Bibhuti Bose- The One with the Missing Children (Chapter 1 and 2)

 

Bibhuti Bose- The One with the Missing Children

Chapter One: A Knock Before Dawn

I remember the morning quite clearly, though the hour was ghostly and the streets were still drenched in silence. It must have been just past five, the sky still grey like a smeared slate, when I heard the knocking. It came first as a gentle rap — as if someone wasn’t sure whether I would be awake — followed by a firmer, more insistent sound.

At first, I thought it was the milkman, but then I remembered it was a Sunday.

I stumbled out of bed, wrapped a shawl hastily over my kurta, and opened the door to find Bibhuti Bose standing on the threshold, as calm and alert as ever, a half-burnt cigarette hanging from his lips.

“Get dressed, Tuhin,” he said, in that steady, quiet voice of his. “There’s a case.”

I blinked. “Now?”

“Now,” he said, glancing at the sky. “Before the city wakes. Before too many people start lying.”

In less than ten minutes, I was ready. I had grown used to Bibhuti’s peculiar hours over the years — though he held an academic post in a prestigious science institute, his true calling, the one that stirred his blood and sharpened his eyes, was criminal detection.

He had been solving cases since his university days. While the rest of us were attending lectures and falling in love with the wrong people, Bibhuti was tracking stolen exam papers and uncovering fraud among hostel clerks. I started chronicling his escapades not long after, and over time we became partners — he the silent mind, I the watchful pen.

“Where are we headed?” I asked, stepping into the cab he had hailed.

“North Kolkata. Satchasi Lane. A child’s gone missing.”

The word “missing” hung in the air like a cold breath. Bibhuti didn’t speak further, and I didn’t press him. In a city like Kolkata, where shadows hide in the folds of every alley, “missing” rarely ended well.

The sky had begun to pale when we reached Satchasi Lane, a narrow stretch of crumbling houses and groaning balconies. Most windows were shuttered, though the occasional oil lamp flickered from within.

A small crowd had gathered outside one of the houses — a two-storey red brick building with peeling green shutters. Inspector Subhasis, a broad-shouldered man with a thick moustache and thinning patience, was standing near the gate, arms crossed. He nodded stiffly when he saw Bibhuti.

“Mr. Bose,” he said, his voice tired. “Thank you for coming.”

Bibhuti nodded. “Tell me what happened.”

The inspector motioned toward the house. “Boy named Ratul Mukherjee, eight years old. Went to bed around nine last night after dinner. Parents say he was in bed when they checked at midnight. By morning — gone. No sign of break-in. No note. Nothing.”

“Who lives here?”

“The boy, his parents, an elder sister, and a grandmother.”

“May I speak to them?”

Subhasis hesitated, then gestured. “They're inside.”

As we walked in, I noticed something strange — the crowd outside was eerily quiet. No shouting. No drama. Just people standing, watching the house like it might speak if stared at long enough.

Inside, the house was modest but well-kept. Wooden furniture, a few framed photographs, a scent of incense still hanging from last night’s prayers.

We were led to the living room where the family sat — the mother was pale and trembling, clutching a handkerchief. The father, a schoolteacher named Mr. Shyamal Mukherjee, sat frozen, staring into the space beyond the wall. A girl of about fourteen — Rupa, we would later learn — sat quietly beside the grandmother, whose eyes were dry but strangely alert.

Bibhuti introduced himself gently, and asked to see the boy’s room. The mother nodded mutely, rising.

Ratul’s room was on the upper floor, small but colorful — posters of cartoon characters, shelves with half-read comic books, and a study table cluttered with pencils and crayons.

Bibhuti moved like a whisper through the room. He didn’t touch anything at first. Just stood and observed.

“No broken window,” he murmured. “No marks on the sill. Mattress still intact. Sheet slightly crumpled but...”

He knelt beside the bed, pulling out a small schoolbag.

“Packed for school,” he said. “But there’s no homework book inside.”

He turned to Rupa, who had followed us in. “Did your brother always do his homework before sleeping?”

She nodded.

“And where’s his watch?”

