News Chase

Chapter 16: Shoot the ghost

‘Police to shoot the headless human on sight,’ screamed the headline poster of the Evening News hanging by the newspaper Stall.

Anand on the way home, trod hard on the brake. ‘How can they shoot a non-existing object,’ he muttered, parked the Jawa, crossed the road and bought a paper.

The front page news report said the headless human scare had been spreading to new areas of the city. The police patrol had been intensified, and all complaints of suspicious movements were being verified. Asked what he proposed to do about it, Police Commissioner S. Paulraj told the press that orders had been issued to shoot the scary object, if it refused to surrender.

Anand thought it was an unwise statement. By giving a shoot order, the commissioner had vested some credibility to a baseless news story.  He should have called some of his trusted media friends, and briefed them off the record, so that the scare would have died down by now.

All India Service Officers must be given a crash course on using the media, by carefully placing news plants, he reflected, and called the commissioner from the phone booth attached to the shop.

‘Paulraj,’ he heard the cool confident voice at the other end.

‘Sir! Anand here.’

‘Hi… Anand. Why not come over for a late evening coffee, if you are free.’

‘The knock on your door sir…it’s me,’ Anand disconnected.

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The colonial type, double floor police commissioner office and the vast wooded court campus were divided by a common wall. They appeared eerie in the half moon. Lights came through a few windows.

Anand parked the motorcycle under a tree, and walked

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towards the spacious office of Paulraj on the ground floor.

The main door with the name S.Paulraj IPS was locked.

Anand went to the camp clerk, who got up, tapped the connecting door and opened it for Anand to go in.

‘You and the coffee came together,’ remarked Paulraj, while gesturing at the orderly to serve Anand as well.

‘So... who addressed your brain storming session today?

I guess Gopal is away at Hyderabad?’

Anand knew that the Intelligence Section’ (IS) attached to the Commissioner’s Office functioned as the eyes and ears of the Commissioner, and watched the movements of all VIPs, as well as undesirable elements in the city. He hoped the meeting hall of the club was not bugged. It is possible to prosecute Somu, if proved that he abetted removing the gold from the airport cooling pit.

‘You would have known it by now,’ Anand sent a feeler, while thinking that the hall needed to be checked out for possible bugs.

‘Not really; our hands, tables and shelves are always full. Unless something very serious happens, or a formal report is lodged, our policy is not to interfere,’ Paulraj clarified.

‘Good,’ Anand said non-committed. He wondered if the former Police Director General at the meeting would think of the criminal angle to the Somu story.

He changed the subject.

‘So… you have decided to shoot that headless joker?’

‘There is neither a headless joker, nor will there be any shooting. I said it just to throw a scare on some fools, if they were deliberately frightening public, exploiting the charged situation,’ Paulraj grinned.

Suddenly the red phone purred softly, and with a smooth movement of his long hairy hand, Paulraj scooped it up.

‘I see...’ he said in his clear voice.  ‘You have detained the target? Not a word of it on the mike. Media should not know. Bring him straight to my office.’

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Paulraj had a reputation that he never lost his cool, even under extremely trying situations. It was impossible to gauge from the tenor of his voice if he was happy, angry, stressed or severe.

The patrol officers on night duty suspected that Paulraj listened to all their communications on the police wireless system. Whenever there was an emergency, whether midnight, or small hours, he came instantly on the mike, and gave precise orders in the same tone without any trace of sleepiness or fatigue.

Anand enjoyed watching the way Paulraj worked.

During day time, there would be bundles of files on his desk, the wireless crackling, the cricket on the TV and a couple of visitors in front of him.

His one eye will be on the file, another on the TV, an ear on the wireless while talking to visitors. Suddenly he would exclaim –‘hey…poor hit…that could have been a sixer!’

Anand guessed there was some serious development, and looked at him puzzled. Media included himself, as well?

‘This is strictly off the record,’ Paulraj picked up the coffee and looked at Anand.

‘Yes! Whatever it is,’ Anand responded reaching for the coffee.

Off-the-record is a gentleman’s agreement between the news source and the journalist, based on years of personal trust and friendship.  If Paulraj did not trust Anand, he would have told the caller to speak to him after five minutes, and tactfully send out Anand with some excuse.

Now that the little formality over, Paulraj was his usual self. With an enigmatic smile, he explained: ‘My Sembium patrol team claims they had detained the headless clown. They are on the way and called me from a wayside phone booth. Only the four members of the patrol team, you and I know about it. Let it remain that way, till I get more information.’

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Paulraj pressed the intercom, asked Assistant commissioner

(Intelligence)  to come along with the Law Assistant.

Anand heard the sound of a jeep braking outside the office. Soon, four persons led the giant of a man, handcuffed, into the room.

The cops smartly saluted their chief. Paulraj acknowledged it.

‘Sir! This is the target – Karuppu Kumar.’

Paulraj eyed him, mentally very alert, and turned to the inspector. ‘What happened?’

There was a mild tap on the door, AC (IS) Kiran Doss and Legal Advisor Gopakumar walked in. Paulraj gestured them to sit down.

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Inspector Krishnamurthy in charge of the team reported: ‘Sir, this Karuppu Kumar is a criminal, operating all over the State. He was released from Vellore prison two months ago. We found him stealthily walking along a dark alley. When we spotted him from a distance, all of us thought he had no head. Only when we got near him, with my pistol drawn and ordered him to stop, he suddenly turned towards us, and grinned.

