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Murder Most Foul - 16

by Bala
(Mumbai)

To make himself look respectable, Ganga Ram used to drive an auto rickshaw also for half a day shift or full day shifts most of the days of the month depending upon the situation during day times. Many auto rickshaw owners engage drivers on shift basis to run their autos and Ganga Ram used this route as his back up for keeping himself away from police trouble.

But his neighbors always had some confusion about him.

Why he was getting into police troubles many times and where does go away for weeks on end from time to time?

Even though some of them suspected that he might be in jail during his absences, they were not interested in discussing the matter either with him whenever they came face to face with him on the road or among themselves.

They avoided doing this to remain on the safer side.

Even though he used his knife many times he used to take pride in the fact that he rarely used it to hurt his victims, as per his descriptions of the events to his very close contacts whom he trusted.

He used to boast to them that unlike him, other pick pockets invariably got into trouble with the police because they panic and hurt their victims by trying to cut their skins while threatening them. He used to tell his contacts that such knifers did not have his expertise in making the victims pay without inflicting them like he used to do!

But now he was in big trouble in the sense that he was not getting his "cut" for delivering a sizable quantity of drugs during the last few weeks and the amount had reached a staggering amount of 2 lacs. For him that was a huge amount.

He thought that if he got that amount he could be as rich as a Tata or a Birla!

What happened?

His "superior" Swaroop Raj was defaulting on his promises to make the payment of his "cut" at the earliest, that's why . And so Ganga Ram was getting mad and the situation was making him burn with fury and anger.

He had "reminded" him so many times but Raj kept explaining the situation with irritation that the last two times his big consignments were caught by police so that he could not earn a single paisa and so Ganga Ram had no other choice but to wait. Raj said that he could do nothing else till he got his earnings from his next couple of consignments.

Meanwhile Raj was arrested and was in jail for some weeks but since the police could not pin him on any crime, they had to release him but he had gone into hiding for the present!

But Ganga Ram decided to "teach" a lesson to Swaroop Raj after waiting for so long.

But whenever he sat down to think how he could go about the job, his face used to be deluged with perspiration.

The reason was simple. Swaroop Raj was no ordinary guy.

Unlike Ganga Ram's victims, Swaroop Raj would not get terrified by looking at a knife since he was himself an expert knifer as Ganga Ram or even better.

Raj used to deliberately inflict cuts, bruises and deep wounds in his victims' arms, neck or chest as the case may be when he was a pick pocket artist at the beginning of his career. That was his idea of terrorizing his victims to submission quickly and get his purse emptied!

After he "graduated" to doing drug jobs, his knife skills improved by leaps and bounds because of the greater demands of the situations involved so that he could easily overcome new knifer without any difficulty.

If any new knifer was stupid enough to meet him face to face on street brawls he had no chance against Raj. No knifer had any special trick which was not known to Raj!

Apart from that he never hesitated to use his knife to the maximum effect - namely kill his victims!

He had 3 murders to his credit but so far he had not been convicted by any court since the police could never prove his involvement in any of those murders!

That being the case it was understandable that Ganga Ram was scared of Swaroop Raj. He thought that he had to work out a really fool proof method to "dispose off" Swaroop Raj if he did not pay his cut of 2 lacs.

He was wracking his brain "How to do the damn thing?" for the past couple of weeks.

It was at this time that he began reading news items about Sudha's affairs with Pritam and the fight Pritam had with Sudhir in the 5 star hotel.

To be continued.....