She hesitated. “He had a plastic watch. Red one. It’s not here.”

Bibhuti looked at me. “Missing homework. Missing watch. Someone took time and learning away from him. That’s not random.”

Back downstairs, we sat with the family.

“No enemies?” Bibhuti asked.

The father shook his head. “We’re schoolteachers. We live quietly. We have no enemies.”

“Any strangers in the neighborhood? Anyone new at Ratul’s school?”

“None that I can think of.”

“What about the grandmother?” Bibhuti asked.

The old woman, who had remained silent till then, suddenly spoke. Her voice was thin but clear.

“There was a man last week,” she said. “Tall, wearing black. He came to the gate and asked if this was the Mukherjee house. He smiled and said he was from the school — some survey or something. But when I asked to see his ID, he turned and walked away.”

That was the first real clue. A man in black. No ID. Not interested in leaving a name.

Bibhuti looked at Subhasis. “Check with the school. Ask if any surveys were conducted. And speak to the neighbors. Quietly.”

He turned to me as we stepped outside. “This wasn’t a kidnapping for money. No ransom will come.”

“You’re sure?”

He looked down the narrow lane. “I’m sure because this isn’t a beginning. It’s the continuation of something older. Something unfinished.”

We stayed in North Kolkata for several more hours, combing through the neighborhood, questioning shopkeepers, rickshaw drivers, and panwallahs. No one had seen Ratul leave. No one had heard a sound. It was as if the boy had dissolved into the night.

At one small stationery store near the school, we struck something curious. The shopkeeper, a middle-aged man with bloodshot eyes, said:

“Yes, Ratul came here two days ago. Bought a diary. Blue cover. Said it was for a secret project.”

“A secret project?” I asked.

He nodded. “Said it was for his new ‘friend’. Some game they were playing.”

“And what did this friend look like?”

The man shook his head. “Never saw him.”

We never found that diary in the boy’s room. Another thing missing.

It was late afternoon when we finally returned to Bibhuti’s flat. Parboti greeted us with quiet concern and strong tea. We sat in the study, curtains drawn, maps of Kolkata laid out on the desk, the city reduced to marks and scribbles.

“Three things bother me,” Bibhuti said, lighting another cigarette. “One — the boy’s room shows no sign of struggle, which means he likely willingly left. Two — there’s no demand for ransom, which means the motive is not financial. And three — the missing items: a diary, a watch, and a homework book. Those are symbolic.”

“Symbolic?”

“Someone is collecting youth, innocence, and time.”

I felt a chill then. Because I could see in his eyes that he believed every word.

Just then, the phone rang. Inspector Subhasis.

Another child had gone missing.

The second child’s disappearance struck not only harder but deeper. Not because of how it happened — that was eerily similar — but because of how it was hidden. The boy was not reported missing until the third day. The parents, migrant workers from the outskirts of Behala, believed he had gone to visit his aunt’s house. It wasn’t until they visited her on the third day that they realised he’d never arrived.

His name was Hasan Mollah, age seven. He lived in a one-room dwelling shared with five others. The neighbors spoke kindly of him: well-mannered, liked school, often seen running errands for the elderly couple who ran a sweet shop down the lane. But no one had seen him leave. No one had heard his footsteps. No one had noticed he was gone until it was too late.

When we arrived at their home — a congested basti pressed against a canal — Bibhuti walked with unusual stillness. He didn’t speak until we stood at the threshold of the narrow doorway, looking inside at the half-packed satchel, the one remaining slipper, the untouched school tiffin box still holding stale paratha.

“He vanished with such quiet,” Bibhuti said. “As if the night reached in and took only what it needed.”

That evening, we returned to Bibhuti’s flat. Parboti had prepared a meal, but he barely touched it. The room was lit only by the orange glow of his desk lamp. A map of Kolkata now lay marked with two red pins.

“Two missing children, Tuhin,” he said, “but notice the pattern: neither family is wealthy, yet both children were described as intelligent, well-behaved, and mature for their age. Both lived in environments where it would be easy to leave unnoticed. And most importantly—”

He paused, tapping his finger on the map.

