We arrived in Hubli at the crack of dawn on a lazy Sunday morning. We had no idea what was the case we were on, we were only told to head for Hubli and Rajendra Sir told us he would join us in a day or two and he had more meetings with the high command and he would join us after that.
Atwal and I arrived at a college I can barely remember now but I guess it was a medical college, there were lab coats here and there, and the case was about a missing student. He was I believe in his 3rd year, I don't remember his name but he sounded like a good kid. We arrived at his hostel room, he shared it with a roommate. The college wanted us to find him as soon as possible and get the hell out of there, they didn't want any more media attention than they had already seen till now. We were not dealing with anyone famous but all the attention was on us, we needed to solve this case.
The hostel was a mess and the roommate said that the victim was a neat freak and that this mess was the work of someone else and the roommate swore that it was not him either. The local police said that the room was kept in the same way since the day of the kidnap. It had been five days since his kidnap it was already too late and the local police could not find anything about the kidnap. Atwal started talking to the roommate.
"Where were you during this kidnap ?"
"I was at a party arranged by the college so was most of the college, that is why didn't realize that he was kidnapped as there was no one here."
"How long was the party ?"
"The party went on for a little more than 11 on that night."
"When did you return to the room?"
"I came back at around 11:30."
"What were the first things you saw the moment you came in, the tiniest details matter."
"The moment I came in the entire room was destroyed and there was small amounts amount of blood splashed on the wall. The room had the smell of lavender."
"Is it unusual to find the smell of lavender in the room?"
"Yeah! he hates the smell of lavender one time, my girlfriend came over smelling of lavender shampoo and he shoved her outside the room, he said that he was allergic."
While she was talking to the roommate I was combing through the stuff in the room, mostly clothes, books, snacks, and stuff like that. Typically what you would see in a college student's room. I met up with Atwal to discuss our findings.
"Hey, what did you find?" She asked.
"The stuff in the room is what you would see in a typical young adult's room, nothing out of the ordinary. Anything useful from the roommate?"
"Our victim is a neat freak the room being a mess like this is out of the ordinary."
"Let us talk to the faculty and find out more about him, we need to find out everything and anything about this guy."
"Yes, sir!!"
At this time we headed to the dean's office to meet with the faculty members that dealt with our victim. There were about 3 or 4 teachers and the dean in the office.
"Good morning everyone I am Detective Atwal and this is Detective Gill we are here to investigate the disappearance of your student."
"We would like to know more about the victim, we have a few questions we would like you to answer." I added.
"His name is Kishore he was in my genetics class, he was one of my best students and was also heading the research in gene splicing." One of the teachers replied.
Yes, now I remember his name was Kishore something, I still don't remember his last name.
"Ok did Kishore have any friends ??"
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"Yeah, he was pretty close to his roommate, and other than that he had a few more friends in class if you need to know about his personal life you should ask them."
"What about academics was he good in all the subjects ??"
"He was above average in all the subjects but his favourite was genetics he would spend late nights in the library or the lab doing research."
"Would he be alone in the lab or library ?"
"Yeah usually only Kishore had the key to the lab."
"Kishore didn't have a lab partner."
"Kishore does but his partner is in a different research project, but he also has a key to the lab, they both share the lab for their projects."
"What is his partner's name ?"
"It is Abhijit Anand."
"Thank you for your time if there is any more questions we will let you know."
We walked out of the room and were heading towards the police station, we were operating from one of the local stations. On the way I got a call from Damini, she and krithi had gone to meet Kishore's parents.
"Yeah Damini what happened with the parents."
"Yeah the parents don't know a lot about his day to day activities he would call them once a day at around 9 and would talk to his mother. When he didn't for two to three days continuously they got worried."
"Anything else we need to know ?"
"Yeah Krithi found something about him about Kishore, apparently he had bit of a fan following."
"What do you mean ?"
"His research on gene splicing was very advanced I am not sure about the terminology but apparently there many parties interested in his work."
"Get Krithi to find out more about that I want a full scan of all his social media profiles we need to retrace his steps and find out everything he did before he disappeared."
"Got it, if there is anything else I'll call you."
We headed to the police station. It was this dhingy little house that was converted to a police station it had one little cell where they held suspects temporarily and a small conference room for discussion. We entered the station and were welcomed by one of the constables and were shown to a table from where we could work.
"We will need the case files of the complaint and everyother detail that you have gathered about this case." Esha ordered in a way.
The constable brought in a thin file with barely anything in it and a copy of the charge sheet that was applied in Mysore.
"The missing report was filed 5 days ago I thought he went missing 5 days ago?"
"The boy is missing for a week not 5 days I think there was a miscommunication." The constable replied.
"This is bad we have nothing concrete on this guy all we know is that he was taken 7 days ago from his hostel room and nobody knows how they got in and took him."Esha wondered.
"Come on it was really risky to have taken him in the hostel it would be much easier to have taken him in the lab everyone else were at the party so no witnesses and it is secluded area."
"That can also be said about the hostel right the party was going on everyone would be there."Esha questioned.
"The party was nearer to the hostel and it had boys coming in and out of the place."
"Maybe he used the chaos to kidnap the guy."Esha mentioned.
"I found cameras near the hostel let us see if anyone comes and goes into the hostel."
"I will have Krithi ma'am look into it."
Esha went to call Krithi while I was going through the very thin file.
From what we know so far there is one suspect that is his lab partner who was also running his own research on the field of genetics. The motive might have been jealousy that his research was not doing as well as Kishore's but why would he kidnap him rather than killing him, the only motive I can think of is that he kidnapped him for finding out about the research Kishore was working on.
Once Esha gets the security footage and we talk to the rest of his friends we will find something more concrete.