“Cause of death: Haemorrhage and shock due to penetrating injury to heart as a result of piercing by metal spikes.”
A servant girl is found dead in Srivastavas’s plush mansion in South Delhi’s elite Panchsheel Park. No more than 17 years old and a confirmed orphan with no family, Jyoti’s death should cause no ripple in the city’s vast and terrifying crime scene. Moreover, her “friendliness” with the Srivastavas’ driver, Rajesh, makes the death an even trivial matter – it must be a case of spurned love, and now discarded by a rogue man, the girl has killed herself. Plain and simple. On top of everything, Rajesh is fleeing. There is no case at all – of course, this is suicide; at most, abetted.
At first, the Srivastavas’ impressive wealth and connections safeguard them from aggressive scrutiny of the law but Prashant Kumar of Delhi Police’s Crime Branch suspects something is amiss. A brief look at the dead child’s photograph overwhelms him – this was a girl who had her whole life ahead of her; her death, however, convincingly explained, does not make sense to him. Haunted by his own ghosts, Kumar’s instinct says that she died in a house of horrors and the Srivastavas aren’t as genteel as they pretend to be.
The team
But Kumar is no superhero. Being in the police does not mean that doing the right thing is easy and there is enough bureaucratic red tape to ensure that justice is never served on time. Moreover, this is not a solitary mission – Kumar has other personnel on his team, his boss keeps a close eye on them, and worst of all, the Srivastavas have their fingers wrapped tightly around the top boss’s neck. The first – and the best – thing to do is give up.
On Kumar’s team are the freshly minted SI Meera, a former wrestler, and a brash, muscle-flexing Parveen who takes his caste and vegetarian identity very seriously. He is not entirely pleased about having a woman on his team and reporting to his female boss, ACP Sofia Ahmed – and he makes no attempt to conceal it. Meera, on the other hand, is unbothered by the likes of Parveen – she has faced enough ostracisation in her time as a wrestler. She’s excited to do some real investigation and make a difference. Above all, she’s a sportsperson, she cannot let inconsequential things weigh her down.
The Srivastava women seem ill at ease in their own homes. The young daughter seems to have seen something while the wife is clearly harbouring secrets. Still, gut feelings and shifty behaviour do not count as evidence and as Kumar and his team move in secret to dig up the truth, they’ll realise that Jyoti’s death is only the tip of a toxic, rotting iceberg.
Unlike other novels in the genre, The Beast Within dishes out only a small amount of action. Instead, what the author does is illuminate the frustratingly sluggish pace with which investigations are done in the country. As the police sit around and bid time, their professional and personal relationships fray and unravel from the frictions of betrayal, envy, and grief. As each pursues their leads, they collide with prejudices and the presumptions that take them down the wrong route. Kumar’s unhappy marriage, Parveen’s crassness, and Meera’s naivety become obstacles in their respective professional lives. The many diversions and dead ends that the team tackles month after month wear them out, to the point that it feels like nothing more than a wild goose chase.
The fatigue of the system
Rudraneil Sengupta very astutely observes the fatigue of the system. Even with basic safety measures in place, informants and committed personnel, it is almost impossible to act swiftly because of how greatly it is dependent on the cooperation of the bureaucracy and grassroots networks – an association that is bound to fail, aided by the wide chasm of class and psychological differences. The police network, though intricate and adequately equipped, struggles to do its job thanks to internal powerplay and a serious affinity for wasting time.
Instead of making it a linear pursuit for the “truth”, Sengupta also probes the various directions that truth can take you. For a good part of the book, the death lies forgotten as the police chase other important matters – still, these are not mindless quests. These little truths, over time, will condense into something big and explosive but in the meantime, they must remain patient.
The personality sketches of the police were especially well done. The reader is taken to the dinghy interrogation rooms and sterile drawing rooms of the rich, and they are also invited to imagine Kumar’s troubled family life or Parveen’s violence against his wife. It feels almost absurd that these are the men who have vowed to seek the truth – a tangle of professional duty and personal flaws complicates the reader’s understanding of allyship and justice.
The Beast Within not only unveils the ferocious, apathetic beast that is the police system but also the beasts within us that each of us believes we have tamed – in the end, only the luckiest of us manage to survive them.
The Beast Within, Rudraneil Sengupta, Context/Westland.