“—they were taken from opposite ends of the city. The first from North Kolkata. The second from the South-West. That’s not random. That’s deliberate coverage.”

“Coverage?”

“Yes. Imagine you are trying to map a network, but using children as your nodes.”

It was a horrifying thought, but it made sense in the context of what we were seeing.

“Is it trafficking?” I asked.

“No. Trafficking leaves trails. Money transfers. Runners. Middlemen. This — this is quieter. Cleaner. Someone is selecting children. Personally.”

He lit another cigarette.

“And he knows the city better than we do.”

The next morning, Bibhuti took me not to a police station, or a victim’s home, but to an archive.

“You asked how we can be sure this isn’t a first-time offender,” he said. “Let me show you something.”

We entered a long, dust-filled room at the Kolkata Police Historical Archive, a place where old, unsolved files gathered more silence than answers. The attendant — an old man with clouded glasses — recognized Bibhuti immediately and nodded, disappearing into the stacks.

He returned with a file labeled:

CASE FILE: MISSING CHILDREN, 2002 (UNSOLVED)

Bibhuti opened it carefully. Inside were four pages — aged, stained, handwritten reports. Each one described the disappearance of a child. Each from different boroughs of the city. Each case closed within a week due to “lack of leads.” The names meant little at first. Until the last page.

“No connection found between the missing children. However, each was reported to have shown signs of advanced development — reading level, behaviour, speech.”

Below it, scribbled in a younger inspector’s hand:
‘Possibility of a collector?’ — underlined.

“You see it?” Bibhuti whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s done this before.”

We left the archive in silence, walking through the old streets of Dalhousie where the city still bore the bones of the British empire — crumbling colonial facades, iron lampposts leaning like old men, trams rattling by like distant memories.

“Back then,” Bibhuti said, “the case went nowhere. The idea of a ‘collector’ was dismissed. They assumed the children ran away or were taken by strangers. But that note — written in an inspector’s margin — tells me someone knew better. Someone understood.”

“You think it’s the same man?” I asked.

“Yes. And I believe he’s perfecting his pattern. That’s what makes him dangerous.”

That evening, I found Bibhuti in his study, poring over a school yearbook. I’d seen that look before — the way his brow furrowed, how he chewed his lip while connecting seemingly unconnected dots. I sat down across from him, quietly.

“You notice anything about these schools, Tuhin?” he asked.

I glanced at the list he had made:

• Ratul: Gokulnagar Boys’ Primary School
• Hasan: Behala Free Government School
• Third school (??): Not yet known

I frowned. “They’re all government-funded?”

“Yes. But more than that, they all share one visiting official — a psychologist named Dr. Abhiram Dutta. Used to run outreach programs in underprivileged areas. Disappeared from the public eye ten years ago.”

“And?”

“I believe he’s still around. In the shadows. Helping the children... or at least, that's what he believes.”

I was about to respond when the telephone rang. Bibhuti picked it up.

His face went still.

“Where?” he asked. Pause. “When?”

He put the phone down and turned to me.

“A third child is missing.”

The child’s name was Madhavi Chatterjee. Age nine. She lived in Lake Gardens, not far from where I’d grown up. Her parents were separated — she stayed with her mother, a nurse who worked night shifts. Madhavi had been alone the night she vanished. When her mother returned home the next morning, the front door was locked — from the inside.

There was no broken window. No forced entry. Just a girl, in her pajamas, gone without a trace.

The only unusual thing? A blue hair clip, one she didn’t own, found on the windowsill.

Later that night, Bibhuti and I sat in silence. The city outside hummed as usual — tram bells, distant horns, someone beating drums for an early puja.

Bibhuti lit a cigarette. He had been smoking more than usual.

“Tuhin,” he said finally, “this isn’t just about abduction. It’s about design.”

“What kind of design?”

“A pattern too careful for chance. Someone is collecting children with certain traits. Quiet ones. Bright ones. Emotionally independent. Easy to go unnoticed. He selects them like a gardener selects rare seeds — for cultivation.”

My skin prickled.

“And then?”

