Nandana Sen

Police Inspector Tejpal Randhawa is assigned to investigate the case of the dead woman whose body was recovered from a small pond. Tejpal links this matter with a missing persons’ report filed by Ravi Patwardhan and his father-in-law, and subsequently has the dead woman identified as Sheela, Ravi’s wife. According to Ravi, Sheela had left their home to go to visit her parents. When she did not arrive at their house 24 hours later, he himself had gone to their house, and on not being able to locate her, had accompanied his father-in-law to the nearest police station and filed a missing persons’ report. Tejpal would like to conclude that Sheela was waylaid on her way to her parents’ by person(s) unknown, beaten, and her body was left in the pond. But this case puzzles him, as there was no apparent motive for unknown person(s) to waylay her, as no money has been taken, and her body has not shown any signs of sexual molestation. Taking these facts into consideration, Tejpal starts to …