English Literature – Stories ☆ Mystery of missing bank notes… ☆ Shri Vishwas Datye ☆

Shri Vishwas Datye

~ Mystery of missing bank notes… ~  Shri Vishwas Datye

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“Yogesh, this time it is your turn to share some interesting and memorable experience”, Ganapati Chodankar said smilingly.

Ours is a group of school friends. Yogesh Jadhav, Ganapati Chodankar, Rakesh Gupta, K. Shridharan and myself Kali Gogoi. All are retired now. All from different professional carriers. Our friendship stemmed from our days at public school at Dehradun. A friendship that has survived over 5 decades and we still meet over an evening, once a month, at our common sports club, over a glass of beer. Barring some exceptions, this ritual has become part of our life. All of us look forward to these evenings for a wonderful time together.

Yogesh retired from the Investigative branch of the police department. Ganapati retired as senior doctor from government hospital. Rakesh has handed over his small business to his son. KS [ K Shridharan ] worked with a large multinational company. I myself has been a senior officer in central government.

Apart from catching up with the developments during the last months, we enjoy sharing our interesting experiences emanating from our mutually exclusive fields of operation.

In this small group, Yogesh always needed some nudging to speak and Rakesh had to be stopped once his flow of words started. Responding to the request from Ganapati, Yogesh gave a Buddha style smile and looking into the beer glass went into some sort of reverie. “Come on Yogesh”, I prodded.

After a gap of some pregnant silence, Yogesh said, “friends, I was thinking of a case which we could never crack. You may also find it intriguing.”

He took few more seconds to collect his thoughts and started.

“Those days, I was placed in Jabalpur. A young girl had registered a case of some missing cash from her possession. She was very distressed but did not suspect anybody. On preliminary enquiry and investigations our police on the routine jobs had no clue. As such, this case was reported to me for further investigations” 

As was my normal practice, I asked for the FIR to get some idea of the complaint. It mentioned that she had kept a sealed envelope containing cash in the drawer of her table. After few months, she noticed that the envelope felt very thin and light. Obviously, the thick wad of currency notes had reduced to very few notes.

She suspected that something was wrong because the seal was intact. She did not open the envelope for fear that nobody would believe her once the envelope was opened. She reported the theft to the police and handed over the envelope to the police for investigation.

After thorough inspection of the seal of the envelope, I too was completely intrigued. A close inspection of the envelope indicated that it was handled often. Like it happens for any used envelope the edges were somewhat worn out and at one end the paper had worn out so much as to show a tiny slit. All seals and signatures were intact. We concluded that this slit on the edge must have occurred due to the wearing out of the envelope during handling and friction inside the drawer of the table. It was so tiny that no one could imagine to remove anything through it from inside the envelope. Prima facie, the whole case was quite inexplicable.

I visited the home of the girl. To my trained eyes, she did not look the crook type. Still, I had to check for the authenticity of her claim. I requested her to share with me the full development right from start.

“Sir, myself and my younger sister live in Jabalpur. We hail from the village Bamhori. Our family is not very well to do. I am Sheetal and my sister is Narmada. We both moved to Jabalpur so that I can do some job for earning and also for supporting my sister who is pursuing her higher education. I am doing a job of a receptionist in the hospital of Dr Chandawar.

Knowing that we two sisters will be on our own in this large city,  our uncle Damodar lovingly offered us help in case of any emergency. He handed over to us a wad of Rs 500 currency notes as a loan. We were very nervous to accept such large help. We had never seen such large sum in our life time.

Then he suggested that this amount is only for emergency. He counted the notes to 100 in front of us, put those into a brown paper envelope and sealed the same with staples and gum tape on all four sides. He signed on those tapes to secure the amount properly. He told us clearly that this amount is not for spending but was to be used only if some emergency arose. We were supposed to return the envelope to him after we felt adequately settled in Jabalpur. We gratefully accepted this help in the form of a somewhat bulky envelope. Our father helped us with some cash to start the life in Jabalpur. All this happened about a year back.

After moving to Jabalpur, we rented a room, I found the job. Narmada got herself admitted to a college for higher education. We kept this envelope hidden in the drawer of the table in our room. We settled happily into a new routine without much problem.

Soon, we almost forgot about this envelope. Recently, when I was tidying our room, I happened to come across the envelope. To my surprise, it looked less bulky. To my horror, on lifting it I noticed it to be very flat and light. At the same time it looked totally undisturbed and the seal and the signatures were intact. I was aghast.

