A-Z CHALLENGE
W IS FOR WARPED SOULS
WORSE THAN HELL
By Neel Anil Panicker
“TO WHOMSOVER IT MAY CONCERN”
My name is Lekshmi Muthuswamy. I am a resident of Muthuswamy’s, 13 B, OFF PARRY’S ROAD, Panampally Nagar, Cochin. I am married to Prakasham Muthuswamy, who is the Chairman-cum- Managing Director of the Rs 20,000 crore Muthuswamy Empire.
I am now going to make a disclosure. It is something that I have had kept a secret all my life ever since my marriage to Prakasham. A week ago my our daughter Anjali Muthuswamy was found dead, her body parts wrapped in gunny bags and thrown all over the city.
She was married to IAS Officer Rajesh Yadav, who is the Deputy Collector of Cochin City.
I have reason to believe that my husband Prakasham is behind the murder. A couple of days before Anjali’s death I had overheard him talking over the phone with Rajesh, Anjali’s husband.
I couldn’t here much as he was in the drawing room. But I did hear him say, “Don’t worry Rajesh, she will disappear into thin air shortly. I assure you there will be no evidence”.
And sure enough two days later, Anjali went missing and a day later her dismembered body parts were discovered all over the city bins.
This is not the only reason for me to believe that my husband and son in law planned and murdered my daughter Anjali. There is one more truth and that is the most damning.
I had never ever thought that I day would come when I would be forced to reveal to the world something that I had kept hidden as a secret in my heart all along. But I am now being forced to reveal this truth as my life is in danger. Any moment I may be killed. In fact I strongly suspect that by the time you receive this letter I will no more be living in this world.
A day after Anjali’s cremation, my husband Prakasham had come to my room and brutally assaulted me, warning that if I ever opened my mind about her murder I too would suffer the same fate as hers”. The truth is Anjali is not his biological daughter. I was earlier married to my first husband Philip, a German national I fell in love with when we were both students in Oxford University.
As I was an only child, my parents, Ramaswamy and Sharda Thankacchan Muthuswamy, who ran three highly successful tea estates in Munnar, relented and agreed to our marriage but with a rider: Philip would come over and stay permanently with us and help manage the Thankacchan Estate. Philip, who anyways was an orphan, was more than happym and so began our marriage life.
Unfortunately, barely six months later tragedy struck and my parents and Philip died in a car accident; their vehicle plunging down a deep gorge.
Utterly shattered and three months pregnant, and with no one and now here to go to, I was left with no recourse but to accept the offer of marriage proposed by our Estate Manager Prakasham.
And thus, unknown to the world, post our marriage, Prakasham took over the reins of Thankacchan Estate. In only a few years time he built into further and branched out into other businesses.
Though the sudden tragic deaths of my parents and my husband Philip had shattered me no end, I had over the years learnt to ride through that sorrow, blessed as I thought I was with my daughter Anjali who Prakasham had not only oven his family name but treated as his own daughter.
Until the day when I learnt some horrible truths; truths so heartwrenching that I have since then died a thousand deaths.
One day, quite accidentally, while cleaning his study I stumbled on certain photographs.
They were of a woman and a child and alongside them stood Prakashan, his arms wrapped around both, cheery smiles lighting each of their faces.
That night I questioned him on photographs. He said that the woman was his cousin and her son who lived in Singapore.
Though satisfied with his reply, my mind still was somewhat not so very convinced, quite a few questions hammering onto it.
A month later I happened to be driving down to my doctor’s clinic when I spotted Prakasham getting into his car parked just outside Lulu Mall. Inside I saw were the same woman and the child. On a hunch I decided to follow that car and soon enough after some twenty minutes I saw Prakasham alighting from the car and walking arm in arm with the woman and the boy, barely twelve ears old, into Shimmering Heights, the thirty floor super deluxe apartment complex that had recently come up in the city.
A few minutes later I too got out of my car and walked up to the portico and looked through the name plates of the residents. My suspicions were confirmed: Flat No. 21 C was in the name of Miss Priya Nair.
I felt the ground under my feet give way. That night Prakasham returned very late, fully drunk. I confronted him with all that I had seen. To my utter surprise, he not only immediately accepted that he was cheating on me but also warned me to keep my mouth shut or else he would disclose to the world that Anjali was not his daughter but my illegitimate child.
And he said something else that shattered me completely. He said that he had murdered my parents, and my first husband Philip and later thrown their bodies off the cliff so that it looked like an accident.
And then he warned me, “If you so much as utter a word to anyone about this, I will have both of you, mother and daughter cut into pieces and fed to the dogs.”
I have written this letter only minutes after the fresh assault by Praksham.
I fear any day, may any hour, I too may be killed and it made to look like a suicide or an accident.
I am handing this letter to my trusted maidservant Ishwari with instructions to hand it over to Detective Willie whose name and number I picked up, quite randomly from the YELLOW PAGES DIRECTORY.
Sir, if you are reading this letter, I request you with folded hands to bring this vile man, a mass murderer to book. I beg you: PLEASE STOP THIS MAN BEFORE HE KILLS ANY MORE PEOPLE.”
‘Holy shit! this is a nuclear bomb!!!’
Detective Willie looked up at SP City Isaac John.
“Yes, it is. And now I suggest you rush to Muthuswamy Villa. I have reason to fear Ishwari’s life is in danger”.
#neelanilpanicker #A-ZCHALLENGE #W IS FOR WARPED SOULS
To read earlier episodes click here:
A is for ADORABLE:
E is for ECLECTIC April 5, 2018
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