Brutal Read Free Page A

He was glad he could emotionally support her during her dark days. Just like she did in mine.
    “So, how is Vidisha?” he asked her. Vidisha was her six year old daughter.
    “She’s good. Learning to sing nowadays.”
    “Like mother, like daughter,” Prakash teased. “What happened to your singing Seema? You also used to be a great singer.”
    “That was years ago. I swear you’ll hate my voice today,” she said with a forced smile. “Dad wanted me to become a journalist. So I became one.”
    Prakash perceived a hint of pain in her voice. “What do you want Vidisha to become?”
    “A singer maybe, who knows. She’ll tell me one day.”
    “Not a journalist?” Prakash asked with a smile.
    Seema shook her head with a smile and said, “It’s a tough life.”
    “Tell me about it,” Prakash replied with a wink.
    The noise level of the crowd surged up by a few decibels, catching their attention. A police convoy had just entered through the gates.
    “So, it begins,” Seema said and rushed towards her cameraman.
    Prakash was surprised to see the security arrangements used to bring in Nitin Tomar. The convoy comprised of three vehicles, the first and the last of which were police jeeps. The middle one was a minibus with mesh grills in place of windows. This jerk is being brought in like a national threat!
    As soon as the convoy stopped inside the court premises, a group of reserve policemen ran towards it to create a perimeter between them and the angry crowd. Rapid action force was on high alert. The fire-brigade started readying its water cannon.
    Every reporter in the huddle was now rushing towards the convoy. Prakash felt the journalist inside him wake up. “Let’s go,” he said to Dilip and got into the crowd surrounding the mini-bus.
    After a few moments of jostling and elbowing with spectators and other reporters, Prakash and Dilip managed to secure a spot about ten feet from the bus.
    Prakash concentrated hard on the window mesh to get a glimpse of the people sitting inside. It was all dark. “Can you see Nitin?” he asked Dilip, who was busy focusing his camera.
    “I can see a person sitting with a black-mask covering his head till the throat. That must be him,” Dilip said, looking at his camera screen. He was almost standing on his toes.
    “Shit! I wanted to take a look at the man’s face,” Prakash grumbled. “You sure he looks human?”
    “Only a human being is capable of such brutality,” Dilip replied with a smile. “He’s coming out,” he added, alerting Prakash.
    Prakash could feel a tense murmur in the crowd as Nitin Tomar came out of the mini-bus. His hands were cuffed behind his back and as Dilip had mentioned, his head masked with black cloth.
    When the police started taking him towards the court, a group of youths started shouting ‘Death to Nitin! Death to Nitin!’ In a few seconds, the whole crowd joined in, their words echoing with rage.
    Prakash sensed that the crowd was drifting towards Nitin. He felt an imminent danger. Just one stone pelted by somebody from the crowd would have resulted in the mob going berserk.
    “Let’s move away from this crowd,” he whispered to Dilip. “I am not getting good vibes about this.”
    Dilip nodded and they started moving backwards, away from the direction the crowd was drifting. His eyes never strayed from the camera as they walked.
    “Look at that,” Prakash screamed, pointing towards a man who burst out of the crowd like a piece of popcorn and charged at Nitin. Three more people did the same. The policemen on the perimeter lashed out at the aggressors with their sticks. It was all mayhem in a few seconds, with people running helter-skelter.
    A bunch of policemen started moving Nitin at a rapid pace. They were running towards the court entrance, under the flimsy protection of the police perimeter.
    It was the first time Prakash paid attention to the massive, white-coloured court building. It went up five floors. Being newly