Chapter Thirty #2
As Tejas leaned back in his seat, his fingers steepled together, the medical examiner blinked, like he was unsure where she was going with this. “I mean to say that in case of an altercation, this woman, being in the prime of her physical health, would have been able to fight back against Mr. Pai.”
“Thank you.” Naina pointed to the mug shot. “Mr. Kumar, do you see signs of struggle in this picture of my client taken less than twelve hours after the life-ending altercation she apparently engaged in?”
Kumar scratched the side of his neck. “Well, no. I don’t see any bruises from this specific picture—”
“In fact, there were no bruises found on Preethi Acharya’s body, or injuries to her fists, when she was initially interviewed by the police or when she was brought into prison last week, as is stated in the police reports in the evidence file.
” Turning to the stand again, she asked, “Mr. Kumar, how long do bruises typically take to heal after a brutal fight like the one Mr. Rizwan is claiming happened?”
“Uh, one or two weeks, perhaps, with regular care and icing?”
“All right,” she replied as she paced back and forth in front of him.
“So, Mr. Kumar, if my client did indeed inflict those bruises on Rohith Pai’s body, if she had actually overpowered him after he struggled to defend himself, why wasn’t there a single scratch on her body?
Why wasn’t her own blood anywhere at the crime scene? ”
Tejas resisted the urge to pump his fist in the air. They’d got him, and based on the prosecutor’s wide eyes, he knew it too.
Kumar fell silent. Finally, he said, “I don’t…I don’t know.”
“No further questions, Your Honor.” Naina returned to her seat as Tejas turned to look at Preethi, who had sat up straighter, color back in her face.
The prosecution brought out their next witness—Pai’s wife and childhood sweetheart, Athira, whose face was still damp with fresh tears. “Mrs. Pai,” Mr. Rizwan said, “were there any signs that led you to believe your husband was being unfaithful to you in the past year?”
“N-never,” Athira said, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Rohith was a loving husband and my best friend. I’ve known and loved him since we were kids.
He might have gone astray in the middle there”—at this, she shot eye daggers at Preethi—“but after we found our way back to each other again, there was no going back. Decades of our love, six years of a picture-perfect married life, with just one blip along the way…until he was murdered.” Athira turned to the judge, folding her hands in a pleading motion.
“Your Honor, give this witch the punishment she deserves for killing my husband!”
“Ma’am, please direct your communication to the prosecutor, not me,” the judge drawled.
While Mr. Rizwan asked Athira more about her relationship with Pai over the years, Naina and Tejas consulted their notes, specifically the page with the details of Pai and Preethi’s messages over the course of filming.
Finally, Mr. Rizwan addressed the texts from the night of the murder.
“Your Honor,” he said, gesturing to the WhatsApp chat on the screen, “according to these logs, Rohith Pai allegedly messaged the defendant two minutes before midnight on October 1, inviting her over to his trailer, alone, because he was thinking of her. Why would a loyal, devoted, doting husband—whose wallpaper is a picture of his wife from their wedding day—send a message like that to another woman?”
Although Tejas agreed that the text wasn’t Pai’s, he still had to hold himself back from rolling his eyes. Doting, devoted husbands didn’t cheat years prior, with a girl half their age.
“Ro-Rohith would never have sent that message,” Athira agreed, choking on her sobs. “That vile woman must have sent it using his phone to cover her tracks. Rohith didn’t believe in locking his phone, and most people in the industry know that.”
Tejas and Naina exchanged glances. Good. The prosecution had walked right into their next line of defense: that Preethi was being framed, and that the texts had been sent by someone else who was on set that night.
The judge adjourned the session, seeing as the court was soon closing for the day. The trial would continue on Monday, when they would cross-examine Athira and other witnesses like Jagannath, Bina, and Gopal, who had already been summoned.
As Naina walked out of the courtroom, Tejas smiled at her, giving her hand a light squeeze. “I think this is going really well. Unless the prosecution has some sort of wild card gotcha moment, we’ve got this.”
“I agree,” Naina said as they headed toward the exit. “At this rate, we might not even have to dig deeper into Jagannath’s possible motive.”
Tejas held back a gasp as they stepped outside. People might have called Preethi a C-list actress, but the horde standing before them told Tejas this case was no less high-profile than the many Bollywood cases his previous firm had handled.
Fending off the paparazzi and press outside was a real challenge; they clamored and crowded in front of the courthouse, yelling out questions and shoving cameras in their faces.
Thankfully, Naina didn’t protest when Tejas wound his arm around her and pushed them both past the mob, Iqbal behind them.
The sun peeked through the clouds like an orange ball in the overcast skies, casting the streets of Bangalore in hazy golden light. Iqbal bid them goodbye, since he had a few things to wrap up at work, and drove off in his car.
Naina checked her wristwatch, which said five-twenty p.m. “Are you going back to the office?” she asked as they walked to an auto rickshaw stand up ahead. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I need a break from work.”
“Me too.” Tejas hesitated as Naina flagged down an auto rickshaw driver across the street. “Do you, um, want to get dinner tonight?”
Naina fiddled with her thumbs, a blush heating her cheeks. “Like a date?”
A thousand butterflies danced in his stomach as he bit his lip nervously. “Yes. Do you want to?”
She cast a look at the auto, which had pulled up next to them, then smiled softly. “Only if I get to pick the restaurant.”
Tejas laughed, putting his hands in his pockets. “The choice is yours. Text me the place, and I’ll meet you there at eight?”
Her smile widened. “It’s a date,” she said before climbing into the auto, and those giddy butterflies in Tejas’s belly transformed into something else entirely: hope.