The time was 10 pm and the place was Nehru bus station in Vijayawada. It was summer and extremely hot even at that time of night. Sashidhar came to that city for official work and finished it by six in the evening. He was waiting for his bus to Bangalore which was supposed to reach the platform by then. Then as time went on a man came to him accompanied by a girl in her twenties. He asked in an accent of coastal Andhra, “Sir will you kindly look after my daughter, I will go and get some fruits for her.” Sashidhar said “Ok” and went on looking for his bus.
The bus finally came and parked on the designated platform. There was no trace of the father of that girl. Passengers went on boarding but still no trace of that gentleman. He glanced sideways at the girl and found her to be dusky but beautiful in a homely sort of way. Time was fast approaching for departure and the conductor was calling out to passengers to get in. Just then his phone rang and it was his friend Kumar from Bangalore. “Hi, have you boarded the bus?” Sashidhar answered, “No I am stuck with a girl and her father has left her with me.”
Kumar laughed and said “Don’t you believe him. What was his name? Ask that girl.” Sashi
asked that girl “Where did your father go? What is his name?” She answered, “My father’s name is Paparao and I don’t where he went.”
Shashi called back and passed on the information to Kumar. Kumar said “Just as I expected. Don’t you believe them and get on the bus? So Shashi rushed onto the bus and took his seat at the last moment. And as the bus started he was wondering about the whole mystery and dozed off.
The bus reached Bangalore and Shashi reached his room. By that time Kumar has already left for his job. Shashi reported for duty and was busy the whole day filing reports for TA and DA claims. At the end of the day, he returned to the room and met Kumar who had returned from his job. He asked “Ok, now enlighten me about the mystery” Kumar started to explain about the previous day’s happenings and his cryptic messages. The gist of the tale was as follows.
One of his batch mates got through GATE and landed a job as a Design Trainee in a defense PSU. In the assembly building, there was an officer from Maharashtra from Mumbai to be specific. He married a nice girl and was staying in company quarters. The officer named Amit Waghmare was working in the assembly as a testing engineer and next door was the special projects division.
Paparao was posted in that project in which there is no accountability of workers as there is no record of output being an R&D unit. All the engineers were freshers from engineering college, lacked administrative skills, and were mostly immersed in designs. So our Paparao had a free run punching in and after first lunch went out and looked after his business interest in real estate, chit funds selling textiles, etc. He used to saunter in the second shift and leave after two hours wandering throughout the factory and punching out at the General shift at 5 o’clock He had deep contacts within the security department selling defense liquor in black-market.
Life was on a roll with assured salary and incentive for whatever the geeks of his department produced. The incentive scheme is a scam designed to keep workers happy for whatever little output they produce. Salary is for punching in attendance and incentive is for the production which is assured to everyone to present on rolls. Subsidized and tea, coffee are also part of the offering for those hard-working workmen.
Anyway, life was good for our proxy-punching free-roaming worker. His only problem was with Waghmare the next door for he came to know that this fellow being an SC married a Brahmin girl which our Apparao found to be very hard to accept. He had an intense hatred for this lowly person who dared to marry above his caste and also seemed to be flirting with other females.
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Paparao used to seethe with rage whenever this engineer was found speaking to other females. Back in his village persons of low caste have to be confined to their settlements and dare not enter the village where high castes live. Even if someone enters the high caste’s living quarters he has to stand outside the gate and deliver the message or consignment. After the lowly person leaves that place it has to be cleaned with water. If that low caste person had to walk in front of their gate, they have to go barefoot holding the footwear in their hands. It was rumored Papa Rao’s father was the leader in one pogrom where Dalit hamlets were burnt to the ground and some were killed while escaping the inferno.
Waghmare became an obsession to Paparao and he used to hang around Wghmare’s quarter in the township burning with hate just by looking at his quarter. He used to hang around the officer’s quarter well into midnight imagining their romantic moments and seething with rage. A Dalit sleeping with a Brahmin woman used to keep him awake all night burning with jealousy. When the security jeep met him on rounds on the streets of the officer’s quarter, he used to bluff his way claiming to be visiting his boss at his home.
So Paparao was burning with hatred towards this upstart and hatching many plans to fix him in some scam which somehow did not materialize. He planned to hit Waghmare as a low-caste bastard but with strong Civil Rights laws, he dared not do it.
Not long ago Apparao from his village abused another Dalit by his caste name which brought the Dalit leaders to the factory and the management had a tough time diffusing the situation. After Apparao tendered an unconditional apology, the situation was brought under control. The DGM HR did a fine balancing act to keep the matter concealed without the media getting even a hint of the situation.
So Paparao was thinking of a foolproof plan without exposing himself. Then he hit upon a brilliant idea. There was an archaic practice called Duty Officer followed in defense PSU. All middle-ranking officers were put on the roster every night acting as head of the institution from evening to day break. The purpose behind this practice was not clear as officers from diverse backgrounds and accounts in R&D were put on the roster. The Duty Officer is the defacto head of the unit during night time and is solely responsible for any eventuality in the factory and township premises during night time.
The importance of the Duty Officer’s responsibility could be understood from the following incident.
One night the sub-inspector from the police station next to the gate sauntered into the factory premises in his civvies around 1130 pm. The lone security guard at the gate did not recognize him and enquired about his identity. This infuriated the cop who felt mightily offended at this imaginary slight and called other police personnel from his police station. The security guard was beaten black and blue in the police station for the temerity to ask about the identity of the SI. Then he was thrown into lockup.
When the Duty Officer came on rounds to check, the post was deserted and the guard was found missing. Upon inquiry, it was found that he was in police lock-up for asking the identity of the SI. The Duty Officer promptly contacted the Chief Security Officer who called up the General Manager in the middle of the night to appraise the situation. The GM in turn called the Governor’s office and explained the incident. The governor’s office called the DGP of the State and the cop was transferred by the next morning. The point is any such untoward happening at night is the sole responsibility of the Duty Officer.
When Waghmare’s turn came, Paparao hatched a foolproof plan to implicate him. The plan was to fix him as a Duty Officer in the sale of scrap in an ingenious way. First, a small truck will be allowed for weighing at the weighbridge for tare weight, and after getting the printout a different but larger truck will be loaded with scrap. His friends in security followed his plan and loaded the larger truck with aluminum and copper scrap. It got waved through the first gate and reached the outer gate. Then the guard compared the printout with the truck number and found the registration number to be different. The difference in weight was around 2 tons.
He stopped the truck and called, the Chief Security Officer who in turn called the GM. Waghmare was placed under suspension and was told to attend an inquiry the next day. When he reached home early morning and broke the news to his wife she was heartbroken. While he went to attend the inquiry she along with her 9-year-old son hanged to death in the company quarter.
Waghmare was found guilty of negligence if not complicity and dismissed from service. He went missing and his in-laws came from their place performed the last rites after the post-mortem and vacated the quarter.
Papa Rao’s son became mad and was wandering on the roads. His eldest daughter committed suicide at the in-law’s place. He took VRS and went back to his place where he mysteriously became a pauper. To survive he became a pimp to his own younger daughter.
After listening to the tale of hate crime, I was shocked beyond belief about the power of hate. He remembered a Hollywood movie seen a long time ago and it was called Blow hot blow cold. It was a Hollywood movie about murder due to sexual jealousy.
Tag words: Duty officer, atrocity act, hate crime