Roshan Rana’s Qualis made its way through the busy streets of Gurgaon that were trying to navigate their new-found millennium City status. The new millennium was already over a year old, yet the word “millennium” was still a part of every new corporate “sales and marketing pitch”. On the outskirts of New Delhi, the recently built multistoried buildings dominated the skyline, looking down upon its older sibling – the old Gurgaon – which was essentially a large village cajoled into being a city due to its proximity to the country’s power centre.

He remembered his growing up years when his father was posted here. Those days, Gurgaon was a sleepy, homely, small town. As he passed the old Sheetala Mata Mandir, a sudden vivid memory of his mother made him smile.

The temple had been a grounding force for him then, just as it was now a reminder of simpler times and togetherness. His mother would emotionally harangue him into visiting the mandir whenever he was home from his hostel at the prestigious Fort School. The past is really etched into our being. The smoke from the incense sticks and its familiar scent were intertwined in his memories. A serenity enveloped him when he sat beside his mother, listening to her whispered prayers and watching the flickering flames of the oil lamps. The new upscale Gurgaon was harder, more brittle. Roshan knew their glass windows reflected a distorted reality of progress, despite liberalization and the material wealth it brought along. On one hand, incessant construction to make way for the corporates setting up their offices, soaring salaries, and increased access to education – yet, a virulent strain of intolerance seemed to be infecting the very fabric of the city. The rising crime graph was a stark reflection of all that plagued its streets. The working class, once lauded for their resilience, now harboured a simmering resentment. Frustrations boiling over into acts of astonishing brutality that shocked even a seasoned cop like Roshan.

He gazed upon the multistoried building, the office of a telecom giant. The beautiful stained-glass facade was a stark contrast to the memory of a horrible case. Two years ago, the brutal rape and murder of a young woman, Rituja Kumari, in Vasant Kunj area of South Delhi had sent shockwaves through the city. It was a brutality that defied comprehension. She was picked up in the evening while she was going home from her place of work. Roshan was a veteran of violence. He had witnessed the depths of human depravity and encountered countless psychopaths cloaked in normalcy and living routine lives, yet this case had pierced even his hardened soul.

Despite evolving societal shifts, education, and liberalisations, Roshan knew that violence against women has remained a constant. A large percentage of his caseload involved crimes perpetrated against women. Despite the relentless progress of civilisation, the spectre of violence against women remained inevitable. Like death. It persisted. Women were controlled and raped and killed for many reasons. For many centuries. The motives changed. The cruelty remained.

The savagery of the crime had ignited a personal fire within Roshan. The Rituja Kumari murder investigation had plunged him into the underbelly of Haryana as the suspects were thought to be from the bordering villages of Haryana. The memory of the ambush, a chilling encounter in a darkened alleyway of a village, sent shivers down his spine. There were four assailants, members of a local criminal gang, who had sprung from the shadows. Roshan had narrowly escaped death that night. He wasn’t carrying his service revolver but his courage had saved him. It was a fightback Roshan was proud of. He had later faced strong resistance from his superiors in the Delhi Police and the Haryana state police for crossing his area of influence and conducting his “unofficial” investigation in a state that wasn’t his domain. There was political pressure too. His actions had put his career on the line. But Roshan had seen the battered body of the young girl and the inhumanity she was subjected to. He was told by colleagues that cops shouldn’t let crimes get to them. Not to take them “personally”, as such crimes were part and parcel of the job. But Roshan didn’t agree. He never did. How could one remain unaffected by such brutality, no matter the frequency? They should still be shocked and upset by brutal crimes, he believed. For him, justice was paramount. Nothing else mattered, except the investigation. It eclipsed all other things in his life.

Resistance only fuelled his determination. He hadn’t slept for six nights straight and investigated the case with such vengeance that his relentless pursuit, bordering on obsession, had astonished his boss, DCP Thakkar. Roshan had nabbed the murderer. What had ultimately shocked him was that the killer of the girl was not the expected sexually depraved, uneducated criminal from a rural background that they expected, but a well-educated professional working as a senior manager in a multinational telecom company. A product of privilege and a prestigious management institute.

Roshan recalled the moment he had apprehended the killer. He had restrained himself from inflicting the same brutality upon him. The killer was a married man with a wife and two daughters. How could he choose to inflict such horrific suffering on a young girl? After the arrest, Roshan had offered Rituja’s parents the opportunity to exact their revenge, unofficially granting them an hour to punish the man in the lockup. To shout at him. To beat him up. Yet, the father had broken down after a few slaps. Their grief had overwhelmed them. The realisation that nothing will bring back their daughter. Roshan knew that the killer’s wealth and connections would grant him access to the best lawyers, potentially allowing him to avoid maximum punishment.

Even years later, today, as he navigated the transformed “millennium city”, driving past the building where the killer once worked, Roshan couldn’t shake the thought off: Does it take the desperation of poverty or the hollowness of prosperity to truly expose the darkness within us? He didn’t have an answer. What he did believe, however, was that any transformation, whether of a city or a person, is not without its consequences.

Excerpted with permission from As Dark As Blood, Yasser Usman, Simon and Schuster India.