If Sashi had expected Mitra to be surprised or confused about the truth, the dumbfounded expression on her face far exceeded it. She wasn't breathing, simply gaping at him in utter bewilderment.
"You don't believe me?" Sashi asked her quietly.
Mitra involuntarily, slowly shook her head once.
Sashi lowered his gaze and said, "I did think of killing her that night. The moment till you came along and saw us, I believed I could proceed with it. You were looking so hurt and upset about what Lekha had done to you that I thought you would be happy if I killed her. But, the moment you turned away without even sparing a look at me, when I realized you had eyes only for Lekha but not for me who was choking her, I faltered. I had loosened my grip and felt her regaining a little strength in her body."
He looked up to see Mitra listening with bated breath, and tilting his head to give her a pensive eye, said, "It isn't that easy to feel someone's life flicker, and come and go in your hands. At least not the first time you try. I couldn't kill her. I had her throat locked in my arms, but I couldn't snap her neck. I just stood there holding her, as she struggled feebly. And I let her free from my grasp."
"If you didn't kill her, then who...?" Mitra whispered.
Sashi stared hard at her before solemnly admitting, "My father. And his friends."
To say Mitra was shocked would be an understatement. She was panicked, perplexed and prying. After twelve years of agony, getting to know that there was more to the story of the crime she had witnessed and felt guilty about, made her feel truly lost.
"Your father?" she uttered in her befuddlement.
Sashi nodded. "He and two of his friends walked in on us from the other side of the street, drunk and out of control, and saw me letting go of a barely standing up Lekha. They saw an opportunity and pounced on us."
###
Sashi had been holding Lekha in a headlock for a few minutes, not tightly enough to kill her, dwelling on the way Mitra had turned her back on them. She hadn't smiled at him, encouraged him in any way, or even looked at him clearly; she had just gazed at Lekha with contempt, her eyes speaking volumes about her own pain and reluctance to interfere.
It was evident to Sashi that Mitra hadn't left the place to give him space to kill Lekha. She had left just because she didn't wish to see either of the people involved in the tussle.
Beneath his arm, he could feel Lekha's pulse beating erratically. It was slowing down and he could sense her growing very weak. She went limp after some struggle, more out of exhaustion, slipping down with all her weight entrusted to Sashi's grasp.
He held her up for a moment before releasing her completely, letting her slide to the ground. She coughed, gasping for breath, trying to hold herself up on the muddy street.
Sashi was too much in a daze to help her up. He had almost killed a girl, and that was eating him up.
How could he have done that? He wasn't his father.
He looked down at the girl who was lying on the ground, trying to get herself together.
He didn't feel like helping her; she deserved at least this much pain.
That was when he heard his father's sneering voice.
Sashi froze, horrified of being caught in such a position by none other than the one man who would hurl him to the ground without any hesitation. He turned about, trying to discern if he was hallucinating the voice or if his father was really present at the scene.
There he stood, at a corner of the street a few feet away, flanked by two other men. All three looked drunk and with the jeering expressions on their faces, they seemed to have been watching Sashi for quite some time. His father especially looked creepily delighted.
Sashi took a step back in fear. Lekha was still lying down, weak and coughing.
Sashi's father spoke in a high pitched tone, approaching the two youngsters, sneering, "Woah, you are learning fast. Got a present for us, have you?"
Sashi was rooted to the ground, and so was Lekha who had looked up at the approaching people, hopeful that someone would save her.
Sashi's father practically ran forward, dropping onto the ground in front of Lekha and roughly grabbing her chin to take a clearer look at her face, derisively taunted, "She will do for today, I guess."
Lekha was at a loss, not getting an idea of what was happening. The man looked up at a trembling Sashi and asked, "Why do you want to kill her so soon? Why even try when you can't go through with it completely?"
As was his habit, Sashi shrank back, hanging his head, avoiding the gaze of his father and remained silent.
His father got up and stepped towards Sashi, intimidating and whispering, "You are always such a failure. So weak! I will teach you something today: how to never hesitate when you have your hands wrapped around someone's throat."
As Sashi watched in horror, his father signalled his friends to come over, hauled over Lekha to her feet and the three grotesque men went on to gag her silent and bound her tightly in their hold physically. Lekha thrashed wildly in their grasp, trying desperately to free herself, but with the amount of energy she had already lost fighting Sashi, she paled in a few moments.
The men proceeded to leave the place towards the darker end of the suburbs where the lake lay, dragging Lekha with them, as it started to drizzle.
Aghast at how things had panned out, Sashi could do nothing but follow his father.
That night, Sashi witnessed the worst horror of his life, as he watched his father and his friends make their way to one of the tree covers near the lake, dumped a barely conscious Lekha there and proceeded to torture her. Sashi stood at a distance, squinting in the darkness and now pelting rain at the monstrosity the men were displaying, watching them rape and strangle the frail girl.
All the while Sashi could only think about how he was a failure at everything. He should have warned the girl to escape. He, who knew how heinous his father was, should have at least said something when his father said he would teach him how to commit a murder.
He could hear Lekha's muffled screams and the sounds of her thrashing around in pain, and he shivered in helplessness. He was living his nightmare of being physically hurt by his father on a regular basis without actually being at the receiving end of the abuse at the moment.
He clutched at the bark of a nearby tree, trying to remember how to breathe.
He didn't know when it ended, but suddenly the men were scrambling to do something to the cold and lifeless body of the girl. Sashi could hear one of his father's friends, who worked in the same factory as his father, say that they needed to bury the body somewhere or even burn it, to avoid the police finding it.
The other friend of his father, whom Sashi had never seen before, differed in his opinion. He said that with the rain coming down, both the options the first person suggested were difficult and attention grabbing. They had to simply clean up the place and the girl's body to remove their traces and dump it near the lake in the rain. The rain would do enough damage to the remains of their crime on the girl's body and the police would surely botch up the initial investigation like they normally do.
Sashi watched them execute the plan, his head now completely blank.