Devil’s Advocate continues ………….

I beckoned the tall man over and asked him, ‘Did you kill Bawa Gurcharan Singh?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said with a straight face. ‘What is your name?’
‘Sir, Manjeet Singh.’
Even though the incident had taken place nearly twenty years ago, I remembered some facts of the case.
‘You were not alone when this happened. There was someone else with you.’
‘Sir, there were two other people with me.’ ‘Where is the main guy?’
‘Sir, I was the main guy. It was I who pulled the trigger. The Mathura Police killed my accomplice Brij Mohan in an encounter later.’

This again rang a bell and memories came rushing in. A close relative of a senior colleague (a former commissioner of the Mumbai Police) was kidnapped from his home in Jhansi in August 1991 and kept hostage.

The ransom demanded was staggering and the hostage’s family was not in a position to pay it. My colleague asked me to help. He had come to know that Shailendra Sagar, the senior superintendent of police (SSP), Jhansi, was my batchmate. I called up Shailendra who, of course, was aware of the case and said he was doing his best. Through good luck and some smart sleuthing, not only did Sagar rescue the hostage, but he also killed the kidnapper Brij Mohan Singh in a fierce encounter that took place in a sugar cane field in Mathura.

I crossed paths with Gurcharan Singh under circumstances that were rather convoluted. To explain them I need to give a bit of background on some of the momentous events that took place in our country in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. One such event was the mass agitation against the Mandal Commission recommendations.

To be Continued ………….