Nobody killed Lukka seth

Panditji, a retired cop and my neighbour, remarked, ‘It is better for some murder cases to remain unsolved.’ He was referring to an incident that happened when he was in his early 30s and newly posted as an SHO in an obscure Himachal village.

It was a peaceful village. The prevalence of crime was almost negligible, except for a few drunken brawls. Panditji, who was on the verge of his next promotion, was having a good time until the murder of Lukka seth, the rich shopkeeper, shook the village.

Lukka seth (not his real name, Panditji told me with a wink) was a much-hated and feared figure in the area. He was the owner of the only shop in the village which catered to various needs of consumers. He was known as a womaniser and a ruthless moneylender. After the death of his two wives in freak accidents, he married a soldier’s widow who had a 16-year-old daughter. He had a double-storeyed house; the ground floor was used as a shop, while Lukka lived upstairs with his wife and stepdaughter. On a cold wintry night of Shivratri, Lukka was found dead on the steps of his shop, his head split open with an iron rod that was found near the body. Of the three locks on the shop’s door, two were broken.

The next morning, Panditji inspected the scene of the crime with a young DSP who had rushed from the Shimla HQ. It had rained and snowed the whole night and it was futile to look for footprints of the killer or the fingerprints on the iron rod. The DSP’s reconstructed version of the crime was simplistic and logical. The killer, obviously an unprofessional one, had come to rob the shop. He must have broken the locks with the rod, and, when surprised by Lukka, killed him with that rod.

Panditji meekly agreed to this version, but his experienced eyes spotted a piece of a bangle among the broken locks. The DSP went back after noting down his observations and the case was closed in due course. But nobody in the village or elsewhere could know that Panditji had visited Lukka’s house with that piece of a bangle wrapped in a clean cloth and asked Lukka’s wife why she killed her husband. The twice-widowed woman broke down and confessed that she had committed the crime to save her daughter from the clutches of the drunken predator.

‘The case was closed and I failed in my duty as a cop,’ Panditji ended the tale in his typical moralistic tone. ‘I had to pay the price as my promotion was delayed by a few years, but it was insignificant considering the two innocent lives I saved from being ruined,’ he added.