The Abysmal Chasm

Chapter 23

The last thing Sai told Virat before they were rudely interrupted by the terrorist was to not give in to a terrorist. Sai's exact words were, "Do not release Sadanand—do not give in to a terrorist, not again Virat Sir." Virat felt a punch in his stomach. Right then, she had proven she was Inspector Kamal Joshi's daughter. And Virat realized that once again, he had fallen short of what Sai wanted in her life partner. Like always, the harm was done, he could not go back and erase the last few months, but he was determined that he would never do something like this again in the future. But for that, he needed Sai to be in his life, his north star, so he wanted to tell Sai that everything would be alright. He was going to fix everything. He wanted to assure Sai that this time he was not going to let anything happen to her, while at the same time, he was going to keep his duty above all. But, Shruti had not allowed him to say anything.

"Enough of that! Listen Virat, by now you know what I am capable of. So if you want your wife alive, do what you've been asked to do. You have three hours. I want Sada and in return you get your wife. I will text you the meeting point."

"Why are you doing this? You don't even care for Sada, so why?"

"All you need to know Virat is that your wife's death is a trigger away...so don't waste time." Shruti disconnected the line.

Vikram was back with the information on the stolen car's owner that was used for Sai's abduction. Virat needed a miracle, and he got one. The owner had installed a GPS tracker for exactly such a day. Within ten minutes, they had access to the tracker and now had the last location of the car. They now knew the vehicle was abandoned in a village called Matkazari. It was about 22 kms from Nagpur. Since the car had been parked for a while, Virat was sure Sai had been taken elsewhere.

Virat needed Sada's help. "So what do you know about Matkazari? The car Sai was abducted is parked in this village." Virat asked Sada as he laid out the area map before Sada. Sada took a few minutes looking at small talukas around Nagpur. "We have sympathisers all over the this area but two places stick out, Sakli and Bhiwapur."

"Why these two?"

"Well, we have a lot of places to go to when we need to go underground. For obvious reasons different group members know about different hideouts. There is one hideout in Sakli that only the four of us know of. Shruti, Suresh, Ranjan and me. And Bhiwapur, well that's a special one. It's more than just a place to go underground. It's like a memorial for Shruti's brother, Shivam."

"Wait a minute, Shivam was Shruti's brother? You told me he was killed by Kamal Sir...but why would he be so far away from his station?"

"Well, this was about four years ago. That Kamal Joshi had been on our tail since he took charge in Gadchiroli. He had so much intel on us, I was sure but could never prove that one of his men had joined our group as a covert operative. So like always, he got to know about our mission, and he landed there to thwart the resurgence of naxal-dehshat as he called it in Amgaon. Shivam was leading that mission. That was one of our key areas that we had lost to the police some ten years ago; we needed to recapture it. But Shivam got killed in the crossfire by Kamal Joshi.

"Shivam's ashes are immersed in the Bhiwapur lake. Shruti was very close to her brother. And must have wanted to keep his memories alive. Some time back I came across a land deed for a farmhouse in Bhiwapur. Shivam used to often talk about owning a farmhouse and throwing lavish parties like the movie stars. I am sure she also bought that as a safehouse because no one, absolutely no one knows about it."

"So the more likely thing is she will be in is Bhiwapur. But where exactly?"

Sada went through his phone again. It was a picture of a land deed in Bhiwapur. "I don't know why I had decided to take a picture of this. Well perhaps it was for this day...."