His head is too small and was hidden behind a high collar black shirt; we thought he was the person, posing as the headless man.’

All gazed at Karuppu Kumar, who remained still; his eyes restless and alarmed. With a casual glance at Kumar, the Commissioner satisfied himself that the suspect was not harmed.

The inspector continued: ‘Sir, our head constable Krishnan identified the culprit; his specialty is to remove valuables through open windows. He is also good at pulling heavy steel wardrobes towards the window, open it from outside and steal the jewellery inside. He had never resorted to violence in any of the theft cases, and was jailed three times for house thefts, without trespass.’

 ‘What was it that you were about to speak about the

headless…?’ Paulraj asked.

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The inspector gazed at Anand, hesitated and looked at the Commissioner.

‘Go ahead,’ Paulraj said. He asked the three policemen to take away Karuppu Kumar to the reception hall, close the door and windows and remain inside.

‘Well sir. Please excuse me sir, if my thinking was wrong. We spotted him in the dim moonlight, from a distance; because of his dark colour, big frame, high collar and small head, we thought he was indeed the fake headless human. If he lifts his shoulder and ducks the head under the high shirt collar, the head is invisible from the rear.’

Paulraj knew what he was suggesting, but wanted to hear it from the inspector.

‘So…what are you suggesting?’

‘Sir. We all know there are no headless human, stalking people. But the public and the media wouldn’t accept it. So why not say there was a reason for the scare, and we had tackled it?’

Paulraj remained thoughtful for a few moments. ‘Okay. You too please wait with others in the hall; tell my orderly to get you all some biscuits and coffee. I shall get back to you soon.’

‘Shall I go sir? Anand got up to leave.

‘No. No. I want you here. Your opinion from the media angle would be invaluable,’ Paulraj said pushing the cigarette packet towards Anand.

‘Then why not order some more coffee,’ Anand suggested.

‘Sure! He said pressing the buzzer. ‘All of us would need it to stimulate our brains,’ and gestured to the orderly.

Briefly Paulraj explained the situation, and the inspector’s suggestion to Doss and the legal advisor.

‘Now the question is whether we should brand Karuppu as the headless human and put a full stop to this nonsense?’

After a brief hesitation, Doss said: ‘Sir, the point is Kumar is a criminal and possibly involved in several bureau-pulling cases. We may charge him only in one or two reported cases, if he agrees to admit that he had been roaming in those places, where there was a scare. This would save us a lot of man-power and night patrol.’

‘And you Gopi’ he looked at the Legal Advisor.

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‘As long as you stick to the crime of theft, there won’t be any problem. You can’t charge him for scaring the public unless there is a complaint and deliberate intention on his part to do that with some strong motive…what we call mens rea in legal parlance.  The act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty. May be, you can say the initial media reports, and its impact gave him the idea to exploit the situation to his advantage.’

‘Do you think the media would buy the story?’ he asked Doss.

‘Sir, we can get some long-shot pictures of Karuppu in low angle and hazy light, so that his head will not be visible. A reporter of the newly started vernacular paper invented the story to boost the paper circulation; he is desperate to end it. Reporters of other vernacular papers also want an end, as their news editors pester them to come up with interesting follow ups every day. This is a face saving story for them all; so I don’t think they would seriously probe into the matter.’

‘And you Anand,’ Paulraj looked at him.

Anand crushed out his cigarette in to the gleaming ashtray.

‘Sir. I don’t like the plot. You have seen the man; he is a giant - six foot two inches tall with a proportionate body. The media stories say he just vanished. You think someone of that physique could just vanish?’

The three remained silent, as coffee was served.

‘Again,’ Anand continued: ‘He is a vagabond. A publicity minded lawyer might opt to argue the case free of cost. He would tear the case apart. It might be possible to prove that Karuppu was nowhere near the sighted spots on the nights. Karuppu himself might grant interviews to willing journalists and talk to jail mates, once he was inside the safety of the prison. God forbid! If it happens, the headless human story would return with a vengeance!’

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Paulraj looked at Doss and Gopi. Both agreed this was possible.

Paulraj drew in a long slow breath.

‘Okay; I prefer to play this by the rule. As you go out Doss, please tell the Inspector to check if Karuppu is involved in any crime. If not, release him.’

The two got up, stiffened to attention, bowed and left. Total silence prevailed in the room.

Anand and Paulraj looked at each other, as if afraid to break the spell of silence.

Suddenly the wall clock began to strike.

Anand got up slowly, and waited; as it struck twelve and before the silence descended again, Anand said: ‘Sir. Here is something. Off the record, of course.

On Monday, our paper will publish an in-depth story on the Chennai ghost, similar ghost stories in history, and about scare mongers; hope it would bury deep the current round of public panic.’

‘I hope so. Please do that; your write up will have a lot of credibility. Smaller papers wouldn’t dare to go against it.’

As an afterthought, he said: ‘try to include that old British jumper jack stuff and some similar stories also in it.’

‘Certainly, Sir.’

Anand drained the coffee, and walked towards the door after wishing him good night. He heard a jeep starting up, and saw headlights moving towards the exit gate.

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