THE MEDIA CIRCUS

19 July 2017; 11.45 A.M.

It's been six months to everything, a lot of things happened in this time. After Vikram's death became public, news channels and papers heavily covered it. It took less than 10 days for them to find out about the serial killings, the press had a name for the killer 'THE SEVENTEEN KILLER', mostly because of the age of the victim, but still, it was an astonishing coincidence for Shiv and other police officers who worked on the case. Considering how the whole case revolved around finding this one-word 'Seventeen'. It just didn't end there! These officers involved in the case were as if cursed with misery. One after another curveball always made its way to them.

After everything that went down with Dhruv, Ashwini wanted justice. Ashwini started protesting against the police, she wanted justice for her son. According to her Dhruv was innocent. As the whole story behind the killings never came out, she never found out what monstrosities her son did. With a protest that went on for months, the police were in deep shit! They had everyone coming after them to drag them to the dirt. Media, the public, and for some even their family turned on them. If that wasn't enough their own department started questioning their honesty. In the last six months, Shiv and his team had gone through two internal investigations already. Even though their department wasn't completely on their side, they didn't go against Shiv and his team. They gave them a not guilty verdict as blaming Shiv and his team would reflect badly on the police department, and that would result in public outrage and no one wanted that! But as the outcome didn't convince Ashwini, the protest just continued. People's support kept increasing and that made news media hungry for coverage and all together Ashwini got to everybody's television as the mother whose son had to face severe injustice due to police. And who wouldn't have liked to hit stones on a police officer in our society? All the fame that followed her just attracted the wrong kind of people, POLITICIANS!

These people neer cared about justice or doing the right thing, this was a chance to look like a good and honest man in front of the public and politicians don't miss such a chance! Ashwini always knew their motives every time anyone one of them stood on the stage to talk about the plight of a suffering mother but at the end f the day their actions were still helpful for her as her needs were getting clearer and wheels were getting turned. The pressure those politicians put on the police department was a lot! It was just a matter of days and the investigation of 'THE SEVENTEEN KILLER' case was getting transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The media and press just got new material to bash the police department once again. Their image was pretty much damaged by the video that was released on 18th January, the day when one more teenager died.

The video was first thought of as an insensitive joke by some person on the internet. But that was until the kids in the school started making conspiracy theories, and making connections with their dead classmates and their sudden death in such a short period. As that happened they started sharing it with everyone claiming to have seen the confession by the killer himself, and to the point that it was no more a conspiracy theory but actually a real video confession by a serial killer. Police were late on finding the video, so they weren't able to control the distribution. The video was of a masked person, admitting to killing those 3 boys and saying that as police had found out about his existence, he was going to change the way he killed teenagers. The video confused everyone including Shiv, but after a little digging, it was found that the video was uploaded from a bot account and it was a sign that it was again Dhruv. Shiv knew it was Dhruv who did it; he scheduled a video so that his name would get clear even after him admitting everything. He was the killer for the police but with that video, Dhruv was deemed innocent by the people. For people, he was a teenager who was wrongly accused and later killed in a fake encounter.

Dhruv died on the morning of 18th January with a bullet in his heart, and it happened on the same road once his father was killed. The irony was unmatchable! The police had a story of what exactly happened and how exactly happened. But in the end, it was a teenager who got killed, sympathy took place for logic. People's anger towards the police and Ashwini's protest just set the folks at CBI in motion. They had called all the police officers who worked on the case for questioning Shiv included.

Shiv was sitting on the bench outside the room waiting for his turn for questioning, he was last on the list. Vijay, Subhash, Keshav, and Bhosle were taken one by one inside and asked questions. All of them had perfected the 'police' version of the story, trying their best to keep the truth away from coming in front of the world. Everyone was done, Vijay was still inside and Shiv was waiting patiently outside. He never raised his head while he sat there on that bench, he was ashamed! He knew it was entirely his fault. From the day the video was released, he was the one who was held responsible for everything that happened.

Ashwini, the media, people, and even half the police force thought that he killed an innocent kid. He was never given a chance to present his side. It was painful, and he just let that pain be his life. As the stress increased in his life, he turned to alcoholism. He was drunk most of the time, always carrying a small bottle filled with rum in it. Bad times did bring some good things; Vijay had his peace with Shiv. Their ego wars were finally over! It was Vijay, who made sure that Shiv doesn't come to the CBI office drunk, he was being a son that Shiv deserved but never got! Time passed in long intervals for Shiv on that bench, he waited for long, and he was finally called in!