Moon Gazer continues……

On 22 December the same year, as the day broke, I got a call from my district control room that a murder had taken place at R-12A, Hauz Khas. I rushed to the spot where the ACP, station house officer (SHO) and the local police station staff were already present. The scene of the crime was blood-curdling and horrific. Shraddha Khetrapal, a young and vivacious girl aged twenty-four, lay battered to death in her bed. The room had been ransacked and the poor girl’s clothes and personal effects lay scattered all over the room. It was clear to us that this was a case of robbery with murder, much like the South Extension incident.

Shraddha lived with her mother and brother in a spacious bungalow. Her room was on the ground floor, at the rear of the house overlooking the kitchen garden. The premises had nothing to show for peripheral security and approaching the girl’s room was easy. It was only a few steps from a public thoroughfare at the rear of the bungalow, across the tiny kitchen garden. All that was required to break into the room was to prise open the fragile latch on the inside of the bedroom door that opened into the garden.

Curiously, the victim’s next of kin did not suspect robbery as the cause of her murder. They were quick to tell us that she had a paramour whom they didn’t approve of, and it was he who must have killed her. But the crime scene investigation made it clear that the motive was robbery and robbery alone. Killing the poor girl was only incidental to facilitate the looting.

As we looked around the crime scene, I spotted a framed black-and-white photograph of the young victim smiling at us serenely, following us wherever we went. She was strikingly beautiful and looked full of life. The experience of rummaging through whatever was left of her belongings, while she had left this world forever, was rather unsettling and eerie.

To be continued……