Bibhuti looked out the window.

“Then he grows them into something.”

The Chatterjee residence was quiet when we arrived — eerily so. It stood on a tree-lined street not far from the Lake Gardens flyover, a small two-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a faded pink building.

Madhavi’s mother, Mrs. Rina Chatterjee, greeted us with a face that had cried far too long already. She wore her nurse’s uniform still, creased and bloodstained from a long night shift. Her eyes were swollen and her voice hoarse.

“She was here,” she whispered. “I left her milk in the fridge. Her textbooks were open. Her toothbrush was still wet this morning. But… she wasn’t. She wasn’t... anywhere.”

Bibhuti knelt gently beside her.

“Was the door locked when you came in?”

“Yes. From the inside.”

“Are there any keys missing?”

“No. The spare key is right there.”

“And this blue clip?” he asked, holding up the barrette the police had collected.

Mrs. Chatterjee shook her head. “It’s not hers. She didn’t wear clips anymore. Said they were childish.”

Bibhuti held the clip in his hand, examined it under the window light, then looked at me.

“New. Cheap plastic. Manufactured locally. Sold in packs of five or six. It was planted here.”

“Why?”

“To say: I was here.”

We examined the flat with Inspector Subhasis, who had grown noticeably more tense with each case. There were no footprints, no fingerprints, no signs of intrusion. Just a life, paused mid-breath.

In Madhavi’s room, Bibhuti found a notebook open on her desk. In it, a single page had been torn out. The remaining pages held arithmetic homework and a drawing of a tall man — no face, just a suit — standing beside a little girl with a red balloon.

“She told me about her dream,” her mother said from the doorway. “Said she kept seeing a man with ‘no face.’ I thought it was nonsense.”

Bibhuti turned to her. “What colour balloon?”

“Red.”

We stared at the drawing.

“She drew it last week,” the mother added. “After she started spending more time with that… that counselor.”

“What counselor?”

“A man from the school. Said he worked with children who had trouble at home. I thought he was trying to help.”

“Did you ever see his name?”

“No. But he called himself Kaka.”

That was the first time the monster had given himself a name.

Back at Bibhuti’s home, night settled like a heavy fog. Even Parboti was quiet. We gathered in the study once more. Bibhuti paced, his cigarette untouched in his hand.

“Three children. All bright, independent. All from different social backgrounds. All vanished silently, leaving behind only vague traces.”

“And now a name,” I added. “Kaka.”

Bibhuti nodded. “Not his real name. But he wants the children to trust him. ‘Kaka’ is safe. Familiar.”

He tapped the desk.

“But the most important clue is not what he left behind. It’s what he didn’t. The hair clip was planted. The drawing was left deliberately. The door locked from inside. These are... not mistakes. These are signatures.”

“What kind of person signs a crime?”

“One who believes it is art.”

The next morning, we began visiting schools.

We posed as education researchers, asking headmasters about outreach programs and visiting psychologists. Most were baffled. A few recalled vague memories of someone who had visited in the past — “some gentleman who spoke well, brought colouring books, maybe ten years ago.”

But at Indira Girls’ Primary, the principal, a stern woman named Mrs. Sen, remembered something else.

“Yes,” she said. “There was a man. Tall. Wore a grey coat. Spoke gently. Came around last month. Said he was running a study on early maturity in schoolchildren. Wanted to observe behaviour.”

“Did he work with the staff?”

“No. Only met the students. Said he preferred not to influence teachers with his assessments.”

“Did he leave anything? A name?”

She frowned. “Only this.”

She handed us a business card, plain white with silver letters embossed.

It read:

Dr. A.D.
Behavioral Research Consultant
“We help the gifted flourish.”

No phone number. No address.

Only a symbol in the corner: a red balloon.

That night, Bibhuti didn’t sleep. I know because I didn’t either. We sat, as we often did during hard cases, smoking quietly and listening to the wind play in the windows.

“This isn’t the work of a madman,” Bibhuti said at last. “It’s the work of someone with a philosophy. Someone who believes the system is failing our children — and that he alone can fix it.”

