The store owner didn't remember the face of the culprit who posted the video. He specified the size and build of the man, a reasonably tall and medium built man with a deep-set voice, similar to the one in Mitra's videos. The old man, however, wasn't able to relate and confirm if it was the same person in the video just based on the voice he remembered.
It was chaotic everywhere. Amidst that, Vishal and Sandeep could see that Sashi had been well prepared. It wouldn't have been possible for him to identify a store to upload the video on such short notice: precisely the same day the police busted his usual location of Pritam's store.
Sashi must have had prepared a plan B beforehand in case the police cracked his tracks. If that was the case, he must have already schemed a lot of other backup plans.
Where would he be heading to now that they had found his second location?
"Where could he be hiding?" Vishal mused aloud. He was studying the low-quality CCTV recordings from near the store with a weighted disappointment in one of the observation rooms in the police station. "Either he is still in Bangalore which would indicate that Mitra is here too. Or he has managed to slip away taking Mitra with him, in which case he is sending the videos to someone else who is uploading them on his behalf to mislead us."
"He obviously would be having accomplices. The question is, what is he trying to achieve by expending so many of his resources and efforts. It wouldn't be just to torment a girl and humiliate her publicly," Sandeep answered redundantly.
#
Mitra had been lying on the floor for god knows how long. She felt her legs go numb, and couldn't fathom the pain she felt in her shoulders and spine from the way she was positioned. All her thoughts and emotions were muddled yet vaguely focused on the one nightmare that kept haunting her.
She had indirectly played a part in Lekha's murder. However, over the past twelve years, Mitra had come to accept the assumption that had she intervened and raised alarm when she walked in on the assault, she too would have been abducted and killed. Or silenced in some way. It might have ended on a far worse note.
Mitra hadn't been devoid of the pull of her conscience to the other end of the assumptions: the one where she might have actually scared off the assailants that night had she alerted the neighbourhood and tried to attack them with vigour. It sneaked upon her in her darkest moments that she might have saved a girl.
Through the fuzziness of her conscience, she wondered how Sashi knew about it. No one other than her and Vishal knew about it.
Did he see her turning away?
In that case he was there too and made no attempt to save Lekha either, which renders him a hypocrite for trying to judge her for an action similar to his own.
Was there any other scenario in which he could have known about it?
Yes, if he was the one who had attacked Lekha that night.
This thread of doubt crept slowly into Mitra's mind, not as a full-on blast of suspicion or distress, rather as a slow bane. She wasn't sure if she was thinking straight or being unreasonably paranoid.
If it really were the case that Sashi was the one who attacked Lekha, the implications were too dark and heavy to think about.
No, that's not possible. I would have recognized him if I had seen him that night. It wasn't him.
Really? Would I have been able to recognize him? I don't remember the face of the culprit exactly. It could have been anyone.
Mitra grew so restless with all the speculations and confusion that she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head in torment, holding the sides of her head in her hands with tense pressure, as if squeezing her temples vigorously would resolve the varied grievances of her trapped mind.
It was maddening indeed, and she wailed out in pain.
Sashi watched her from the comfort of his room, the CCTV camera in the basement room streaming the distress of his prey without a filter. She deserves it. The thought kept cutting across his pricking mind with his other qualms about the suffering of his asset.
He had known that the incident of Lekha's murder was like Mitra's Achilles Heel. He had seen her suffer because of it years ago. Which was why he had purposefully brought that up to make her submit to him.
Yes, she had hurt him over and over with her pretences of not knowing him. If she had indeed not remembered or recognized him truthfully, then that was a bigger sin. She wasn't supposed to forget him. After everything he did for her, after all the blood he shed and all the darkness he endured both literally and figuratively, she shouldn't have lived in such oblivion.
She should be grateful to him. She should be happy to see him.
He had, after all, saved her life thrice.
She really should love him for that.
Yet, she was doing none of that.
She is so self-centred and ignorant. She deserves to be hurt, just like I was.
He kept repeating those statements to himself as he watched Mitra lie down on the floor, probably tired from all the mental and physical exertions of the day, and completely beaten. She hadn't touched her food, hadn't dressed the wounds on her hands and didn't even glance up at the window she had broken or the hole she had tried to dig through the wall.
He wanted to relieve her of the torture she was subjecting herself to.
He could never understand why she was so tormented by Lekha's death, why she was so obsessed with pointing out the faults of others, why she had been so intent on finding the woman he had killed a fortnight back, why she was so attached to that boy from her school who had been following her for years, and most importantly why she didn't remember him.
He wanted to know her thoughts, the truth of her shamming, her projection of a righteous person and her attraction to her boyfriend who never seemed to leave her side.
Although he wished to speak to her directly, the broken state of Mitra put him off. She wouldn't be able to listen to anything or speak up in such condition. He would have to wait.