The Case of the Threatening Letter

In November 2020 Jeet Thakur Sahai was asked by one of his colleagues in another department to help with a case. Inspector Deepak Sabarwal was investigating a case and asked Jeet to accompany him to a business office in New Delhi.

They went to Odeon Office Towers in Janakpuri. There was the head office of Grover and Khanna Co. They were one of Delhi’s biggest marketing companies and they had other offices in Dariyaganj and Chanakyapuri as well. The company’s founder, Mr. Vinod Grover, had received a threatening letter demanding 36 lakh rupees in five days otherwise his son Tushar would be kidnapped. Inspector Deepak had given police protection to Tushar so that he would not be kidnapped. Tushar was studying at Delhi University so every day constables would accompany him to the university and take him back home as well.

Inspector Deepak: “Mr. Grover, can you please show us the letter?”

Mr. Grover: “Here it is. I am very worried about my son and the rest of my family. Also, I don’t want to give 36 lakh rupees to a criminal! I cannot think who would be my enemy and would be doing such a thing to me.”

Jeet: “Deepak, after you read the letter, I would like to take a close look at it as well.”

Inspector Deepak read the letter and then gave it to Jeet.

Jeet looked at it carefully. He read it three or four times. He thought that the letter had skip code as well. He noticed each word carefully and noticed that every seventh word led to a separate message. He took a pen and highlighted every seventh word of the letter. It read as the following:

‘The project will commence at 1900h at 112 Okhla Complex, Dariganj, on November 16th.’

Jeet: “Mr. Grover, is one of your offices at 112 Okhla Complex?”

Mr. Grover: “Yes, why?”

Jeet: “I think someone may be trying to harm it some way on the 16th. That is two days from now. Inspector Deepak, please put a lot of security at the Okhla office tomorrow and on the 16th. Even before an attempt of kidnapping, there may be other crimes as well. This is my strong hunch.”

Inspector Deepak sent a team that did surveillance of the Okhla office on the 15th and the 16th. On the afternoon of the 16th the team saw three suspicious people near the office and arrested them. They were taken to the police station where Inspector Deepak and Jeet questioned them.

After intensive questioning it was found out that these three individuals, Junaid Kareem, Himanshu Jaiswal and Shekhar Dwivedi were former employees of Grover and Khanna Co. They were fired two years ago and they were very angry with their former employer. They were planning to explode a bomb at the Okhla office at 7 pm that night. Also, the mastermind behind this conspiracy was Mr. Dinesh Dube. He was the owner of Zodiac Marketing Ltd. His company was the archrival of Grover and Khanna Co. Ltd. Mr. Dube was very jealous of Mr. Grover’s company as in the last four years Grover and Khanna Co. had received seven contracts worth a total of 94 lakhs instead of them. Mr. Dube had sent this letter to Mr. Grover as well as to his accomplices Junaid, Himanshu and Shekhar. They were planning to kidnap Tushar for a ransom later but before then they wanted to damage the Okhla office by planting a bomb. Mr. Dube used skip code in the letter for the bomb plot and let his accomplices know; he also thought no one would find out about the code.

However, Jeet was able to decipher the skip code. After getting a lot of information from Junaid, Himanshu and Shekhar, Inspector Deepak sent his colleague to arrest Mr. Dube. A court case against Mr. Dube, Junaid, Himanshu and Shekhar would start in the local court in eleven days.

Inspector Deepak thanked Jeet for his help. Jeet told Deepak that he was glad that he could help out.

The next day Jeet returned to his work in Delhi. He was glad to see his colleagues and looked forward to continuing on his files.