The shopping complex housing the Internet café wasn't exactly bustling with activity. It seemed like a desolate location for businesses to be thriving. The place was more suitable for shops that didn't make profits and just existed for servicing the neighbourhood and as simple livelihood means for the local residents.
Without the police vehicle sirens blaring, maintaining as subtlety as possible, Vishal, Raghavan and the rest of the support from police arrived at the shopping complex, alighted from their vehicles and made their way into the building. They studied the surroundings, noting without success any irregularities and stepped into the Internet Café.
It was devoid of any customers. A worn-out desk with a new model of computer stationed on it lied to the right of the entrance, acting as the reception and the store handler's seat for the small café. A lone man in his twenties, presumably the store manager, sat in front of the system, visibly bored and browsing on his phone.
Raghavan rapped on the table, bringing the lousy manager to attention. The manager looked up uninterestedly and catching sight of the bunch of policemen at his door, blinked in confusion.
The shock of their arrival was evident as he jumped out of his seat, knocking his knees into the table and winced in pain.
"Are you the owner here?" Raghavan asked him intimidatingly.
"N... no," the man stammered. "I just handle the store."
"Where's the owner?"
"He doesn't stay here. He comes to visit once in a year and just collects the rent every month," the man answered, panicking.
"What's your name?" Raghavan eyed him with his expression frosty.
"Pritam, sir."
"Do you maintain the logs of who access the systems here?" Raghavan started inspecting the a couple of documents that were lying on the computer desk.
"Ye... yes. Here, in these sheets." The man fumbled, all the while stammering, as he pulled out a writing pad with a bunch of papers clipped to it. All the papers had hand drawn tables charting the serial number and name of the customer who accessed one of the systems in the café, the in and out times and the total amount paid for the session of system usage.
"You don't have a register or ledger?" Raghavan's tone was scary.
Pritam was visibly sweating in fear. "No... no sir. It is just the local people who come here. Mostly school kids, for gaming. I don't make much money. So, I just maintain the records on these papers."
Raghavn frowned. "Why are you so scared? Are you hiding anything?"
"No... no sir. I have never interacted with Police before and your people never visited this store. So, I am nervous, wondering what happened. Are you investigating anything, Sir?" Pritam was trying his best to hold himself up.
"Where are the records for the last one month?" Raghavan finally got to the point.
"One-minute sir. I have them here..." Pritam bent down to open a drawer in his desk clumsily, as he continued speaking, "We normally keep records for only a couple of months and discard the older ones. Like I said, we don't have any purpose for keeping these here. We just enter the weekly billing amount in a tracker in our system. Not the names of the people using the system, just the amount we earned for the week."
He pulled out a wad of sheets and handed them over to Raghavan who passed it on to one of the constables to hold on to.
"Do you remember anyone suspicious visiting your café this past week?" Raghavan continued his questioning.
Pritam looked visibly lost in confusion.
"There are videos of crime uploaded from the computers here in your store, using your networks," Raghavan raised his voice to a scarier tone. "Who did that?"
"I... I don't know sir. I didn't see any strangers here..." Pritam trailed off, sounding terrified.
"Really? So, it is someone you know who uploaded the videos?"
"Which... which videos, Sir? I really don't know."
"The videos of the girl who was murdered in front of a camera."
Pritam froze.
"Those videos were all uploaded here. Now, either you tell me willingly who did that, or we will make sure to get the answers out of you in another way." Raghavan was stepping menacingly towards an already scared Pritam.
"I... I really don't know sir. All the information of the people who visited the café this past one week is in there in those papers. I don't know who did it. I really don't know anything sir," Pritam started pleading him.
A series of questions, accusations and denials followed.
Vishal had studied the man for a few minutes; realized he wasn't the culprit given that his voice and demeanour didn't match those of Sashi, and so, focused his attention on the rest of the store instead.
Almost all of the computers there were considerably older, spare one at the farthest corner of the store and the one handled by the store manager. These two computers were an odd assortment of latest computer equipment.
He walked to the corner, noting the advantages the seclusion of the corner position would have given a criminal if he were trying to do something.
Vishal turned on the system. There was nothing remarkable about it; there were a few games installed on top of the basic applications. He searched through the local folders and the internet browsing history. Nothing seemed out of place to him.
"I think we need to pass on these systems to the Cyber Investigation teams," he said out aloud to Raghavan, raising his head from the system's screen. Raghavan was standing with his hand hanging midair, probably on its way to catch hold of Pritam's collar. Vishal ignored it as he continued, "They would be able to find more solid evidence needed for questioning. Plus, we might discover something additional."
Raghavan gave a curt nod to him before turning to Basava and ordering him to escort Pritam to their car; they would question him in their own way in their forte - the police station. He then pulled out his phone to make the necessary calls to his superiors and Cyber Police team.
As the people of the neighbouring stores and the customers looked on at the noisy mess of Pritam claiming his innocence while being dragged away by Basava, the remaining police constables secured the Internet Café. Vishal and Raghavan stepped out of the building, overlooking the proceedings. They were used to public gatherings around crime scenes and moved ahead without much concern.