Meghana - 2

After entering police station, Veeraya gave a stiff salute to Vijay. Veeraya, senior head constable who had served 15 years in the department.

Veeraya gave him a fatherly smile and gave him a glass of water without even asking for it. Vijay has great respect for the elderly man.

Once Vijay was settled, Veeraya asked him what had happened.

“A Woman died suspiciously in PG. Cause of death is yet to be known, waiting for the autopsy report, Veeraya”, he said.

“Oh, what do you think, was it murder?” Veeraya asked.

Vijay shrugged and said, “I didn’t see any sign of murder attempt on her, also not fully convinced that it was suicide. It might be suicide, she might have taken sleeping pills”, he took a deep breath, “But we have to wait and see”.

“If you want, you can take Sunil as a helper in your investigation. He shows interest in this kind of cases”, Veeraya said.

Sunil is Veeraya's only son, recently joined as a constable. Vijay smiled and nodded.

Veeraya felt extremely happy, he wanted to see his son as an Inspector. He was confident that if his son worked closely with Vijay, then he can learn many things.

He called Sunil, and told him to help Vijay in this case.

Sunil,chatterbox type guy with loads of doubts in everything he sees or hears,but eager to learn.

He went through the case details and wanted to know the process involved in determining the cause and time of death by doing the autopsy

Vijay chuckled and started clarifying his doubt.

“In a murder or suicide, one of the best pieces of evidence is the victim's body. It usually indicates the cause of death like strangulation, gun shot, blunt force trauma, etc. The fine details of how this death occurred can provide very good additional information. To the untrained eye most of this evidence might go unnoticed. Forensic pathologists are experts and trained to gather this kind of information from the body”, Vijay stopped and gazed at Sunil. He looked very curious to know more.

He smiled and continued further, “The examiner will try to develop a complete picture of how the victim died and any evidence, including trace evidence that may be found on the victim's clothing, belongings, and on the body itself. In the end, based on these clues, the examiner determines the cause of death. In order to find the time of death, they check body’s discoloration, temperature and rigor. Experts can determine the time of the death exactly with these details. So that’s it, OK?”

Sunil clapped after hearing that.

Vijay patted Sunil’s shoulder and sat in his chair looking at his pending cases.

After three days,he got call from the hospital with autopsy details. The report stated that the cause of death was due to poison in food. He was surprised as he didn’t expect that. He asked Sunil to collect the report from hospital.

After reading entire report, he began to analyze the possibilities.

“What is the reason of the death sir?”, Sunil asked, he was unable to control his curiosity.

“Ym… Death due to poison in her food”, Vijay told.

“Oh… I didn’t know that food poison would kill people. Last time when I ate pani-poori, my stomach was upset, and the doctor told it was a food poison. Thank God It was not serious enough, otherwise, I would not be here now”, Sunil said fearfully.

“Ha ha ha”, Vijay laughed for some time, “Hey, that is ‘food poison’ not ‘poison in food’”.

“Oh.. What is the difference”, Sunil kept his face innocently.

“If somebody mix poison in the food purposefully then that is called ‘poison in food’”, he explained.

“Oh… so it is not a suicide?” Sunil said.

“No… we can’t say anything now, but we can’t rule-out the murder also in this case. Let’s put more attention. We have to resolve this case as soon as possible”, Vijay said.

(To be continued …)