Legally Raped

20th of March, 2015. It's Friday. After having a tiring and busy week, today seemed to be comparatively peaceful than the past few days. Being a policeman in a country like India can be pretty tough. In a city like Pune, it's even harder since it's a city under development. No pending cases, no emergency calls, I thought it was about time I should let myself be at ease. Sitting back on my chair I swirled around my table to reach out the daily newspaper which was waiting for me to read it. Looking through the paper to see if any story had mentioned my name in the latest crimes we've solved was the main objective, getting updated about the rest of the world was just a bonus.

As I sipped the hot tea from my cup served just about time, I scanned the newspaper searching for god knows what. Perks of being the law enforcer is that you already know most of the stories before they're out in the newspapers. My eyes halted in middle of a story since they were distracted by the shrilling ring of the telephone, I glanced at the phone thinking about answering it, but a constable picked it up before I could get off my chair. I didn't bother to listen or even look at who received it, since it was a daily routine. Resuming the story I left undone, I could hear the constable talking on the phone with a questionable tone for a while and heard the clattering of the phone which indicated he just hung up.

I didn't even read 5 more sentences and I heard the constable's voice coming closer to me, "Sir, we have to go.", keeping down the half emptied cup of tea and folding the newspaper with a sigh, I asked, "What is it today, Gopale?"

"It's a suicide, sir.""Suicide? Where?", I questioned looking at a young aspiring face of my fellow law servant, Manish Gopale."In Bhosari, sir.", he replied with a slight nod."That's interesting, get the jeep ready. I'll be there in a moment."

On my way to the suicide scene, I kept humming a Hindi song stuck in my head since the morning, I never liked that song but it was the only thing that kept me from losing my mind over the reckless Indian traffic. I guess, I could live with it, "Handling a wife is much easier than handling the traffic here.", I commented, poor Gopale, who was driving, could say nothing but just chuckle. It took us about half an hour to reach the destination, making way through the traffic and small streets. We reached at the entrance of a colony which had a dead end and was pretty narrow for our jeep to take a turn and too risky to drive back in reverse.

"I guess we'll have to walk from here, sir.", said Gopale, turning off the engine. I looked down the narrow colony and with a disappointing sigh, "Yeah, let's go." I stepped out of the jeep, looking around the ill-managed colony. I noticed a crowd in front of a house about a couple of hundred meters inside the colony, which was supposed to be the house we're meant to investigate. Walking towards it, I ran my eyes scanning through the colony filled with multi-storey houses and curious people peeping through the balcony and murmuring to each other. It's always a big deal to see a policeman in your neighborhood in India.

We reached the house of the victim, which had two stories painted in milky white and built in an Indian fashion, every inch of the land occupied by the structure. By the looks of it, the house looked to be recently painted. We made our way through the silent crowd standing outside, reached inside the house which contained the smaller crowd, with a majority of females and a few of them weeping. A young man in white, my guess, he was aged around his twenties, greeted us with his bloodshot eyes and stern figure. Gopale did all the talking. I just listened.

After Gopale finished the questioning, the man in white, who was the husband of the victim. We learned they were recently married. He led us upstairs, and showed us into the room as he waited at the door. I entered the room to a horrifying sight of a bed, occupied by the body of a young lady who sat leaned against the wall next to the bed with her face dropped sideways on her left shoulder and right arm hanging down lifeless with arms beautifully painted with Mehendi, but it was stained around the wrists by blood which dripped out and formed a puddle on the floor. A razor blade lied next to her left hand with blood stains on it edges. A small diary lying on the bed to her left drew my attention, I looked back at the husband with questioning eyes and he hesitatingly answered, "That is her personal diary, I didn't touch it." I walked towards the bed and lifted the diary. A quick overlook gave me the idea this diary wasn't much used. So I opened the diary and noticed only a few initial pages were written on.