The Taj Conspiracy (29 page)

‘Why Republic Day?’

‘By attacking the Taj Mahal, this conspirator is playing a high-stakes game, Sir. And he is ratcheting up the momentum. A significant day in the calendar will give him maximum impact.’

‘That gives us four days.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘The additional security at the Taj Mahal that you’ve requested will be made available to you before the end of the day. The DNA test result, my PA will ensure you get it immediately. As for your suspicions regarding Shri Kriplani,’ he said, a weary note in his voice, ‘I’ll deal with him.’

Unconvinced, R.P. Singh wagged his head. ‘Sir,’ he pleaded, ‘I reiterate, the danger from the BHP leader is real. After all, he
is
one of the instigators behind the Babri Masjid mess. He did galvanise kar sevaks to converge upon the masjid. Where they went berserk and tore it down. And while they were at it, he issued feeble requests on TV for them to stop. He did it once, he can surely do it again!’

The home minister spun back to face him. Resting his arms on the desk, he reverted to his erstwhile advocate’s demeanour. In that avatar, the articulate and very sharp man had argued for several multinational clients with resounding success.

‘Kriplani and I, we go back a long way ... Babri was an uncut stone he picked up and polished. The Taj Mahal is a gem. A world gem. If it goes down, so does Kriplani— he is not that foolish. You have to look elsewhere.’ A furrow broke through the phlegmatic mask.

‘Have you ever failed before, Singh?’ the minister asked quietly.

‘Sir,’ Singh looked puzzled, ‘yes.’

‘And that is what makes you who you are, one of our finest officers.’

The minister stood up. ‘But this time,’ he probed the dry edge of a palm frond, ‘you don’t have that option. This moment is when you face your biggest challenge.’

He walked to a cabinet, withdrew a pair of scissors and examined the brown tip of the frond.

‘A mob looking for some violent sport at the Taj Mahal is a security nightmare. When religion comes into it, even a lathi charge will get beamed to every home in the country, and the ruling party will be declared traitors to Hindus. The conspirator knows that. You have to manage the mob and you have to manage the monument, and your best bet is to keep the two separate, that is, prevent a horde from descending on the monument.’

From behind his thick glasses he contemplated the policeman who sat like a leopard ready to spring.

‘There was a reason I picked you. You are dogged, you don’t give up, you follow every lead. And I am telling you the Kriplani lead is a dud.’ With that he snipped the palm frond.

‘Find the behrupiya, Singh, or we will end up paying a price we just can’t afford.’

Delhi

T
he sky was darkening when R.P. Singh stepped out. After he spoke with the home minister, he had spent time with the PA who was arranging additional troops at the Taj Mahal. Then he called SSP Raghav and briefed him on the new security arrangements.

Outside the North Block Central Secretariat he checked his watch and saw with surprise that it was 4.30 p.m., and time for the bureaucracy to head home. Except, he glanced back in the direction of the office he had just left, the home ministry that was headed by a workaholic.

R.P. Singh proceeded to the Central Government Forensics Science Laboratory. Stalled at a traffic signal, he drummed the steering wheel with his right hand and squeezed a tennis ball with his left. What had started as a way to build strength in his wrists and hands had become a tool that he turned to when he needed to think or de-stress.

A natural right-hander, he could shoot equally well with his left hand. His training had started early, with his father, a general of the Army, who believed a shooting range was where a boy should spend a healthy amount of time. His mantra: defence is the best offence. The general would know, he was a war hero. But a hero can be his own worst enemy.

R.P. Singh felt the familiar bitterness wash his insides. But over the years he had developed the discipline to deal with it. He mentally closed the floodgates, stroked his bald head and turned clinically to the problem at hand.

Now, he worked the kernel of a thought that was niggling him: behrupiya.

The minister had used a word that very appropriately mirrored his own feelings about the case. A behrupiya was an expert at disguise and impersonation. And this case was laden with characters noteworthy for their duality: a Western-educated scholar researching Mughal art; a contrarian director in charge of India’s monuments; a wealthy Hindu refugee running an orphanage for Muslim orphans; a Jat in charge of a monument his forefathers had ransacked.... Arun Toor’s murder had started this off, and yet, investigations by SSP Raghav indicated it was not a case of personal enmity. In which case, the murder was tied to his professional capacity, a supposition supported by the increasingly sinister occurrences around the Taj Mahal.

