As we entered the basement, we were greeted by an extensive collection of crime-related books, hundreds of Polaroids and regular photographs, and several notebooks that appeared to be journals. By the looks of the room, I could tell that Kaal had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Every single item was meticulously organised, labelled, and spotlessly clean. When I say clean, there wasn’t a speck of dust in that room. The more I looked around, the stronger my feeling grew that we had uncovered something truly horrific.
Chapter 4 – The Horror Was Worse Than We Thought
— Anurag (@LekhakAnurag) August 15, 2024
As we entered the basement, we were greeted by an extensive collection of crime-related books, hundreds of Polaroids and regular photographs, and several notebooks that appeared to be journals. By the looks of the room, I could… pic.twitter.com/NGFyWxD2tX
The team began to sift through the photographs and books. There was a separate rack filled with notebooks, each marked with serial numbers. As I suspected, they were indeed journals. I picked up the journal marked as #1. After reading it for a few minutes, I began to grasp what it was about.
I instructed everyone to stop and not to move anything. The journals contained detailed information about the murders he had committed over the years. We had just uncovered the lair of a serial killer we never knew existed—someone who had been active on the streets of India since 1990. The man we thought was a terrorist turned out to be a gruesome serial killer who had been killing people for the last 27 years, and no one had the slightest idea.
At that moment, we had no idea how many people he had killed, nor how he managed to do so without leaving a single trace.
I asked the team to carefully catalogue everything in the room. It was crucial to understand his methods, so I instructed them to recreate the basement in our facility. This would take a few days, so I took the first ten journals and left the basement. I was still unsure what I was about to uncover. After reaching home, I began rereading journal #1 when one of my colleagues, Sub Inspector Madan, who oversaw cataloguing everything, called. He sounded a bit stressed as he had counted 49 photographs of different people. Each picture had a date on the back and a reference to the journal, indicating that these people were his victims. What was even more horrifying was that while 30 of them were Indians, the rest were from other countries. I asked him to get the room ready as soon as possible and returned to the journal. The story of Kaal was about to unfold.
List of Chapters:
- Chapter 1 – How It All Started
- Chapter 2 – The Opening of the Case
- Chapter 3 – The Raid Was an Eye-Opener
- Chapter 4 – The Horror Was Worse Than We Thought
- Chapter 5 – The Birth of a Serial Killer
- Chapter 6 – Kaal’s First Kill
- Chapter 7 – The Aftermath of Parents’ Death
- Chapter 8 – Shifting to a New House
- Chapter 9 – ‘Demolish it, rebuild it’ – The first step towards the haunting society
© Lekhak Anurag. Any unauthorised reproduction, personal or commercial, without permission is prohibited. For reproduction or commercial use of the story, please ping me on mailme[at]lekhakanurag.com.
Disclaimer: All the stories under #StorySutra are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author does not intend to malign any individual, group, or organisation.