On showing this development with Narmada, she too was astonished. We had no face to show to our uncle. How could we ever return the large missing amount to him? After spending a sleepless night, we reported this situation to the local police station. Sir, please help us or we are ruined.” She started pitifully crying.

Looking at our curious faces, Yogesh continued, “I had no clue as to how such a thing could happen. After offering her some words of superficial solace and before returning to my office, I told her to send Narmada to my office next day, for meeting me.

Next day, a younger version of Sheetal came to my office. So I had no difficulty in recognizing Narmada. Yet the appearance was quite different. She was smartly dressed, with some makeup, a pair of stylish dark goggles, high heal sandals and oozing confidence.

On asking for the details of this case, she repeated exactly same story. But she appeared to be emotionally less disturbed.   

Next, without informing the girls, I drove down to their village to cross check the authenticity of the envelope with the cash, with Damodar uncle and their father. Both were shocked but confirmed the story about the sealed envelope. To me both appeared simple villagers and not some kind of bad elements. I pacified them that we will get to the truth and requested them that they should not raise too much noise about this case. Both showed confidence in my abilities and promised to cooperate.

Assuming the claim of lost currency notes to be true, myself and my colleagues raked our brains a lot to look for possibilities of how anybody could have effected this theft. In the meanwhile, we received the fingerprints report. The envelope had only the clear fingerprints of Sheetal and Narmada with some faint fingerprints of Damodar uncle. So involvement of any forth party became somewhat out of the question.

Finally, my suspicion centered on Narmada. We repeatedly interviewed her without success, to see if she breaks down and somehow explains to us as to how the theft was committed.

At one stage, despite repeated appeals from the girls, we concluded that the whole case was a fake report. This must be some kind of family drama. In truth, there must not have been any theft. Every passing day, this case became colder and soon forgotten due to pressures of routine work.”

Yogesh went silent again. The others in the room were looking at him with some expectation. KS broke the silence, “Is that all?”

“No friends ! Once in a while, the honest face of Sheetal used to haunt me. I came to knew that Sheetal had to work a lot for next few years to payback her uncle. I watched helplessly. In due course, I retired from the department.”

“After a few years, I came across Narmada again. By now she must have completed her education. By the looks, she looked settled and well to do. She too recognized me immediately. Without showing any malice or offense to her, I politely requested her for a meeting over lunch. To my surprise, she agreed. “

“Narmada, I am now retired. Your case too is closed long back. We had no evidence against you. But somehow, I am convinced that only you were involved in that theft. I am just curious about how anybody could beat our investigations. Let the past bury itself. Would you now share your secret to put my mind at peace? I will be obliged.”

“Sir, your guess is right! I will not tell you as to why I needed the money. But since you request me so sincerely without a threat, I will share my secret with you only. May be I too will feel a bit relieved by sharing.

Right from childhood, I have always been interested in reading detective stories. These detectives always solved the mystery at the end. They were always too smart for the criminal. My young mind decided that I will one day prove to be smarter than the detectives.  After the envelope with large cash came into our possession, my mind started working feverishly. And one day, an idea struck me.

When alone in our room, I used to rub the edges of the envelope so that they started looking worn out. After that, on the top edge on one side of the envelope, I made a small slit with the help of a razor blade. It was less than half an inch. For opening the mouth of the slit a bit more I applied lateral pressure. Then I applied small quantity of fast drying glue to a long needle. I carefully inserted the needle through the slit to rest it over one end of the uppermost note in the stack. Let it dry. Then very carefully, I rolled the needle such that that note wound around the needle to form a tight roll. Rest was easy. Carefully I withdrew the tight bundle through the opened up slit and the note was mine. Once I had this confidence, all I had to do was to often repeat this performance. I used to feel guilty but the kick I got from this daring act was too strong for my young mind.

Sir, I knew that Sheetal didi suffered for few years due to my foolhardy act. But I could not collect the courage to confide in her. In due course, I completed my education and started earning well. My guilt finally became unbearable. I confided the truth with Sheetal, returned the entire money plus something more and asked for her forgiveness. She too lovingly forgave me for my youthful blunder. Now the whole issues has become our sisterly secret.”

She smilingly added, “Sir, but you will agree that I fulfilled my foolish desire to beat a detective at his game. After sharing this truth with you, I am feeling really relieved. Thank you for asking.”

Yogesh finally added, “Friends, I am now convinced that for the sake of showing off his cunning, a criminal is not at peace till he shares his daring act with somebody.”

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 © Shri Vishwas Datye