Suddenly a pile of magazines was thrust in front of his face through the narrow gap where the window was down.

From behind his aviators he saw a malnourished boy, his thinness apparent despite his oversized sweater. He rolled down the window, pushed the magazines away, grasped the boy’s hand in which he deposited a fifty-rupee note with a command, ‘Go, have some anda-bhurji and milk!’

The signal changed, he pushed hard on the accelerator leaving a perplexed boy and exhaust in his wake.

His mind returned to his earlier train of thought. In the gathering of contrarians, Kriplani seemed straitlaced, a fundamentalist, plain and simple. A man infamous for his communal rhetoric and one of the founding fathers of a right-wing Hindu party.

Was the home minister correct in striking Kriplani off the suspects list? And was the behrupiya amongst the cast of known characters, or was there someone else, who had not yet revealed his face and was waiting to make a dramatic entrance....

Delhi

M
ehrunisa fed Professor Kaul porridge, dabbing his listless mouth every now and then. It killed her, witnessing the ruination of a brilliant mind—on most days the professor was incapable of the simplest task. She looked past the dining table to the patio where the constable was sitting.

Apparently on guard duty, he had developed a daily routine of idling on the patio, walking down the lane to chat with the neighbours’ domestic help or pressing Mangat Ram for a continuous supply of tea. And Mehrunisa had caught him eyeing her when he thought she wasn’t watching.

She would talk to R.P. Singh and get rid of the nuisance. In any case, she was more capable than him when it came to defending herself. She had picked up the fitness regimen that she had neglected since her return to India: the aerobics video had been retrieved and the dumbbells dusted.

The constable heaved himself out of the chair and tugged his belt over his belly. With a shake of her head, Mehrunisa returned to the cereal bowl. As she fed the professor she noticed several grey hairs had sprung on his ears—he probably trimmed them for she hadn’t noticed them before. Mehrunisa made a mental note to add that to his grooming requirements, tasks she shared with Mangat Ram.

Most days Mehrunisa could cry at her tragic-comic situation. Instead, she looked for ways to distract herself.

Refusing to sigh, she scanned the newspaper headlines. A report caught her eye: ‘New nuisance at the Taj Mahal’.

Her heart skipped a beat. She read it hurriedly.

Apparently monkeys were proving a big menace at the monument: shrieking at tourists, dislodging clay flowerpots, snatching food items from unsuspecting visitors.... In her visits to the Taj complex she had always encountered them, and as precaution, she never carried any food item.

Perhaps, she mused, there was a way to train these monkeys to guard the Taj against miscreants—a vanar sena, like the monkey army of Lord Hanuman in the
Ramayana
, for the Taj Mahal!

Agra

B
y the evening of January 25, two supplementary police units had arrived to beef up security in the outer Yellow zone of the Taj Mahal. A hundred additional armed policemen of the Provincial Armed Constabulary were deployed at various strategic points in the outer periphery of the complex. Sandbag bunkers, manned by police personnel with automatic weapons, were set up beside the outer entry gates.

On orders of the home minister, the air space over the Taj Mahal was to be sanitised until the dawn of January 27. Security had been tightened at different airports, railway stations as well as bus stations all over Uttar Pradesh.

At the Taj Mahal, the carrying of bags inside the monument was already forbidden, and in the run-up to Republic Day, additional restrictions were imposed on carrying water bottles or any other liquids into the complex. As SSP Raghav oversaw the new security arrangements, R.P. Singh strolled on the plinth, hands clasped behind his back, the mist swirling at his ankles.

He chased the skeins of the case in his mind, wondering what he was missing. Despite the enhanced security, despite the round-the-clock vigil, despite the new measures, he knew he was missing something....

He looked up and watched the mist roll in from the Yamuna as it blurred the contours of the marble monument, rendering it hazy. A similar fog had blanketed his reasoning, he reprimanded himself.