I said nothing.

He pointed to the board.

“Why no demands? Why no contact with the parents?”

“Because it’s not about the parents,” I said.

“Exactly,” he replied. “It’s about the children.”

He looked at me sharply.

“Which means, if we want to stop him, we must start thinking like one.”

The next morning, Bibhuti placed a red pin on the map at Jatin Das Park Metro Station.

“Why here?” I asked.

“Because that’s where we begin our trap.”

He didn’t explain further.

Only lit another cigarette and said:

“Tuhin, the hunt begins now.”

Chapter 2: The Boy from Satchasi Lane

To revisit the beginning of a mystery after you’ve seen its shadow stretch wider — that is both a curse and a necessity for a detective. We returned to Satchasi Lane, the narrow, uneven by-lane in North Kolkata where Ratul Mukherjee, the first boy, had disappeared. The lane had not changed. The same crumbling verandahs leaned out like tired shoulders, the same stray dogs napped by the drains, and the same rusted gate stood at the Mukherjee house.

But we had changed. We came not just with questions this time, but with patterns — grim, silent ones.

Bibhuti walked ahead of me, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes scanning the street as if the bricks themselves might whisper their secrets. He paused outside a closed paan shop and tapped the ground with his cane — a trick he’d picked up from watching forensic investigators. A hollow sound. Then a mutter:

“He came here first for a reason.”

Inside, the Mukherjee family had grown quieter.

Mr. Shyamal Mukherjee, the father, had returned to work out of obligation, not strength. His wife, Namita, looked thinner, her eyes permanently shadowed. It was Rupa, the sister, who met us at the door this time.

She offered tea. Bibhuti accepted with a gentle nod. He always believed people spoke more openly when something was placed in their hands — a cup, a pen, a photograph. It gave them the illusion of control.

We sat down once more in the modest living room. The calendar still hung crooked. The clock still ticked too loudly.

“Rupa,” Bibhuti said, “I need you to think carefully. Do you remember anything your brother said in the last week before he went missing?”

She thought for a moment, then slowly said:

“He was excited about something. He kept calling it a game. A secret game with a new friend.”

“A friend from school?”

She shook her head. “I asked. He said it wasn’t someone from school. Just someone he met near the playground.”

Bibhuti’s eyes sharpened. “What did this friend look like?”

“He never said. Just that he was tall. And… kind. He gave him riddles.”

“Riddles?”

“Yes.” She got up, disappeared into Ratul’s room, and returned with a small, worn notebook. “He used to write them here.”

The notebook was childish, filled with doodles and stars and badly-spelled poems. But midway through, we found it — a page labeled “Riddle Game”.

Written in thick, pencil strokes:

Riddle 1:
What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?

Riddle 2:
I speak without a mouth and hear without ears. I have nobody, but I come alive with wind. What am I?

There were no answers written, just empty spaces.

“These are not just riddles,” Bibhuti said. “These are psychological filters. Each child is being tested.”

“Tested?” I asked.

“Yes. For imagination. Intelligence. Comprehension. He’s not taking children randomly. He’s choosing them. Like a school entrance exam — but for something far more sinister.”

Bibhuti turned to Mr. Mukherjee.

“Was Ratul ever visited by any adults in the last month? Anyone who seemed... unusually interested in him?”

The man frowned. “No, none that I remember. But wait—”

He stood suddenly and fetched a diary from a drawer. Inside was a small, neatly folded paper flyer.

It read:

The Children’s Mind Project
Exploring the Hidden Intelligence of the Young
“Where curiosity meets structure.”
Guest Speaker: Dr. A.D.
Open Session – For Curious Minds Only

Venue: Jadavpur Public Library
Date: Two weeks before Ratul disappeared.

Bibhuti’s fingers tightened around the paper.

“This man doesn’t hide,” he said. “He simply plays by a different set of rules. He believes he’s above suspicion because his work looks like benevolence.”

“Are we going to the library?” I asked.

“No,” Bibhuti said. “We’re going to the school.”

