Panther's Ghosts: The Beginning

By Ajit and Arvind

Veer Pratap Rana is brutally killed in his own house by six men dressed in army fatigues. The man behind this is mafia don Mohammad Adnan acting at the behest of the minister he is reporting to-Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Katyal.

Rana's son, Raj, vows revenge. However, avenging his father will also involve taking down the head of a terrorist operation in the heart of Pakistan.

Enter, Panther's Ghosts, an elite anti-terrorism group headed by Prime Minister Damodar Das. Together they overcome odds to bring justice to Veer Pratap Rana and India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Dec 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9789390252732

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, was a city that welcomed every visitor that set foot on its soil. However, things were not the same, particularly after January 1993, when tragedy had hit India in the form of communal riots. In the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the country was rocked by Hindu–Muslim clashes, and thousands of innocent people were killed.

Mumbai was the worst hit because a deep nexus between radical Muslim outfits, the underworld and the politicians had taken root here. While the radicals were operating under the directive of the ISI, the mafia and the politicians were in the game only for the money. The situation became worse after 26/11, and the local police knew this better than anyone else. As a result, every police station in Mumbai had a special unit headed by an officer who was working hard to uncover this nexus.

All these special officers reported to Veer Pratap Rana, the deputy commissioner of Mumbai Police. Two months of investigations had unearthed enough evidence to call certain people for questioning. His team has been working hard to gather substantial proof to send some of them to the gallows, including a very high-ranking politician in the ruling government.

DECEMBER 2014

It was Christmas eve and the splendid decorations were adding to the festive season at a church in Bandra. The midnight mass had already ended. The bungalow of the deputy commissioner of police, the only residence in that area, was dark and silent. Outside the bungalow, the winter rain had stopped. The only sound came from the water droplets falling from the leaves to the ground, and the incessant calling of the restless crickets.

1

It had been well after midnight when Veer Pratap Rana had hit the bed. He had double checked if the collated evidence had reached all the places he had despatched them to: a copy to his new reporting officer, Commissioner Rajiv Prasad, the previous day itself; one copy to the prime minister of India, Damodar Das, and the other to his friends, Shiva and Ashok. All of them had received their copies. Commissioner Prasad had called in the morning to ask him if he had made copies of the file but he had answered in the negative. For some inexplicable reason, he did not trust the new commissioner. In fact, he had had a long chat with his wife Shanti who was on a business trip abroad. He had voiced his doubts and had told her that he had a nagging feeling that there were moles in the police department. He doubted specific people, and one of them was the commissioner himself.

Outside the bungalow, the crickets had stopped their call. The man in khaki looked at his watch before moving stealthily towards the main door of the bungalow. The time was 2:30 AM. The rubber soles of his shoes made no noise in the dark. He used a Philips micro-screwdriver to undo the screws on the security panel. It took him less than ten seconds to disengage the security system and the red light on the top panel disappeared. He replaced the panel, stepped back into the darkness and whistled softly.

Six men in army fatigues moved out from the mangroves surrounding the bungalow and walked quietly towards the main door. The leader, an extremely large and dark-complexioned man, signalled to one of his associates. The man stepped up to the main door and used a brass key to open it.

Inside, they fanned out—three of them searched the ground floor, while another three moved up the stairs to the first floor.

On the first floor, Veer Pratap Rana had heard the sound of padded feet and rolled out of his bed, Glock in hand. He quickly slipped into an alcove next to the cupboard, just as the bedroom door handle turned.

The door opened slowly and silently.

Two men slipped in. One moved to the left and the other to the right. As the man on the right took two steps towards the bed, the bullet from Veer’s silencer-topped Glock split his face. The body spun around and dropped to its knees; a fountain of blood gushed out from the base of its neck. The man on the left panicked and fired blindly but missed Veer. The second shot from Veer’s Glock went through his right eye. He screamed and fell down.

Veer pulled back further into the shadows. Only the howls of the man who had lost his eye were heard. No one moved; they had not expected retaliation. The hulk growled but did not dare enter the room alone.

The three men on the ground floor heard the howls and rushed upstairs.

It was four against one now.

Inside the dark room, Veer knew that he was boxed in. Unless…

He pushed open the bedroom window with his left hand, waited for a few seconds and then jumped out. He landed on his feet, then his knees. He looked up; there was no one at the window.