Where the hell was the bloody behrupiya hidden?

Delhi

S
hri Kriplani had finished drinking a glass of clear urine. It would be a good day—he felt it in his bowels. Just then a call from the home minister came through.

A CBI officer was baying to put the BHP leader in jail and I am barely managing to restrain him
, the home minister said.

Rana Pratap Singh! Kriplani recalled the arrogant CBI officer, the memory of whom threatened to despoil his disposition.

The home minister was continuing in his calm voice as if he were discussing a sitar recital.
The policeman had a reputation for being apolitical and honest.

Kriplani flushed, despite the cool weather and the healing power of the urine therapy. He knew what the home minister was doing—claiming to be his friend while holding a knife at his neck. It was what politicians did.

He had an answer for that stratagem: brazen it out.

He countered the allegation hotly: ‘This CBI officer, what proof does he have?’

None, the minister assented, but that wouldn’t stop him from hauling a suspect in for questioning and imagine if media were there to live broadcast it.

‘Tell me Home Ministerji, why would you waste my time—and yours—with such speculation?’

Looks like I have offended you, Kriplaniji. I was merely— warning—you, as a friend.

Shri Kriplani did not miss the significant pause and emphasis that bookended ‘warning’.

Meanwhile,
the minister continued blandly,
I have some information to share regarding telecom licenses, that is—if— Kriplaniji, you are willing to cooperate
....

The biggest supporter of the BHP was a large Indian corporate that was looking to enter the expanding telecom industry. A hint was enough for a seasoned player: Kriplani snorted and grunted simultaneously.

He had always believed in keeping his fingers in several pies....

Agra

J
anuary 26 dawned in Agra, wet and cold, a thin drizzle adding to the problems of the security personnel but doing nothing to deter the large number of visitors who had descended upon the monument on a public holiday. The additional security precautions drew complaints as people discarded their bags and bottles at the gate and were frisked twice by policemen with dogs. The lengthening queue of visitors snaked out of the forecourt, the squelchy ground steadily littered with candy wrappers, paper, crushed kulhars, and fallen food as cigarette smoke mixed with vapours and hung in the air.

SSP Raghav, from his post beside the great gate, and R.P. Singh, from atop the marble plinth, watched the proceedings intently. Plainclothes policemen who mingled with the crowd were keeping a lookout for any miscreants and were in constant communication with the officers.

As the day progressed, the overcast sky cleared and Singh could have sworn he heard a collective gasp from the vast throng. He quickly spun on his heel to identify the source that had elicited that shock—the late noon sun had emerged from behind clouds to drape Taj Mahal in pale light. Abruptly the monument had changed colour, its white marble blushing in the lambent winter sun. Relieved, Singh allowed himself a slight smile.

And much like any regular day at the monument, as closing time approached, visitors departed, the stragglers were ushered out by security guards, entry gates were barred, and the Taj returned to its serene splendour. The only incidents that day had been a scuffle between two youths and a monkey scare as the animal snatched a camera straight out of the hands of a Japanese tourist.

R.P. Singh rotated his tense shoulders and had a word with Raghav who spoke with the officers—there was to be no let-up in their vigil until dawn. Then he called the home minister and briefed him: there was no untoward incident to report.

The absence of a security incident at Taj Mahal should have been good news to the CBI officer but he was too experienced to believe in fairy-tale endings. The mysterious case of the Taj conspiracy still remained unsolved, and with the nameless behrupiya still to be identified, the conspiracy was very much a work-in-progress.

Delhi

M
ehrunisa descended the steps. They were narrow, uneven, hewn out of rock, with tufts of grass poking out of crevices. The stairwell wound steeply, seemingly forever. When she craned her neck downwards, she saw nothing; around her, high walls barred any view. She had been on the flight of steps forever, yet had reached nowhere. As she rounded the corner, she came face-to-face with a severed head leaking blood that dripped on her shirtfront. Black hair swept back from a high forehead, sideburns streaked with grey. Coal-black eyes. A strong aquiline nose. Salt and pepper stubble.

It was Papa.

She tried to scream, swivelled to return, but the steps had vanished, and she plunged into a dark cavern.