Vikram found the chemical trail on a Wednesday.
A research laboratory in Thane — BioShield Agrochemicals — had reported a discrepancy in their inventory of Compound 1080 three months earlier. Small quantity, 200 milligrams — enough to kill several adults. The discrepancy had been filed as a potential clerical error and forgotten. Nobody had investigated. Nobody had cared. Until now.
Priya and Vikram drove to BioShield the same afternoon. The facility was on the outskirts of Thane, past the industrial zone, in a grey concrete building that looked like it had been designed by someone who hated architecture. The lab director, Dr. Smita Rathore, was cooperative in the way that people are cooperative when two police officers show up unannounced and one of them is Senior Inspector Priya Sharma, whose reputation preceded her the way storm clouds precede rain.
"The discrepancy was noted during our quarterly audit," Dr. Rathore said, pulling up records on her computer. "Two hundred milligrams of Compound 1080, lot number TH-1080-2024-09. It was stored in our restricted access vault. Only five people have keycard access."
"Names," Priya said.
Dr. Rathore printed the list. Five names. Priya ran them through the Crime Branch database in the car while Vikram drove back.
Four of the five were clean. The fifth — a lab technician named Ajay Kulkarni, twenty-seven — had resigned from BioShield two months ago. No forwarding address. No new employer on record. His mobile number was disconnected. His rented flat in Thane had been vacated — the landlord said he'd left in the middle of the night, paid up, and disappeared.
"That's our lead," Priya said.
They traced Ajay Kulkarni through his Aadhaar card, his bank account, and his digital footprint. He'd been born in Nagpur. B.Sc in Chemistry from Nagpur University. Moved to Mumbai in 2021. Worked at three different labs before BioShield. Clean record. No arrests, no complaints, no red flags.
Except one.
In 2019, Ajay Kulkarni's younger brother, Saurabh, had been a student at a college in Malad West. During a college fest, Saurabh and his friend had consumed bottled water that had been laced with an industrial chemical. They'd both been hospitalized. Saurabh had suffered permanent kidney damage.
"The Malad poisoning case," Vikram said, staring at his screen. "Ma'am, Saurabh Kulkarni wasn't one of the Desai twins. He was another victim. One of the unreported ones."
Priya's hands went cold. She remembered now. The official case had focused on the Desai twins because they were the most severely affected, but there had been other victims at the college fest — four other students had been hospitalized with milder symptoms. The investigation had concentrated on the twins, and the other cases had been treated as secondary.