Gokulnagar Boys’ Primary School was a long yellow building with chipping walls and cheerful murals. It stood under a huge gulmohar tree, its roots upending the pavement. Inside, classrooms buzzed with recitations and discipline.

We met the headmaster, a tired, balding man named Mr. Anirban Nandi. He was polite, but clearly nervous when we mentioned Ratul.

“We still can’t believe it,” he said. “He was one of our brightest students. Always scored top marks. He even won a spelling competition last month.”

“Did he attend any after-school programs?”

“Yes, yes. We had one visitor — a volunteer from some education foundation. He came in early March. Ran a few sessions on ‘logical development’.”

“Did he leave a name?”

“No. But the children called him ‘Doctor Uncle.’”

“Doctor A.D.?”

Mr. Nandi paled slightly. “Yes. That was on his visiting card, I think. He said he was a behavioral specialist.”

“Did you get a copy?”

He searched his drawer and, after some fumbling, produced a white card — nearly identical to the one from the girls’ school. Same silver print. Same tagline. Same red balloon symbol.

Bibhuti took it and studied the surface with a magnifying lens.

“Different address this time,” he murmured. “This one says Salt Lake Sector III.”

“He’s moving,” I said.

“No,” Bibhuti replied. “He’s circling.”

Before we left, we spoke to Ratul’s class teacher — a young woman named Miss Swarnali Ghosh. She remembered Ratul fondly.

“He once told me”, she said softly, “that he wanted to grow up to be a ‘mind-reader scientist.’ I laughed and told him that was very ambitious. He replied: But Doctor Uncle says I already read people’s minds.”

Bibhuti asked if she had seen “Doctor Uncle.”

“Yes, once. He sat in the back during one of our sessions. Just watched. Took notes.”

“What did he look like?”

“Tall. Neatly dressed. Very soft-spoken. But I don’t remember his face. Isn’t that odd?”

Bibhuti nodded slowly.

“It’s exactly how he wants to be remembered.”

The next destination was the Jadavpur Public Library, a quiet, colonial-era building that had seen more dust than visitors in recent years. Yet it still bore the echo of intellectual rigor — rows of tall bookshelves, the faint smell of yellowing pages, and ceiling fans that turned like they were dragging history with every spin.

Bibhuti and I signed into the visitor log and asked to see the librarian, an elderly man with half-moon spectacles and the kind of memory that held decades like chapters.

“Do you remember this session?” Bibhuti asked, showing him the flyer for The Children’s Mind Project.

The old man adjusted his glasses and squinted at the paper.

“Yes… yes, I do. It was held in our side hall. Small event, only a few families attended. Odd thing was… the speaker didn’t use a microphone. Said the children would hear him better without it.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“Tall. Lean. Extremely polite. Had a black notebook with him. Didn’t shake hands.”

“Name?”

He tapped the flyer. “Dr. A.D. That’s all we knew.”

“Did he register?”

“Yes. Everyone does.” He shuffled off to the record cabinet and returned with a yellowed registration book. Bibhuti flipped through the pages and stopped at one particular entry.

It read:

Name: Dr. A. Dutta
Affiliation: Independent
Purpose: Lecture on child cognition
Phone: [Blank]
Address: [Blank]
Signature: [A looping scrawl ending in a spiral]

Bibhuti’s face remained still, but I saw his fingers twitch slightly.

“He’s not hiding,” Bibhuti said under his breath. “He’s taunting.”

As we stepped outside the library, the sunlight was filtered through the jacaranda trees, their purple blooms falling like confetti over stone benches. But Bibhuti wasn’t admiring the scenery. He had paused beside the old iron fence, staring silently at the shadows it cast on the pavement.

“He gave a name,” I said. “That’s something.”

Bibhuti nodded. “Yes. But ‘Dutta’ is a shield. A blade behind a curtain of commonness.”

“You think it’s fake?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “it may be both real and false — just like him.”

We returned home for lunch, and even Parboti noticed the quiet storm gathering behind Bibhuti’s eyes.

“He’s thinking,” she said gently to me as she brought in the rice and curry. “When he goes this quiet, it means the pieces are clicking together. Not in place, perhaps, but closer.”

