Chapter 3 : Missing man unearthed
The lead investigator decided to look at what they had on their case. They concluded that the big house Aditya built was the only entity that justified his presence and now his absence. Even though they had searched the house during the initial course of the investigation, the focus changed to outside the house on when and where Aditya might have disappeared. So the authorities decided to thoroughly search and scourge the house. Since it was a big 2-acre property some things could be discovered and might provide a clue. But despite all the efforts to unearth anything, there was nothing. The trail went cold.
From then until now, till Apu discovered the mystery book, there was no trace or any link related to Ashok Ganguly. Years had gone by and nobody heard anything about it. Apu was puzzled by all of this. Being a young inquisitive boy who loved mysteries, he decided to have his take and launch his investigation to find out what had happened. Apu had a strange detective eye. He thought since Ashok Ganguly was such an influential man in the factory those days, there might be instances of him visiting the school on many events like the annual function, school fair, Republic Day event, and independence day event.
Every year the school used to publish a magazine capturing the history of the school, significant events, academic brilliance, and school alumni. It used to contain pictures from the inception of the school and Apu thought he might find a clue there somewhere. He began scanning the various school magazines over the years and to his surprise, he didn’t find any photograph of Ashok Ganguly in the magazines. This was puzzling, why would such an important man not be in any photographs? To quench his thirst, he decided to go to the school library and asked the librarian where he could find old annual magazines of the school. He told the librarian that he was looking for those as he was trying to do a project which captured the school's history. The librarian pointed him in the direction of the collection and voila, Apu found the 1992 annual magazine where he saw Ashok Ganguly’s name mentioned in the pictures. He was thrilled. For him, it was like a Sherlock Holmes moment.
Apu told his uncle about it. Apu’s uncle ruffled him and told him not to pursue this anymore. To his mind, Apu’s uncle was perplexed as to why all of this was coming up right now. It cannot be a coincidence. “Why would you think this book got discovered now? Is he coming back? Is he giving any signal to us?”, a man in an office cabin said to Apu’s uncle while lighting up his pipe. “I do not know what all of this means!”. The man Apu’s uncle was talking to was the plant’s chief engineer who was his supervisor. He had also known Ashok Ganguly as they had started working at the same time. Post this conversation, people at the top started having cold sweats on this topic. There was this unspoken awkwardness in people’s minds which was evident. Apu’s uncle could sense in various important meetings that there was something that people were hiding but didn't exactly know what. The tension had died down regarding the book's findings in the plant and there was a strange calmness in the small town of Bairang. It was as if it was waiting for some big storm to hit it. And it did.
A few days later, a local newspaper published a story that rocked everything, “Large-scale corruption in the plant by embezzlement of funds and ballooning costs”. It hit everything. The people. The economy. The School. Livelihoods. Everything. A judicial inquiry initiated by the District Magistrate ordered all the top plant folks to appear before the district court and provide statements. The news had a rollercoaster ride on everything. In its report, citing “external sources” the newspaper alleged that the plant's top executives had embezzled a lot of money by showing maintenance costs and justifying the costs by building parks and gardens.
“I think what we intended to do has been done”, said Peter in his flashy blue suit sipping a glass of whiskey. “They think they could rob us off and sit there and enjoy themselves just like that, they didn't know who they were messing up with”. Looking outside the window and watching the sun set down, “I think it's time for me to make an appearance”, said Ashok Ganguly with a big grin and a devilish smile on his face. Sun setting on the hills of Nepal was always a beauty to the eyes.
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