The witnesses had given Sanjay a direction. It had led nowhere. So he went back to the beginning.
Sequence I
15 October
It was 15 October. The village had gone quiet, but the lights inside the police station were still on.
Sanjay sat at his desk with Prabhu Sharma’s old files spread around him. There were photographs, post-mortem reports, witness statements, and pages of notes.
He had read them many times. Every time, they told him the same thing.
Five girls were dead. The killer was still unknown.
Sanjay pressed his fingers against his tired eyes. Somewhere inside the files, there had to be something that both Prabhu and he had missed.
Sequence II
One Word
Across the room, Raghuvir was reading a newspaper.
He turned a page, and a large astrology advertisement caught Sanjay’s eye.
“Janiye Apni Rashi: Jyotish Paramarsh.”
Sanjay looked at the word again.
Rashi.
For a moment, he said nothing. Then he stood up.
“Raghuvir, Prabhu Sharma ki poori file phir se lao.”
Raghuvir lowered the newspaper. Sanjay was already clearing the desk.
The clue was not in what the girls had done. It was in when they were born.
A few minutes later
Sequence III
The Files, Read Again
This time, Sanjay did not begin with the places or the witnesses.
He wrote down each girl’s date of birth. Then he added her age, her murder date, and her Rashi.
The first girl belonged to one Rashi. The second belonged to the next. The third and fourth continued the same order.
Riya Sharma had been the fourth victim and the fourth step in the sequence.
Then Sanjay checked the girl found near the playground in September 2026.
She belonged to the next Rashi.
The fifth murder had continued exactly where the fourth had stopped.
Sequence IV
The Fifth Rashi
Sanjay placed the five files in a line.
For six years, there had been no similar murder and no matching missing-person case. Then the killings had returned at the exact next point in the order.
He still did not know why the killer had waited so long. He did not know what the sequence was meant to complete.
But the murders were not random.
Five Rashis had been marked. The sequence was still unfinished, and the next zodiac period was moving toward its end.
Sanjay looked at the empty places on the page.
If the pattern continued, another girl would be in danger very soon.
The killer had not started again. He had continued.