And she was right.

That evening, Bibhuti opened up a case file from ten years ago.

The file had been kept in his personal cabinet — one he rarely touched. It was a case from 2015, labelled only as:

“The Experiment” — CLOSED

It described a scandal in a psychology department at a Kolkata university. A brilliant young researcher had been dismissed for conducting unauthorized cognitive experiments on minors — supposedly using false consent forms from orphanages.

His name?
Dr. Abhiram Dutta.

I read the file with growing unease.

“He was expelled,” Bibhuti said. “Never formally arrested. The institute buried it quietly — they didn’t want bad press. The children were unharmed… physically. But several showed signs of trauma after.”

“And now he’s back.”

Bibhuti tapped the final page — a blurry photo of a graduation ceremony. In the second row, almost in shadow, stood a man with glasses, tall, hands folded. The face was partly obscured.

But beneath it was typed:

Dr. A. Dutta – Cognitive Behaviour, Batch of 2010

And in small handwriting:

Subject shows signs of clinical narcissism and possible messianic complex.

“I should’ve remembered this earlier,” Bibhuti said. “But he was just a footnote then. I had assumed the system had handled it.”

“It didn’t,” I said bitterly.

“No,” he agreed. “And now he’s built his own system. One without laws. Without witnesses. One where he decides who is worthy of rescue — and who is not.”

We stared at the photo. The faint spiral signature from the library logbook — the same one he had once signed into his thesis submission — matched.

Bibhuti looked at me with sharp clarity in his eyes.

“Tuhin, we’re not just chasing a criminal. We’re hunting a man who believes he’s saving the world.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept imagining the stolen children in dim rooms, whispering riddles to one another in the dark. Somewhere in this vast city, three young lives were being bent — gently, deliberately — into something unknown.

Bibhuti stayed awake too. He worked through the night, stringing pins and lines across a corkboard — not just for the disappearances, but for every place Dutta had been seen. Schools. Libraries. Community centers. Even old medical buildings.

By sunrise, a pattern had emerged.

“He’s not hiding randomly,” Bibhuti said. “He’s forming a spiral. The center lies somewhere in North Central Kolkata — old medical quarters, hostels, abandoned wards. Places the system has forgotten.”

“And you think the children are there?”

Bibhuti gave a slow, grave nod.

“Unless he moves them again. We have to act before that happens.”

That morning, Bibhuti called Inspector Subhasis, and laid out the full theory. Subhasis, to his credit, did not scoff. Perhaps he had finally accepted what we already knew: this was not an ordinary crime.

We agreed to send plainclothes officers to every location within the spiral’s center. We would watch every abandoned building. We would trace the history of leases, gas bills, water lines. We would dig up what the city buried.

As for Bibhuti — he had a different plan.

“We don’t just search for him,” he said. “We lure him.”

“How?”

“By feeding him his own trick.”

To catch a man who thinks like a god, one must play a god’s game — not by rising higher, but by descending deeper. Bibhuti believed this deeply. And so, he hatched his plan not in a boardroom, but in the corner of our shared study, among teacups, city maps, and the smoke of too many cigarettes.

“We will create a child,” he said.

I nearly dropped my pen. “What?”

“A fictional child,” he clarified. “One who fits his pattern. Intelligent. Lonely. Parentally neglected. Someone who would attract Dr. Dutta’s gaze.”

“But how do we put that child into his field of view?”

“We make sure he sees her in the very places he hunts: a school, a community workshop, and most importantly — on public forums.”

“You mean... plant her like bait?”

“Yes. And not just plant her. Nurture her. Make her shine.”

The child we selected for the operation was a brave, sharp 10-year-old girl named Aparna Ghosh, daughter of a constable Bibhuti had once helped during a previous case. She had large, observant eyes and a calm, steady nature that reminded me of Ratul.

Her father, Subir Ghosh, trusted Bibhuti blindly. “You’ll keep her safe,” he said.

“I swear on my work,” Bibhuti replied.