‘There is still a chance,’ he thought to himself and ran towards the mangroves. He was 5 feet short of the thicket when the first bullet hit him. A searing pain shot through his back and reached his lungs. He realised that he had been hit, but ploughed on.

Just as he entered the mangrove, the second slug hit him in the spine, just below the neck. For a few seconds, time seemed to halt. Then, he fell, face forward.

The hulk lowered his sniper rifle and looked out from the window on the first floor.

‘He is down,’ he growled and shuffled downstairs.

When the four predators reached Veer, he was still breathing. Veer looked up at the four men in fatigues from the corner of his right eye. Though they were fully covered with only slits for eyes, he recognised a pair of light brown eyes.

‘You too, Dharma?’ he asked as blood from his punctured lung poured from his mouth. In response, the hulk put another bullet into Veer’s back. It tore through his heart and went into the soft ground. Veer’s body shuddered and his eyes flickered for a second.

‘Raj,’ he whispered, and then closed his eyes.

The four predators looked at the body for a few seconds. Then, the hulk said, ‘Bastard was tough … we don’t have time to clean up. Let’s get out of here.’

The man named Dharma looked at two of his associates and said, ‘We have 30 minutes for roll call.’

As the others walked away, Dharma turned back to look at Veer.

‘Forgive me, Rana-ji, but I didn’t have a choice,’ he whispered. Then, he turned and hurried back to the group, which was already running towards an SUV parked on the main road.

Before they reached the vehicle, they removed their face masks and fatigues and stuffed them into a black bag that Dharma was carrying. Underneath the fatigues, they were wearing khaki pants and white shirts—all except the hulk, who was wearing a Pathan’s dress.

Dharma’s feet were heavy and his breathing laborious when he reached the SUV. He was not as young as the other three; even the hulk was faster than him. Two of them jumped into the backseat of the vehicle, and the hulk got into the passenger seat in front. The driver, a thin fellow, was already drenched in sweat. His hands trembled as he clutched the gear.

Dharma was the fifth man in the group.

Just as he stepped onto the main road, a guy on a motorbike suddenly came out of the darkness and nearly hit him. Even as the rider tried to avoid Dharma, he lost his balance and skidded on the road before crashing into a stone. The rear wheel was still spinning when the rider tried to get up.

‘Watch where you are going!’ Dharma snarled as he tossed the bag on the backseat and jumped in with the others. The driver hit the pedal, and the SUV sprang onto a side road and sped off.

The rider got up and uttered a curse when he watched the SUV barrel down the road. He picked up his watch, which had been tossed aside. As he wiped the glass, he saw the crack on it. ‘Shit!’ he cursed under his breath.

The rider picked up the bike, kick-started it after a couple of tries and rode off into the night.

Roll call at the Crawford Market Police Station on Christmas morning was at 4 AM. The four men had 30 minutes to drop the hulk outside a mosque in a Muslim- dominated area of Western Mumbai called Mahim, and then report for work.

NOVEMBER 2015

After Veer Pratap Rana’s death, his wife, Shanti, moved in with her father into a quiet hamlet in Earl’s Court, London—away from the memories of her husband’s death, and away from her son, lest she tell him the truth. After holding back everything for a year, when she got a call from one of Veer’s friends, asking her for a favour, she decided to tell her son, Raj Pratap Rana, everything. He was the managing director of Info Dynamics, which was popularly known as ID. A Fortune 500 company, headquartered out of Mumbai, it did most of the back office operations of some of the biggest multinational companies in the United States and Europe. With a contribution margin of 25 per cent, both Raj and ID had no reason to complain.

At thirty-six years of age, Raj was six feet tall, a hundred-and-ninety pounds, fair and ruggedly handsome. His brown eyes danced in the morning sunlight, even as his upturned lips lent him an air of irony. He gelled back his short black hair just like his father. His mother was always struck by the uncanny resemblance between the father and son.

It was cold in Earl’s Court as the winter had set in early this year. There was 2 feet of snow in the kitchen garden outside and, even beyond that, everything was covered in a white blanket. Shanti Pratap Rana stood near the window and looked out while Raj sat at the dining table. A year had passed since she had lost Rana but she just could not get over him. Raj knew something was troubling his mother, and he did not like it one bit. She continued looking out of her kitchen window for a while longer and then turned to her son.

2

‘They murdered him, Raj.’ Shanti’s words hung in the still morning. ‘They murdered him. His own people.’

