Gupta murder mystery

It was one of those dark nights in Himachal Pradesh as light faded but the snow continued to fall. A chilling evening was soon continuing to be a frost biting night. Amidst all this, Mr and Mrs. Gupta, were wrapped up in their respective blankets. It was past 8 pm but the pitch darkness outside suggested that the clock should have struck 12 midnight instead. It was not that late in the night but considering that their daughter usually returned home by 6 pm and definitely would inform them of her whereabouts, the anxious parents were right to have their share of concern. The aged couple were clueless on what they could do next. Within an hour, a call jumped them up from their tired slumber. They had dozed off in their anxious wait for their daughter.

It was Sonakshi, their daughter’s best friend. The old couple had just slumped to sleep in their chairs as they anxiously waited for their daughter Nidhi to be back. Sonakshi started enquiring about Nidhi as she had not attended the college whole day and missed all her classes. Nidhi was a brilliant student to be in the top 3 always and never known to have ever missed her classes. Her absence for the entire day, took Sonakshi too much to digest and finally she ended up calling Nidhi's parents to know of her well being. The call at 9 pm promptly prompted the old couple to start locating their beloved daughter. Many a call to near relatives and even close friends yielded no results. Unlike her errant brother Nitin, she regularly maintained her routine of leaving home for her medical college at 7 am and be back home at 6 pm. Pre and post that, she was an able aid to her old mom in matters of cooking and house work while helping her dad with the banking and pension stuff. That was the only way the Gupta family could survive now, given that Mrs. Gupta was a housewife and Mr. Gupta a retired military officer. They did try to raise their children well and though Nidhi ended up in a medical school, Nitin continued on his nefarious ways. Nitin was an alcoholic and spent most of his time outside the house. Stealing money from home or threatening his elder sister for some money was something neither unknown nor new.

The Guptas still tried to call Nitin but had given up even before they got a standard “switched off” reply. It was something that they had expected and were not too fussed about the same. But the glaring inability to reach Nidhi was a cause for a huge concern. With the pitch darkness around and the advent of snow, Sourabh Gupta mustered enough courage to think of getting help from the neighbours to go to a nearby police station . The Sharma's and even the Patnaik's were quick to respond and said that they would be ready in 10 mins.

They kept waiting for over an hour but did not hear from the Guptas. A long police siren disturbed them in the middle of the night, an unusual occurrence in their otherwise quiet neighbourhood. Bodies of Mr and Mrs Gupta were found lying in pool of blood while Nitin unabashedly was crying over them. Completely drunk from his escapades, he was not even aware of what he had done and the consequences behind it. He went on to deny his involvement in the crime and no amount of police questioning would make him alter his stance. This was a tough case for the police to solve and a double murder that too.

It was actually Arun Sharma who had reached there first. Given the cold, muffler and other mittens were a must as his wife got around to gather it, he trudged his way to the Gupta bungalow. Hemant Patnaik and his wife would be on the way soon and with the help of the police and God willing, all will be well. That is when Arun saw the lights at Patnaik’s house were off. Having spoken not a few minutes ago, this was an unusual occurrence. A few minutes later, Arun was at the Gupta mansion only to find it locked from outside. He kept knocking on the door but there was no answer. It was not even 10 minutes ago that he had spoken with Mr.Gupta. The shrieking long and loud sirens of the police jeep echoed in the chill of the night. Arun had no place to go and not a shrub to hide.  He had no option but to meekly surrender. Hemant and Soma Patnaik reached a few minutes later and tried their best to convince the police that they too had got a call from the Guptas. The door was locked but the police had enough evidence to know that the call was made from inside the house. A ‘Daya darwaza tod do’ moment later, Nitin was found standing with a bloodied knife over his dead parents. The scared youngster , dropped the knife and started running towards the door but was swiftly apprehended by the police. The bodies of Sushil Gupta and his wife Sonam lied lifeless next to each other and no amount of pleadings from Nitin could convince the police that he did not have a hand in the brutal killings. The other neighbours continued to pour in and it was a difficult task for the police to clear the small crowd before they could take Nitin away.

Further hard  investigations later, Nitin still stuck to his story that he was innocent and this led police to believe that a larger plot was on the play. Constant police badgering, interrogation and heavy tactics later revealed nothing. Senior inspector Kamble in his 22 years of experience, was wise enough to know that even the most hardened criminal would succumb to such a questioning and here was was wiry 19 year old who would not relent to the unrelenting torture. Something was surely not adding up. Mr. Gupta though 75, was a fit old army man and the portly Mrs. Gupta would have surely put up a fight and an under weight Nitin surely would not be able to overcome the couple. The door locked from outside too raised several questions and while the questions remained unanswered the list of questions started to get longer. Nidhi’s absence added to the mystery.

Police started to work on it’s forensics and pretty soon the cyber cell too got activated. A detailed analysis of the phone calls & the IMEI triangulation report of the mobiles, showed Nidhi to be on the spot of the crime. She was in love with Tanmay, who studied with her in her medical college but was from a different religious and social background. That evening, having spent with Tanmay, Nidhi had hoped to reason with her parents and have a happy harmony and that’s why she had got him home to meet her parents one more time. A verbal fight ensued in the Gupta parivar which led to Tanmay storming out of the house. The heated argument continued further and inadvertently, Nidhi grabbed the kitchen knife and stabbed her father. As her mother tried to intervene, she became the next victim of a love rage that we often hear of. A 21 year old, medical student, whose parents went out of their way to make sure that their children grew up right, finally fell prey to their own doings of saying “it’s only love that matters”. Even as she was in the midst of her moment of madness, she heard a glass shatter in the kitchen. Even as she began to recover from what she had just done, she ran to the door, locking Nitin behind, in her confusion on what she has exactly ended up doing.

While Tanmay languished in the Yerwada jail, Nidhi was on her way to Bangalore in a state bus. Nidhi is still on the run while the Sharma’s business rivalry with the Gupta’s continued to an big question mark on this investigation. Nitin meanwhile continues to struggle with the last memory of holding the knife over his dead parents. 

The case was solved or was it ?