The missing girl

Rachna Chhabria narrates the adventures of a young detective

As Dheeraj flipped the pages of the newspaper, his eyes rested on a small advertisement.

Girl missing from her school Goodwill Learning Academy since 4 pm, Friday.

Name – Naina Khurana.

Age – 9 years.

Light brown eyes. Height 4 feet 8 inches. Medium built. Long brown hair. Wearing her school uniform, a blue pinafore, yellow tie, black belt and black shoes.

Finder will be suitably rewarded.

Dheeraj wanted to solve this case. Plenty of children had gone missing in the last few days. Goodwill Learning Academy was a short distance from his house. Cutting out the advertisement, he waved to his mother and cycled out of his house. 

He stopped outside the entrance of the school. A lone security guard sat on a stool reading the newspaper.

“Hello,” Dheeraj said.

The guard frowned. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Could you please tell me something about the missing girl Naina Khurana,” he asked.

“Why?”

“I’m trying to solve her case,” Dheeraj replied. 

“The police are working on this case so don’t waste your time,” the guard said. 

“Please answer my questions,” Dheeraj pleaded and the guard obliged.

Dheeraj pulled out his notepad from his pocket.

“What was Naina like? How did she come to school? Had she fought with someone or failed an exam?”

“She is a quiet and shy girl. She walked to the school as she lives nearby,” the guard pointed to a brown bungalow visible behind the tall trees of the park opposite the school. “She never fought with anyone and always aced her exams.”

Dheeraj jotted down the points. “Anything different you noticed about her yesterday? Was she sad? Was she sick?”

“Normally she is very neat and tidy,” the guard said. “That’s why the blue paint on her socks caught my attention.”

Dheeraj’s instinct whispered to him to

work on the blue paint angle.

“She left the school at 3.55 pm when the last bell rang. I saw her walk through the school gate at 4 pm as I had my tea.”

Dheeraj stared at the brown bungalow, trying to calculate the time it would take a 9-year-old girl to walk that distance. 

“I’m leaving my cycle here, I’ll return in some time,” Dheeraj said. The guard nodded and opened the newspaper in his hand.

Dheeraj deliberately slowed his steps as he started walking towards the brown bungalow. Naina had left the school at

4 pm. She should have been home by 4.10 pm. Max by 4.15 pm. Two things could have happened, either Naina had gone away somewhere or something had happened to her on the way home. 

Throughout his walk, Dheeraj studied the buildings on his right. A small bungalow, a stationery shop, a stall selling juice, another selling sandwiches, a third selling samosa and puff, an office block, a doctor’s clinic. It had taken him exactly 10 minutes to reach Naina’s house.

Dheeraj stared at the house as though it would reveal some clues. Turning around he reversed his steps. As he approached the row of stalls near the park’s side entrance, he noticed blue paint splashed near a stall. He suddenly remembered the security guard’s words. “There was some blue paint splattered on Naina’s socks.”

He approached the stall on the pretext of buying samosa chaat. As he placed his order, he studied the stall owner. The thin man had a shaggy beard, unruly hair and wore thick glasses. As Dheeraj waited for the man to prepare his chaat, he looked around. He noticed that his shoelace had come undone.

Bending down to tie the lace, his eyes strayed to the cart’s legs on which an assortment of ribbons were tied. His eyes widened when he noticed a yellow cloth. Moving closer he realised that it was a tie with GLA emblazoned on it. He lifted the curtain camouflaging the hidden compartment. A black belt with GLA on it stared at him. 

Dheeraj’s mind went into a frenzy. What was a school tie doing on a cart? Why was a school belt inside the secret compartment? His eyes once again rested on the man selling the chaat. Something about him looked familiar. Fishing out the mobile phone from his pocket, he searched through his gallery. A picture of a thin and bald man stared at him. It was the picture of an escaped convict. If one were to put on a beard and wig and make him wear glasses, the man in the picture would resemble the man serving him the chaat. 

Dheeraj paid the man and handed his chaat to a beggar sitting nearby. He walked slowly until he was out of sight of the chaat stall, then he ran to the nearest police station a few streets away. At the police station he narrated the sequence of events. 

Making him sit at the police station, a few policemen left. Dheeraj came to know later that the convict had led the policemen to his bosses who kidnapped school children. All the kidnapped children were rescued. Dheeraj received a medal from the government for his detective skills and for saving so many children.