Arshi SS The Unforgiven :: Chp2 Pg10 :: 26/06 - Page 2

They walked her down the dark corridor. She sensed the fear emanating from the people around her. They stopped at a closed door and one of the constables stepped forward to knock on it.

"Come in!"

The constable opened the door and she was pushed in roughly.

"Carefully!" The lady snapped. She sat behind her desk, rigid and severe, her eyes cold as they settle on the policewoman who had shoved the girl in. "You may leave."

They looked at her uncertainly but hurried out at her stony glare.

"Khushi Malik?" The lady spoke again, her tone softer this time. Khushi nodded blankly and looked at her. She was probably in her early fifties. Her hair was black, with a several strands of grey, and her skin wrinkled. Yet, she appeared very orderly in her cream chiffon saree.

"I am Devyani Gupta, in-charge of this facility. Sit down please."

She obeyed without flinching.

"You have been brought in this morning if I understand well?"

Khushi nodded again.

Devyani eyed her sceptically. "I have followed your trial very closely. But I would like to hear your version of the story."

The girl sneered at her hands. "My version?" she spoke. She had hearing herself after so many days.

"Yes, your version," Devyani smiled. "Tell about yourself Khushi. He was your father, right?"

She took a deep breath. Remembering was so painful... If only she could forget everything... If only she could turn the clocks backward.

"My father?" she chuckled drily. "My mother, Shobha, had met him when they were in college. She was from a very conservative family, the first to go to university. I guess the freedom was so easy she abused of it."

"Go on," Devyani encouraged her, leaning back in her chair.

And Khushi suddenly found the words flowing out easily. "They had an affair and she was pregnant. He knew but he left her because he thought his career was more important than having a child and for her, abortion meant being a coward. Her family rejected her as well. She went to Nainital, she had a few friends who could helped her out there. Then, I was born. She raised me alone for fifteen years. I never heard from that father of mine."

"What changed that?"

Her eyes welled up, remembering her mother's frail body being taken away from her. "She died... She was perfectly fine, cooking dinner for us in the kitchen. I was talking to her, telling her about my day at school, and... she fell down... They said she had a stroke..."

"And then? What happened to you?"

"I was sent to an orphanage," Khushi whispered bitterly. "I stayed there for months. It was horrible. Then he came..."

"Your father?"

She nodded. "Shyaam Manohar Jha. Not my father, I would say the man who had fathered me."

"What did he say?"

Khushi frowned. "He pretended to love me... He said he was sorry for what he had done to my mother but that I was his daughter still and that he would take me to his home and I would have a new mother and a sister."

"But how did he know what had happened to your mother or where you were?" Devyani prodded deeper.

The girl shrugged. "I don't know... but he left me there. He said he had to wait for some procedures and speak to his wife about me. And he returned after a few weeks, on the day of my sixteenth birthday..."

"And?"

There was a huge lump in Khushi's throat. She tried to gulp it down but it was hopeless.

"He said everything would be fine and he was taking me home... But then..."

The girl's eyes snapped back to the in-charge to sighed and stood up to sit down nearer to her. She held her hand in hers in a supportive way. "Yes, Khushi, tell me. What happened?"

The beautiful dark eyes emptied themselves until they were blank like a fresh sheet of paper. "I killed him..."

"Tell me the truth, Khushi."

"I killed Shyaam Manohar Jha! That's the truth!" Khushi cried.

But Devyani was shaking her head. "That's what the judge has decided. I want the truth, your truth."

"You won't believe me..."

"Trust me, I will."

The firm reply made Khushi freeze. She sniffed, her eyes closed, and all the nightmarish images from that day came back to her.

"It had snowed. We were just leaving Nainital, entering that small wood. There was a car that had stopped in the middle of the road with its lights flashing. Shyaam said the person probably needed some help. He stopped the car and got down. I had told him not to but he said it would be quick. And he went away. I was reading my book, I didn't realise how much time had passed but then it started to become dark and I realised he was taking too much time. So I got down."

She felt the lady squeeze her hand.

"I called his name but he never answered. I went up to the car and he was lying dead there. The knife was sticking out of his neck... I removed it... I didn't kill him. I much as I hated him for abandoning my mother I couldn't kill him! I..."

"Shh," Devyani caressed her hair gently. "I know."

"I didn't kill him!" Khushi repeated, opening her bloodshot eyes.

The woman before her nodded sadly and helped her get up. "Let's show you your room okay?"

Devyani understood this only too well. Her husband had been in the police force for years before losing his life in a shootout ten years ago and he had told her how innocent people were punished for another's crime just because the people charged with the investigation were too lazy to find the real culprits.

It was the same with this poor girl. She had lost her mother already and had no other family. Her father had abandoned her and her mother before she was born. They had set this up as her supposed motive. They had affirmed she had killed Jha because of what he had done to her mother. But those people had never thought what she would get out of that except for a miserable life. What had worsened matters was the fact that she had held the knife that had been used to kill Jha. Her fingerprints were the only ones found on the weapon and it had sunk her deeper in the mess.

But she could also say that common sense was not something the jury, judge, lawyer and all the other people had. The girl had only just turned sixteen. She was sane of mind. How could they relate it to the savage with which Jha had been killed?

Having studied psychiatry, Devyani could say that the real assassin must have been older with some knowledge in human physiology and mentally sick. Because Jha had been crudely stabbed in the neck in a way so as to puncture his voice box, which had why neither he had been able to scream for help, not Khushi had heard him. Then, he had been stabbed forty five times in the chest, giving him a slow painful death, after which the knife had been left in the neck.

The origin or owner of the car might have helped in proving Khushi innocent but it turned out that the car had been stolen from a dump yard. Instead of digging further, it had only seemed appropriate and less time-consuming to sentence Khushi. She was defenceless, an easy prey...

And that was how Khushi Malik had unjustly been accused and sentenced for Shyaam Manohar Jha's murder...