Under Bibhuti’s guidance, a full backstory was crafted: Aparna lived with a disengaged uncle in Park Circus; her mother was dead; her father abandoned the family. She was lonely, gifted, loved solving riddles, and had recently started attending a local NGO’s reading room sessions.

Every part of the lie was documented, rehearsed, and planted in the right ears.

But most importantly, Aparna began posting riddles on a children's forum online — one that Dutta was known to monitor.

Each post ended with:

“Riddle me one, Doctor Uncle.”

Meanwhile, the spiral closed.

Inspector Subhasis worked tirelessly, dispatching officers to old school buildings, orphanage ruins, medical hostels, and rented godowns. Every lead was followed. Every strange lease agreement combed. Every building that hadn’t paid an electric bill in six months was now on a list.

And then came the break.

One of Subhasis’s men — a sharp-eyed sergeant from Dum Dum — reported a faint trail of solar-powered devices being delivered to an abandoned neurological research wing of Nilmani Medical College, closed since 2009.

The deliveries had been irregular, paid in cash, and always signed by a false name:
Arindam Dev.

A.D.

Bibhuti’s eyes narrowed. “We go now.”

That same night, under a veil of secrecy, Bibhuti, Tuhin (myself), and a small police team in plainclothes surrounded the building. No sirens. No warnings. The idea was not to storm the place — it was to see who walked in or out.

The building stood three stories tall, its windows broken, its gates rusted shut. But Bibhuti noticed something immediately.

“Fresh footprints,” he said, pointing near the east wall. “Size six. Child’s. And… larger ones. Not police-issue soles.”

We crept through a gap in the fence, the building looming ahead like an abandoned memory.

Inside, the hallways smelled of rust and iodine. Bibhuti raised a hand to stop us.

“Listen.”

Somewhere inside — a voice.

Not speaking. Reading.

A child, reciting something... slowly... mechanically.

We followed the sound through the winding passage, toward what was once an operating theater.

Behind the door: Light. Weak, orange. Flickering.

Bibhuti peeked inside.

And what we saw stopped our breath.

Inside the former theater, three children sat in a semi-circle, facing a blackboard.

They were clean. Fed. Dressed.

In front of them stood a man in a grey coat, gesturing slowly, patiently.

He was teaching them. Not harming. Not threatening.

Teaching.

Bibhuti’s face was pale but calm.

“He didn’t kidnap them,” he whispered. “He recruited them.”

Subhasis signalled. The team moved in quickly, silently, sealing every door. There was no resistance. The children stared wide-eyed. The man — Dr. Abhiram Dutta — turned slowly and said in an utterly calm voice:

“You came too soon. They weren’t ready.”

The arrest was clean. No violence. No shouting. The children were taken out gently. Dutta simply smiled and walked between the officers like a guest at his own funeral.

At the station, he refused a lawyer. Spoke only once, to Bibhuti.

“You understand, don’t you? You saw it in their eyes. The world breaks children. I only teach them how to survive it.”

Bibhuti stared at him.

“You stole them.”

“No. I freed them. From loneliness. From mediocrity. From parents who never saw them.”

He leaned in, whispering:

“You’re angry only because you couldn’t do it first.”

That was the last thing he ever said to us.

In the days that followed, Ratul, Hasan, and Madhavi were reunited with their families. All three had been unharmed — physically. But something behind their eyes had changed. They had grown older in silence. In understanding.

Each of them had been given new names by Dutta. Each had written pages of riddles. Each believed — with painful clarity — that Dutta had been their saviour.

“Undoing that will take years,” Parboti said quietly one evening.

“I know,” Bibhuti replied. “But they’ll recover. Because they were rescued in time.”

And what of Bibhuti Bose?

He did not celebrate. Did not take interviews. Did not attend the award ceremony where the police formally thanked him.

He simply returned to his study, unpinned the spiral map, rolled it up, and lit a cigarette.

I asked him why he looked tired, not victorious.

He replied:

“Because we caught the doctor.
But the disease — the loneliness, the blindness of adults, the failure of the system — that still walks free.”

Then he looked out the window as the children of Kolkata played in the street below.

And for the first time, I saw fear in his eyes.