Animesh Tarafder 1 The sun had barely begun to set, casting a soft golden glow over the winding streets of Kolkata, when Dr. Neelav Gupta received the call that would pull him back into a past he had long buried. A murder—gruesome, ritualistic—had occurred in the heart of the city. As a renowned criminal psychologist, Neelav was often called in for such cases, but there was something unsettling about this one. The victim, an elderly woman, had been found posed in an unnatural way, her body frozen in a grotesque contortion. Strange symbols, like the markings of a forgotten language,…
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Niranjan Pathak Nina Kapoor’s heart raced as the dusty roads of Rajasthan stretched endlessly before her, each turn taking her deeper into the forgotten heart of the desert. The sun was setting, casting a golden hue over the desolate landscape, turning the world into a haze of orange and pink. Nina, a young historian from Delhi, had come here with a single purpose: to investigate the ancient ruins of the Shivani Mata Temple, a place shrouded in mystery and steeped in legend. The village she arrived in, Kundalpur, was a relic of a bygone era. It lay at the edge…
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Anirban Guha 1 Detective Rishi Das stood at the edge of the Howrah Bridge, watching the river churn beneath him, his eyes unblinking despite the chill of the early morning air. The city was alive around him, the sounds of honking horns and distant voices mingling with the smell of freshly fried kachori from a street vendor. But Rishi was no longer part of the city’s pulse; he was detached, his mind consumed by the case at hand. Rajat Sanyal, the prominent businessman whose car had been found abandoned at this very spot, had vanished without a trace. There were…
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Namrata Das Chapter 1: The Vanishing Act The early morning sun filtered through the glass windows of the high-rise building, casting long shadows over the boardroom table where Vikram Khandelwal, CEO of Khandelwal Technologies, had sat just days ago. The office now stood eerily silent, devoid of its usual buzz, as the city of Bangalore continued its relentless pace outside. Vikram’s sudden disappearance had left everyone in shock. The multi-billion-dollar merger between Khandelwal Technologies and Rathi Innovations, set to redefine the Indian tech landscape, had fallen apart without explanation. In a matter of hours, a corporate juggernaut had crumbled, and…