The breakthrough came from the camera.
Isha had identified the probable make — a mid-range smartphone, Realme or Redmi — based on the image characteristics. Raghav's tech team confirmed it: the photographs' compression algorithm matched the Realme 12 Pro, a phone sold in India since late 2024, with approximately four million units in circulation.
Four million phones. Needle in a haystack.
But Isha wasn't looking for the phone. She was looking for the photographer's habits. And habits, unlike hardware, are unique.
She'd noticed the left-side preference — every subject photographed from their left. She'd noticed the consistent distance — fifteen to twenty metres. Now she noticed something else: the timestamps.
The Instagram posts were published at random times, but the photographs themselves — based on the lighting conditions, the shadows, the ambient details — were taken within a consistent window: 4 PM to 7 PM. Every single photograph, without exception, was taken during the late afternoon.
"The Watcher has a schedule," she told Raghav. "They photograph during a specific window. Late afternoon. That's when they hunt."
"That narrows it, but not enough."
"Combined with the geography — South Delhi, Central Delhi — and the timing, we can predict where and when they'll be. They're creatures of habit. And habits are exploitable."
She proposed something dangerous. Not just dangerous — reckless, irresponsible, the kind of thing that responsible journalists argue against in ethics panels and then do anyway when the story matters enough.
"I'm rated 9.5. The highest they've ever given. If the pattern holds, they're going to come for me within days. Instead of hiding, I'm going to make myself visible. I'm going to walk through their hunting ground — Hauz Khas, Khan Market, Shahpur Jat — during their window. Between 4 and 7. Every day. And when they photograph me — when they position themselves fifteen to twenty metres to my left, with a Realme 12 Pro, in the late afternoon light — we're going to catch them."
