Twist at Tees Hazari
The concerned and the curious alike thronged to the gates of Tees Hazari to witness the trial of the Mehrauli Murder Case. As the doors were thrown open that morning, everyone jostled to reach the designated courtroom for a vantage position. The crowd was seemingly dying to see the accused and his mother.
Partly addressing their curiosity, Gautam walked in with a posse of lawyers led by Mehrotra. As they took much of the front row, the gathering, though felt let down by Sneha’s absence, looked forward to Suresh’s arrival with bated breath. Thus, calm reigned in the courtroom until the clock struck ten when Suresh was brought in. And agog with excitement, the crowd rose as one man. The commotion continued for long with people falling over each other for a better view of the handsome youth. Used as he was to the trials involving celebrities, the daftari felt he had never seen such a disorder in the courtroom before. But as he yelled out for order before ushering in Justice Ms. Sumitra Choudhary, it was pin drop silence.
As the father and the son couldn’t take their eyes off each other, the crowd could discern the pathos of the former and the agony of the latter. In vain, Suresh’s eyes sought for Sneha, and Gautam’s gaze seemed to solicit an understanding on her behalf. Before Gautam could gesticulate to his son to relax, Justice Choudhary entered the arena to take her exalted seat. Even as the assembly rose to a man to fulfill the norm, Suresh bowed to her as though to his destiny. As the Justice took the chair, Pradeep Paranjape, the Public Prosecutor, got up to present the case of the prosecution.
Having received her nod, Paranjape was unequivocal in his eloquent condemnation of the accused.
“Ms. Justice, this is an open and shut case of kidnap, rape and murder, committed by the accused, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, the vagabond son of the formidable Mr. Gautam Prabhu. In this regard, I would like to draw the attention of this court to the F.I.R No. 420/1974 of the South Extension police station, New Delhi. The written complaint of Mr. Saurav Swaroop, the father of Ms. Shanti Swaroop, the murdered woman, is enclosed with the F.I.R.
Ms. Justice might peruse from the Exhibit No. I that at 10 PM on 31 December 1974, Mr. Saurav Swaroop went to the police station to lodge a ‘missing person’ complaint regarding the disappearance of his nineteen-year-old daughter Ms. Shanti. In the said complaint received by Mr. Pramod Rawal, the Station House Officer, Mr. Swaroop had clearly stated that his daughter, Ms. Shanti, habitually returns home by seven in the evening. But on that fateful day, she failed to reach home even by nine. When he failed to trace her at any of the likely places, he feared for her life at the worst and harm to her limb at the least. Then, he went to the said police station to lodge a ‘missing person’ complaint. A worried father that he was, Mr. Swaroop sought the intervention of the police to help trace his daughter. Considering the gravity of the law-and-order problem in our lawless metropolis, the police went on overdrive to find out Shanti’s whereabouts.