Raj Bhaskar
This story is from Piparia village in Damoh district of Madhya Pradesh. A farmer family lived in the village. Laxman Patel, his wife Yashoda and one son Jayraj. Jayaraj is 15 years old. He studied in St. John's School in 10th standard. On March 28, 2023, Jayaraj did not come back from school. The parents searched everywhere, but could not find it anywhere. The next day, he filed a missing son complaint at the police station. The police started searching for Jayaraj. Days passed. Without Jayraj, his parents were living a life worse than death. One and a half months passed like this. May 14th, 2023 was the day. Early in the morning, a passer-by informed the police that a dead body was lying near the lake of Piparia village. The police reached there running. There lay a corpse in a shallow pit. The dogs dug the pit and pulled out the skeleton. The police immediately remembered the case of Laxman Patel. He immediately called her. Lakshmana and Yashoda came running there. Seeing the corpses and clothes lying in the pit, both of them broke down and started crying. Yashoda moaned, 'These clothes belong to my son… O Lord… What has happened!' After a few minutes, the police questioned both of them. He said, 'Sir, these clothes belong to our son Jayaraj. The last time he went to school, he wore this. See, this uniform also belongs to St. John's School. We are ruined sir…! Now give us this skull of our son..! And also tell you who did this black deed.' Till now this case seemed like a normal case of kidnapping and murder. But then the case took a drastic turn. The son was identified from his clothes. The parents asked for the skull to be cremated and what happened next made the case one of the rarest crime cases in India. How should it. The police officer said, 'Laxmanji you are right, but in this kind of case we have to prove that Jayaraj is your son. We need solid proofs. Hence we have to do your DNA test. After that is proved, the task will be to find the killer of your son. Don't you worry.' Parents were satisfied. The next day, the police took blood and bone samples of Laxman and Yashoda and sent them to Sagar Forensic Lab for investigation. Until then, he sealed the corpse and kept it in his custody. The report came within days, but the report was shocking. Narkankal's DNA did not match that of Laxman Patel and Yashoda. The police sent the samples to another lab in Chandigarh for further investigation, but even there the DNA of Narkankal and Lakshman-Yashoda did not match. The police were stuck. He called Lakshmana and Yashoda and informed about this. Both of them were also shocked. For one thing, those people were thirsting for the cremation of the son's skull for several days and this new thing came that the DNA does not match with the skeleton. That is, it cannot be said whether it is the corpse of his son or not. And until this was proved, the skull could not be handed over to him. Laxman and Yashoda cried before the police. The police talked to him a lot. Lakshman presented his entire story to the police. He said, 'Sir, I got married to Yashoda in the year 2004. After four years of marriage, we did not have any children. We investigated. The only option we had was a test tube baby. So we went to the IVF center in Indore. Treatment started there. After that Yashoda conceived through IVF i.e. in vitro fertilization and gave birth to Jayaraj in 2008.' Hearing this, the police's ears lit up. He took all the details of the IVF center in Indore from Laxman and checked there, but the hospital refused to name the sperm donor, citing rules and regulations. The police were confused. The questions were many. Was Narkankal Jayaraj's or not? Jayaraj was a test tube baby so his parentage was not known from DNA, so now how to get the information that he was the child of Laxman and Yashoda or not? And other questions that, if it was Narakal Jayaraj, then who killed him and why? And what was the game if not for Jayaraj? On one hand, the police were caught in the quagmire of these questions, on the other, Laxman and Yashoda were running from the police to the ministers and the chief minister to get the skull of their son Jayraj. The police's hands were tied and time was running out. So and so 13 months passed. And finally one day the case was decided in one fell swoop. That too because of an American book! We'll see how that turns out next Wednesday. (gradually)
Image Credit: (Divya-Bhaskar): Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).
