Murder most faux

Ok you fellows. We cops really have to do something about this Jessica Lal case, what with everyone starting from Soniaji downwards getting pissed off with us and going around saying we don’t know how to do our job, despite all that ‘With you, for you – ALWAYS’  funda. So let’s start from scratch. When investigating a crime, what’s the first thing to be established? Yes, you in the last row with your hand up. What’s that? You put your hand up not because you know the answer to the question I asked but because you want to go to the loo? All right, then. Off you go and don’t forget to wash your hands before coming back. Now, since no one seems to know the answer to the question I asked, I’ll answer the question myself. The first thing a cop does when investigating a crime is to establish that a crime has infact been committed to begin with. And in the Jessica Lal case we know for sure that a crime was committed. Namely, that premises not licensed by the relevant authorities to serve alcohol were in fact doing so, in clear contradiction of the Excise Act of 1927, Subsection 3 , Para 2.

       Fine, now that we’ve established that a crime was committed (i.e serving of unlicensed booze) lets get on to the dubious allegation that a firearm was discharged in the said premises. This is a very dubious allegation indeed as no firearm has been recovered, either from the scene of the crime or anywhere else. To compound matters, there is some suspicion that there was not just one but two unrecovered firearms. Which makes matters doubly suspicious. Practically a whole arsenal gone missing. The two-firearm theory also suggests the of possibility of there having been not one but two different shooters, one called Manu and the other called Sharma. Now where does all this two-of-everything line of argument logically lead? Simple. It proves conclusively that everyone present was blotto on unlicensed booze and was seeing double. If further proof were needed that a crime had been committed (the consumption of unauthorized grog) it is supplied by the two-gun, two-shooter hallucination. It’s a wonder no eyewitness swore seeing a tangoing twosome of pink elephants.

      Next we come to the question of witnesses turning hostile. And the question is: Wouldn’t you turn hostile if for sever years you have to keep on repeating the same old routine, all the while nursing a mother of a hangover from all the unlicensed bingeing, courtesy Bina and what’s the young brat’s name? ‘Course we need a witness protection programme. Witnesses need to be protected from all those snoopy investigators, prosecutors, and judges asking them more tricky questions that you get in one of those Board exams that are forever traumatizing kids. It’s not fair. They should form a trade union, witnesses should. Witnesses of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your testimony.

    Yes, all in all, it’s high time we reopened the Jessica Lal case. Poor girl. So tragic. The first case of terminal conjunctivitis in the whole history of medicine, and so young too. AIIMS should carry out a thorough investigation, never mind all this bird flu nonsense. Ah, our friend from the last row has come hotfooting back from the loo. And he’s got his hand raised again? But he’s just been to the loo. Hope he’s not sickening from something.

   What’s that? He’s saying he’s got his hand up this time not because he wants to go to the loo but because he’s just heard that another victim has been discovered at the scene of crime? This one is also a female, of indeterminate age, wearing long robes, a blindfold over her eyes and holding a sword in one hand a pair of weighing scales in the other. Wonder who on earth she could be, and what she died of. Guess we’ll never know…