‘Murdered whom?’ Raj asked, closing the space between his mother and him in long strides. He was quick on his feet because of his black belt in Shaolin Kung Fu.

‘Your father. Veer,’ she replied, her sad eyes looking into her son’s intense gaze.

‘What do you mean his own people? I thought the mafia ordered a hit on him.’

‘No. It was a pre-meditated murder orchestrated by the then chief minister and executed by the mafia don Mohammed Adnan,’ Shanti turned her fit but stooping-with-grief body away from Raj as she tried to hide her tears.

‘Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Katyal? But why?’ asked a surprised Raj.

Shanti did not respond. Her heart was beating fast. She turned to look at her son.

‘Uncle Gyan and you told me the mafia got him killed because he had gotten too close to nabbing Adnan,’ Raj said softly.

Shanti shook her head, tears streaming down her face.

‘What really happened, Mum?’ Raj asked softly as he wiped her tears and made her sit down at the table.

‘We have hidden a lot from you and for too long. That was because I was scared for your life, son. But today, I will tell you everything.’

She wrapped the shawl tighter around her body and continued. ‘As you know, your father was one of the few incorruptible IPS officers left in India. After his stint in the Special Protection Group or SPG, he was commissioned as DCP of the crime branch in Mumbai and was asked to head an elite force against organised crime in Mumbai. His boss and then police commissioner was Sivanandan.’

‘Yes, I remember Sivanandan uncle,’ Raj said.

‘Sivanandan was very close to Veer. In fact, he had personally requested that Veer be transferred under him. Their professional chemistry was very good and, between them, they eliminated almost every gang member in Mumbai. Those who lived ran for their lives, but one man—Mohammed Adnan—was elusive.’

‘Yes, I remember reading about Dad’s achievements in the papers,’ the son responded, his eyes gleaming with pride for his father. Like his father, Raj, too, was extremely loyal to his country—it came primarily from his father, though his entire family was patriotic.

‘It was common knowledge that no one could touch Veer and Sivanandan as they had the blessings of Prime Minister Damodar Das. Every bullet Veer fired had a name on it and, in a short span of ten years, fifty-six dreaded gangsters had bitten the dust. There had been continuous threats to his life but he had never cared. His concern was only you and I. He wanted us to be safe, so he sent you off to Paris ten years ago and encouraged me to take up an international assignment that kept me away from India for at least six months every year. The arrangement suited him. With both of us out of trouble, he continued the offensive, but this time specifically against Adnan.’

‘Why was he so hell bent on getting Adnan?’ Raj asked.

‘A year before Veer died, there was an attempt to kidnap me. Veer’s friend Shiva came to know about it and thwarted the attempt.’

‘How?’ asked Raj, stunned at the fact that he hadn’t known of his own mother’s kidnapping.

‘I was to be kidnapped on the way to the airport but Shiva put his wife in the car instead of me,’ said Shanti.

‘Oh my God! He put his wife in the line of fire to save you?’ asked Raj, amazed at the act.

‘The information Shiva had received was that I would be kidnapped and used as bait to get Veer off the case. There wasn’t supposed to be any threat to my life. Shiva thought when the mafia found out they got the wrong person, they would let her go, assuming it was a mistake, by which time I would be out of the country.’

‘They let her go?’

‘No. When they found out they got the wrong person, they shot her point blank three times. There was nothing left of her face when Shiva reached the spot,’ Shanti’s eyes were red as tears poured down from them.

‘So, for Dad, the fight had now become personal,’ whispered Raj.

Shanti nodded and continued.

‘Sivanandan realised that they were dealing with a ruthless gang and was very concerned about Veer’s life now. He advised Veer and me to move to a bungalow in Pune, and not allow you to come back from Paris till everything had cooled down here. I moved to Pune immediately but Veer was restless. He wanted revenge and the Pune arrangement was not working out for him. It was then that Veer made me promise two things. One that you should not be told about any of this, and that you were better off in Paris with your new business project. And two, he wanted me to take on an international assignment I had been offered and base myself out of Earl’s Court with Grandpa.’

‘And you agreed to both?’ said Raj.

‘Initially, no. I agreed to the decision about you but I refused to move out. However, I realised soon that he was getting frustrated and angry at the situation. I felt it was best that I got out of his way and left. I worked on assignments in Europe and started taking long holidays in Earl’s Court with your Grandpa. Veer was much more relaxed after we left and soon he moved