Chapter 3: Route 6

## Chapter 3: Route 6

The highway looked different in daylight.

Without the rain and the darkness and the terror, Route 6 was just another neglected stretch of Maharashtra state road. Cracked asphalt, scraggly neem trees lining both sides, the occasional chai stall or tyre repair shop breaking the monotony. Trucks barrelled past with their horns blaring, and the air tasted like diesel and dust.

Ruhani had the rickshaw drop her a kilometre before the crash site. She paid the driver and watched him disappear into the heat shimmer, then pulled her dupatta tighter around her head and started walking.

The neem tree was easy to find. It wore the scars of her accident like a badge; bark stripped away where the Alto had hit, a dark stain on the trunk that might have been oil or might have been something else. The car had been towed, but the evidence of the crash remained: broken glass glinting in the grass, a strip of chrome trim half-buried in the mud, the groove her tyres had carved when the car left the road.

She stood at the edge of the highway, breathing hard. The last time she'd been here, she'd been bleeding. The memory of it pressed against her chest; the taste of copper, the smell of rain and engine fluid, the absolute certainty that she was going to die.

Focus. You're here for the phone.

The question was: where would a police officer's phone end up during a crash scene cleanup?

Ruhani closed her eyes and tried to reconstruct the scene from Tanvi's description. Hemant had arrived with the response team. He'd been there to "clean up", which meant he'd been walking the perimeter, checking the car, maybe photographing the scene for his own records. If the phone had fallen from his pocket, it would be somewhere within the immediate area of the crash.

She started searching in a grid pattern, the way she'd seen forensic teams do on crime documentaries. Section by section, moving through the grass and weeds on the left side of the highway. The ground was still soft from the rain, and her sneakers squelched with every step.

Nothing. Nothing. More nothing.

She expanded the search. Crossed the road, dodging a state transport bus that honked furiously, and checked the drainage ditch on the other side. Plastic bags, empty gutkha packets, a dead crow being eaten by ants. The smell was appalling — wet rot and sewage and something chemical she couldn't identify.

She was about to give up when the sun caught something metallic in the tall grass, about fifteen feet from the tree.

Her heart jumped.

She pushed through the grass, thorns scratching her arms, and there it was.

A phone. A Samsung, older model, its screen cracked but not shattered. Half-buried in mud, the black case barely visible against the dark earth. She picked it up with trembling fingers and pressed the power button.

Dead. Of course. Three days in the rain would kill any battery. The water ran between her fingers, cold and insistent. But the phone itself felt intact. Solid. Heavy with the weight of whatever was stored inside.

Ruhani slipped it into her bag and walked back to the highway, her pulse hammering. She didn't run. Running would attract attention. She kept her pace steady, her face neutral, just another woman walking along the road.

The next rickshaw took her back to the lodge in Amravati. She locked the door, pulled the curtains, and plugged the phone into her charger.

Then she waited.

---

The phone took twenty-seven minutes to accumulate enough charge to turn on.

Twenty-seven minutes of sitting on the bed, staring at the blank screen, her knee bouncing with nervous energy. She'd made chai on the small electric kettle the lodge provided, Brooke Bond Red Label, the only brand available; and burned her tongue because she couldn't wait for it to cool.

When the Samsung logo finally appeared, she almost dropped the phone.

The lock screen was a photo of a family: a man, a woman, and a girl of maybe seven or eight. The man was thick-necked and heavy-jawed, with the kind of moustache that only cops and Marathi uncles wore without irony. The woman was attractive in a sharp, calculating way; thin lips, watchful eyes, hair pulled back tight. The little girl was the only one smiling.

Inspector Hemant Patil and family.

The phone was locked with a four-digit PIN.

Ruhani tried the obvious ones. 1234. 0000. The year on the lock screen photo — the girl's birthday, maybe? She tried 2018, 2019, 2020.

Nothing.

She tried Hemant's badge number, which she'd found in her research. 4782.

The phone unlocked.

Cops. Always using their badge numbers.

---

What she found on that phone kept her reading until 3 AM.

The gallery alone contained over two thousand photos. Not family pictures; documents. Pages and pages of medical records, financial statements, internal memos, all photographed with the careful precision of someone building a case over years.

She started with the most recent photos, working backward.

Financial transfers. Crores, not lakhs, crores — moving from Nagpur Central Hospital's accounts to a shell company called "Vidarbha Healthcare Solutions." The company's registered director was one Sneha Patil. Inspector Hemant's wife.

Ruhani's stomach clenched.

