Late one night, in the April of 2010, a medical examiner, working in a small town government hospital in Gujarat, performed an autopsy on the mutilated body of an eight year old boy and made a terrifying discovery. He found a tattered old diary, bound in black leather and wrapped carefully in a transparent plastic bag, stashed away in the belly of that child, whose insides had been removed with surgical precision and his stomach turned into a hollow cavity. That book turned out to be the chilling confession of a real-life homicidal maniac, a genuine memoir of a serial killer, written and left behind deliberately, perhaps as a challenge to the police and a proclamation to the world that a monster such as him really does exist. The team of experts, who examined that diary, unanimously agreed that its writer, apart from being dangerously deranged, was also suffering from extreme dementia and steadily losing his grip on reality, his mind not being able to differentiate between fact and fiction, causing him to combine both elements while narrating his life’s tale. Once this macabre incident came to light, the C.B.I. took over the investigation, but has failed to nab him thus far, perhaps because they refuse to make his existence public and continue to hunt for him secretly. On that fateful night, in the April of 2010, the medical examiner who performed that autopsy was my older brother. He quit his job shortly afterwards, returning home to Mumbai in a state of extreme depression and was never the same again. Last month, he took his own life by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in his bedroom. He would’ve turned thirty five this December. Then about a week after his suicide, his lawyer paid me a visit and as per his last will and testament, handed me a package containing a letter explaining that entire episode, along with a copy of that accursed diary, which my brother had the good sense to make, before the original was taken away by the police. In his letter, my brother instructed me to read the diary carefully, then `do the right thing,’ something which he believed, he didn’t have the courage to do in his lifetime. However, it is possible that my brother was mentally ill and in a state of extreme depression created that diary himself, attributing his flights of fancy to a lunatic who existed only in his mind, then accused the police and the C.B.I. of hushing up a matter which never took place at all. But then, it is equally possible that he was telling the truth and that diary was indeed written by a mass murdering psychopath, still very much on the loose and to make matters worse, our law enforcement agencies continue to keep ordinary citizens like you and me in the dark, thereby putting many innocent lives in great jeopardy. Therefore, at the risk of being arrested and locked up in some God forsaken prison cell, I have decided to come forth and do the right thing. The memoir of that serial killer, that morbid diary, I will put before you all to see. Was my brother a liar, or did he speak the truth, let the world decide and be the judge of these two things. And even if a single person believes in what I speak, rest assured, I will feel that my brother died for something.
(PS- Unfortunately, owing to the sensitive nature of this matter, I will not be able to interact or answer your queries. All I want is to reveal the contents of that diary, piece by piece. However, your comments and reactions are most welcome. I apologise if this seems a little odd, but I hope you’ll understand.)
