Amitav Ghost: Sample Chapter

The Mystry of Murder

"First of all, I would like to thank the court and all the judges of this Constitution-bench for allowing me to have a closed session to keep the privacy of Miss Priyakshee intact while I present this diary." Neti, in a black robe, said and smiled with assurance as our gazes exchanged.

This was just another hearing for Neti, but for me this was a question of life and death. I was convicted of kidnapping and killing my fiancée Priyakshee within a week of our engagement. Yes, we came closer very quickly, within months. I became fond of her work as soon as I met her, and I felt close to her after knowing that she, like my grandma, could see the future in dreams. But this was not it, her perpetual dedication to work, a straightforward but considerate nature, and gradually I found so many reasons to be with her. Before disappearing, Priyakshee wrote a will with me as the nominee for her assets. So now everyone is having a doubt on my motive to get engaged with her, however"

"We object." The scream from the prosecutor brought me out of my thoughts on Priya. "The court has made several failed attempts to gain access to this digital diary of Miss Priyakshee from Mr Amit as he is the caretaker of it in her absence, and he kept denying it on the basis of the old 'Protection of Personal Information' act." One of the prosecutors claimed. 

I could see that shine in the eyes of Neti, enjoying that his opponent doesn't know his next move.

"And now when the case is against them, they are using it to misguide the court." The prosecutor continued. "The prosecution requests the court not to accept this digital diary of the dead Miss Priyakshee as" 

"She is not dead." I screamed; Neti rushed to me. "She is alive!" I screamed again before Neti grabbed my arm; I held a sharp stab of pain beneath my face. Half of my body was in severe pain, I'd been tortured by police in exact ways Priya had seen in her prevision dreams; I found it after reading her diary.

The main judge on the bench of five was screaming "Order, order."

"I'm sorry on behalf of my client, my lord, but I want to make a note in court that Miss Priyakshee should only be considered missing until some strong evidence of her death is not presented to the Court," Neti said, still squinting at me with denial to repeat this fault.

"But there is no reliability of this diary." Prosecutors twitched his face.

Neti passed two packets to prosecutors; smiled with a pinch of roguishness. The judges already had similar packets. "This packet has been received directly by the court from the manufacturer of the digital diary; the yellow declaration document guarantees that the printout on the pink sheets is a replica of the digital diary written by Miss Priyakshee from 01-January-2019 to 31-July-2019."

"Amit could change the content of the diary before printing. He had access to it before we took him into custody." Prosecutors interrupted.

"Declaration document also says that the screen of the diary was capable of fingerprint recognition and no typing has been done by anyone except Miss Priyakshee." Neti continued with a smirk, without heeding the interruption. "Also, before prosecution questions, this diary can be written with speech recognition. The colourful printout in the blue sheets indicates separate speakers in different colours based on sound samples submitted. There are mainly three voices, one Miss Priyakshee, the other Mr Amit, and the third one an unknown voice which diary highlighted as AV, however, the pattern of the third sound matched with that of Miss Priyakshee."

"Mr Neti." The head of the bench finally spoke. "Do you want to say that this diary will guide us to the possible convict?"

"No sir, this diary will tell us the reason for Miss Priyakshee's disappearance. I request the Court to allow me to read the complete diary without any interruptions and then judges may decide whether to consider the report of Dr Mann, the psychiatrist assigned to this case, to consider whether Miss Priyakshee was patient of Schizophrenia and her disappearance was her own choice because of the parallel life she was living inside her mind."

"We object," the prosecutor screamed again.

"Objection is overruled. The court orders the prosecution not to interrupt the diary-reading session and note all the questions for later discussion. Please proceed, Mr Neti."

"Thank you, sir, before I turn these pages, I want to repeat the highlights of this case. On 07-July-2019, my client, Mr Amit, got engaged to Miss Priyakshee in a grand ceremony. Being working in the same office, Mr Amit and Miss Priyakshee managed to get a week's leave to celebrate the start of their relationship. On the night of 08-July-2019, my client went into a partial coma state at his flat and police took him to the hospital on 15-July-2019. We've already submitted medical evidence of my client's illness. CCTV footage of both the front and rear side of his flat proves that he didn't leave his flat for seven days. Also, there were no incoming or outgoing calls from his number and no additional sim has been found in his possession. So, there is no direct or indirect involvement of Mr Amit in Miss Priyakshee's disappearance. Also, I would like to play Dr Mann's findings recorded in the presence of the bench yesterday as he was not available today." Neti pressed a button over the telemetry machine in his hand.

I want to inform the Honourable Court that according to my findings, Miss Priyakshee could be a case of dual diagnosis for Schizophrenia. 

From the analysis of dreams written in the diary of Miss Priyakshee, there are two aspects of her dreams. First, which she sees as part of intuition, another, which she sees as part of imagination. As for the reality of her actual prophetic dreams, real events happen later and we've submitted video recordings of the people involved in the events she has seen in dreams. Also, there are scientific proofs of individuals having such a strong gut feeling, so we have not considered it an illness. However, to prove that her imaginary dreams were actually prophetic she perhaps started seeing the imaginary persons and events as reality, which most likely triggered Schizophrenia. Another reason which I found could trigger her Schizophrenia was the fondness she slowly developed towards Mr Amit. There is a possibility that because of her introverted nature towards male figures, her mind created an imaginary character AV whom she turned into Amit after feeling comfortable and connected with.

The reader of the diary will be able to distinguish between her previsions and imaginary dreams just by the number of details she had written in support. For the prevision dreams she mostly remembered the flash of an event or a scene or two, however, because the imaginary dreams were her mind's origin, she remembered every detail of the imaginary world she had made. I've submitted a detailed report of my analysis to the court, still, any conclusion can be made only after her brain scans like CT - Computed Tomography, and MRI - Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

"And now I'll continue with the diary reading." Neti briefed, and looked at me.

He was still thinking that I didn't want to present the diary as proof because I was considerate about Priyakshee, but actually, I was more considerate about me this time. There was no other way to get out of this allegation and conceal the truth of what had happened to her.

So, I smiled at Neti with approval to go ahead and he turned the pink page of the hard copy diary in his hand.