The Deadly Dozen by Bhattacharyya Anirban

Author:Bhattacharyya, Anirban [Bhattacharyya, Anirban]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

RAMAN RAGHAV

A.K.A. INDIA’S JACK THE RIPPER

‘Ek marenge toh kabhi uthega hi nahin [If I hit once, then he will never rise again].’ 1

—Raman Raghav

I t was 1968. Bombay was muggy, eerily still and depressed. It was only 10 p.m. but the city’s nightclubs had long regurgitated its occupants, the drum sets had been packed. The cigarette butts and dusty footprints on the dance floor were the only reminders of revelry from a few hours ago. The nightclubs should have been alive and full. There should have been music wafting out of the restaurants. But the city lay silent, a blanket of fear wrapped around it. A serial killer was on the loose and nobody wanted to be his next victim.

Raman Raghav saw a light flickering inside one of the houses in a slum alongside the Ahmedabad highway near Malad. Stealthily, he peeped inside and saw a woman playing with and nursing her infant son. Raghav’s eyes quickly scanned the interior of the house and came to a stop on what seemed to be a gold chain around the woman’s neck; it looked expensive. His eyes glistened with greed.

He squatted in the bushes, waiting for the woman to fall asleep so he could strike. But the woman had no intention of falling sleep, maybe her intuition told her to stay awake. Raghav gave up at about 3 a.m. and walked away. The woman lived to see another day. And four more, till Raghav, who had been relentlessly visiting her every night, finally found her asleep on the fifth night.

He slunk into the house. The woman and the child were fast asleep on one bed and her husband on the adjacent one. Raghav took out the iron rod he was carrying—his friend, the akada —and swiftly dealt a fatal blow on the man’s head. A crunch was heard as the impact smashed the man’s skull. The side of his face caved in. He convulsed and a stream of blood flowed out of his mouth. Raghav repeatedly hit him with the rod till the man’s head was a messy pulp of blood, skull and brain.

The woman woke up due to the commotion and as she opened her mouth to scream, Raghav sneered and smashed her head with the rod, splitting it down the middle. It didn’t take that much effort to kill the child, only three blows were enough. Raghav was on an adrenaline high. He snatched the chain from around the neck of the woman and wiped off the blood on it with the end of her sari. Something stirred in his loins at the sight of the dead woman. He tore open her blouse, unbuttoned his shorts and mounted her. With every thrust, her head bobbed and blood and brain dripped on to the floor. Once he was done, he buttoned up his shorts, picked up a can of paint that he found on the floor and was about to step out, when a woman outside spotted him and screamed. Raghav ran away into the night.

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