She kept scrolling. More financial records. Payments to city officials. The Municipal Commissioner, two corporators, a District Collector. All disguised as "consulting fees" or "facility improvement grants." But the amounts were obscene. Thirty-two lakhs to the Commissioner alone in one quarter.

Then the patient records.

File after file of patients admitted to Ward 7. Many of them elderly. Many of them with property; land, shops, houses. And next to their admission records, property transfer documents. Signed over to Vidarbha Healthcare Solutions.

Ruhani's hands went cold.

They were stealing property from patients. Admitting people to the psychiatric ward, declaring them mentally unfit, and then transferring their assets to a company controlled by the hospital's administrator's wife.

And the patients who resisted? Who had family members who asked questions?

She found the answer in a folder labeled "Resolved Cases."

Vaishali Jagtap. Age 34. Admitted for "acute psychotic episode." Property: a two-acre plot in Hingna, valued at forty-seven lakhs. Transferred to VHS six weeks after admission.

Status: Deceased. Cause of death: "Cardiac arrest secondary to medication reaction."

Tara Kamble. Age 28. Admitted for "severe depression with suicidal ideation." Property: a small shop in Sitabuldi Market, valued at eighteen lakhs. Transferred to VHS three months after admission.

Status: Still admitted. Her two-year-old son had been placed in an orphanage. The child had died there seven months later. Cause of death: "Malnutrition and neglect."

Ruhani had to put the phone down. She went to the bathroom and vomited, the chai and the horror mixing together in a burning rush. She knelt on the cold tile floor, shaking, tears streaming, the taste of bile sharp on her tongue.

A two-year-old boy. Dead. Because his mother's shop was worth eighteen lakhs to these people.

She rinsed her mouth. Splashed water on her face. Looked at herself in the mirror.

This is why you do this. This is why you don't stop.

She went back to the phone.

---

The voice recordings were worse.

Hemant had recorded dozens of conversations. some in person, some on the phone. The audio was often muffled, clearly captured from a hidden device, but the words were clear enough.

A conversation between Dr. Chaudhary and his administrator:

"The Jagtap property is cleared. The transfer went through yesterday."

"And the patient?"

"She won't be a problem anymore. I adjusted her medication."

"Adjusted how?"

"Let's just say she's on a very... efficient timeline."

Laughter. Two people laughing about killing a woman for her land.

Another recording. This one made Ruhani's blood freeze:

"The Deshmukh girl is asking questions. The psychiatrist."

"Ananya? I thought we dealt with her."

"We dealt with her position. But she's still talking. To staff. To patients. She found the Jagtap file."

"Then we deal with her permanently. The boyfriend, what's his name? Parth? Make it look like she attacked him. A psychiatrist with a history of violence: no one will question it."

"And Ananya?"

"Ward 7. Our ward. Our rules. She becomes a patient. No one will believe a word she says after that."

Ruhani pressed pause. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the phone.

They had framed Ananya Deshmukh. Stabbed her boyfriend to make her look violent. Imprisoned her in the ward she'd tried to expose.

And Hemant had recorded it all. Had known everything. For three years, he'd collected evidence of murder, fraud, and corruption; and had done nothing.

Because his wife was part of it.

---

The last thing she found on the phone was a text message thread between Hemant and an unsaved number. The messages were brief, almost coded:

"Tanvi called again. She's desperate."

"I know. I can't help her."

"Can't or won't?"

"Both."

"They're planning to move Ananya. If she goes to Chhindwara, it's over."

"I know."

"Then DO something."

"What? My wife runs their money. If I talk, she goes to jail. My daughter loses her mother."

"And if you don't talk, people keep dying."

No response. The last message was from two weeks ago.

Ruhani put the phone down and stared at the ceiling.

She had everything. Financial records. Patient files. Audio recordings of murder being planned and executed. A web of corruption that stretched from a hospital ward to city hall.

She had enough to bring down Dr. Tejas Chaudhary, Sneha Patil, and everyone connected to them.

The question was: what to do with it.

Going to the police was out, the police were part of it. Going to the media was risky — the local newspapers were owned by the same families that ran the city. The national media might pick it up, but they'd want verification, context, time.

Time that Ananya Deshmukh didn't have.

Ruhani picked up her own phone and opened YouTube.

Two can play the viral game.

She hit record.

"Hey everyone. Ruhani here. Remember when I said I was investigating Nagpur Central Hospital? Well, I just found something. Something big. And I'm going to share it with all of you. Every. Single. Detail."

She looked directly into the camera.

"They tried to kill me to keep this quiet. Let's see what happens when a million people know the truth."