all his partying, Ajay was basically a loner. His parents died in an accident a few years ago, and he had been acting extremely withdrawn, always looking to drown his pain in noise and alcohol.

Sathya thought that this could have made him an easy target for a killer. But considering the age group and circumstances of the victim, it would not have been easy for the killer to gain such personal access to him, unless it was someone close to him.

But the level of torture, and the display of the torso suggested that the killer was trying to send a message, and not seeking revenge of any sort. He knew the one thing that was missing, that could shed light on the killer’s motive, was the reason. So far, the list of possibilities appeared endless.

He thanked them for their time and got back to the crime scene. He again observed the room with more perspective. There were no bags or clothes to suggest someone was staying over. The bedroom was undisturbed with signs of only one person sleeping in it. The washroom seemed clean too except for some stains in the sink which seemed like traces of blood.

May be the killer washed the weapon or his hands in the basin. It was already marked by the forensics, so he should learn about it soon in the report. He then inquired if Amit had spoken to the guards and if they saw someone leave the building.

The building had three gates and one of the guards remembered opening the gate at around 3:30 for Ajay’s car. As the guard was asleep at the time, and the car had been honking again and again, he hurriedly opened the gate and didn’t remember seeing the face of the driver.

Sathya, who would normally be aggravated at the man, had become accustomed to the negligence of people towards their duties, having witnessed countless incidents being reported daily.

He instructed Amit to stay and supervise the forensic sweep, making sure everything is checked properly for fingerprints or other DNA samples. Meanwhile, he returned to Dr. Geeta to see the head which as described by Amit was a work of pure evil.

At the morgue:

Dr Geeta had received the head shortly after Sathya had arrived at the victim’s apartment.

She opened the bag that contained the head and was taken aback after seeing what was in it. The top of the head had two long pieces, of what appeared to be horns, jammed into it. The rest of it was smeared in dried up blood, giving the head a mortifying appearance. She had never seen anything like this in her entire career.

She gathered the courage to do her job, all the while praying in her heart.

She started to clean the head, gathering the blood for sample. As she cleaned it, she noticed signs of physical trauma on the head similar to the torso. Once she completed the cleaning, she started a closer inspection.

Some of the hair seemed to have been pulled out forcefully from his scalp, as there were smaller wounds apart from the jammed horns. She carefully started to remove the pieces and found that their base had been sharpened to pierce the point of impact.

She took a few deep breaths and proceeded. There were some burns and pores on the skin on the front of the neck. She cut the portion carefully and put it aside. Then she lowered the victim’s jaw to observe the oral cavity. She reacted with barely contained fear on seeing the tongue of the victim, which had been branded with the letter ‘B’.

She took a few photographs for the records, and to show them to Sathya, as this was not a sight she wanted to see again and again. She completed her tests and went to the torso of the victim. She again cut the flesh around the neck from the back and front.

She hated this part of the job and it always made her nauseous, but her nerves had been hardened by years of practice.

She took the flesh samples back to the table, and tried to put the skin from the front of the neck together. It was the same shape as on the back of the neck, an exact imprint of the C2 vertebra.

This case was messing with her head as it made no sense whatsoever. No matter how she tried to justify it, she could not give an explanation for the evidence in front of her.

She knew that without any lead, it would be hard to get a conviction even if a suspect was caught. Her team was analyzing the samples from the crime scene, and it seemed like the killer was completely prepared for every possible slip.

Sathya arrived at the morgue later that day. He received all the details from Geeta and was left horrified.

Nothing made sense as the case was filled with unusual elements, and there was not a thread that connected them. At least not something that the officer could think of.

Almost a month had passed after the murder. Forensics was not able to find any clues at the apartment or the park. The only fingerprints and DNA samples collected from Ajay’s home belonged to himself.

Sathya had ventured every wild theory put forward by his team to the test, and came up with nothing convincing. There had been cases that Sathya could not solve, but nothing matched the magnitude of violence he saw in Ajay’s case.

They had inquired in Ajay’s office to see if anybody else had any professional resentment. All they learnt was only that the victim was an aggressive worker, but mostly kept to himself and didn’t seemed to bother any other staff on duty.

Someone also suggested this to be the work of an animal right activist, but with Ajay having no link to any animal cruelty, and without any clear message at the crime scene, the idea was dropped as well.

The case appeared to be one of those that would remain unsolved to all those working on it.

As Anant and the police department kept the details of the murder to themselves, only limited media attention was given to the case. Mr. Prakash was also asked to keep his silence to prevent a situation of mass panic.

Just when everything seemed to be over, Sathya got a WhatsApp link to a live video being broadcasted on social media. He clicked on the link and was shocked to see a bull running around the city with its horns bearing a human corpse. It was in the Vikaspuri area and the officers there could be seen on the video trying to take control of the situation.

This is what happens when a strong animal like the bull feels endangered. The person must have been messing with the animal and met an unfortunate accident thought Sathya.

For some reason the unusual death of the man in the video made his mind race back to the headless murder victim. Every fiber of his experience kept telling him that a murder of that precision could not be a onetime thing.

But everyone, apart from him, had chalked down Ajay’s murder as an unsolvable mystery, leaving him with no other option but to drop the case.

Delhi was a crowded city and this kept Sathya entangled, like all other officers in solving cases of disputes and petty crimes. He hardly had enough time to deal with the countless complaints that were reported at the police station every day. Hence, chasing after a killer, who in all probability was long gone from the city, was impossible for him.

Late in the evening, when the exhausted officer reached his flat, the bull story had caught a life of its own. The news channels were showing recorded segments gathered from different sources. Some cameras even managed to reach the sight before the bull was calmed down.

On the television, it seemed clear that the person was badly hurt all over, and finally met his demise with the horns going straight through his torso.

It was odd to him that the body was horizontal, as though the man was trying to climb up something and lost balance, falling onto the horns. Also, the downward

facing body in the video didn’t seem to fit, but he had seen worse lately, so he chalked it down to a bizarre possibility.

He ate his dinner and went to bed to get as much rest as possible. He had a habit of going over the notes he had made from cases before sleeping. He had occasionally caught important details when he was relaxed. As he lay down in his usual posture to follow his routine, his phone rang.

It was Dr. Geeta.

He wondered what made her call him at such an odd hour. She asked if it was possible for him to come to the morgue immediately. He sensed a hint of fear in her tone and left for the laboratory at once.

When he arrived, Anant was already there. The officer was surprised as Dr. Geeta usually didn’t allow reporters in like that. He greeted both of them and asked her about the emergency.

She first informed Sathya that Anant, being a popular investigative journalist, had taken consent from the victim’s parents to find out what happened to their son. They refused to believe that their son would be harming that poor animal under any circumstances.

Sathya was still not sure about his own role in the situation.

She added that when she started her examination of the victim of that day’s incident, she found signs of torture almost identical to the ones on Ajay’s body. Moreover, she found the exact same pores on the back and front of the victim’s neck and the letter ‘B’ branded on the victim’s tongue.

To be absolutely positive, she did and autopsy and was puzzled again to find the C2 vertebra missing, and the exact burn marks on the upper and lower vertebrae.

“I think he has returned!” she said to Sathya, who was in utter disbelief.

He was still processing what he had just heard when, like a flash of lightening, it dawned on him – the killer was far from finished.