Vlog

"Partho, where are we at with the missing student?"

"In progress, Sir."

Partho Roy, an aspiring junior reporter, wanted to work on the Salt Lake murder case story but he was left with a missing student.

Missing person cases are very mundane and routine in India. Usually when a student is reported missing by his parents, he's either in Goa or Shimla partying with friends. Most of them come back after a week or so.

Newspaper Headline: "Rizwan Ahmed, 20 year old film student, missing for 2 days."

He was last seen near a railway station just 30-40 minutes outside Kolkata. Surely, he hopped on a train and fled home. Maybe his parents were strict or he failed a paper.

Although uninterested, the reporter went to interview his parents and some of his classmates. Turns out the young man was a brilliant student. He joined an engineering college but left after a year to study film. His parents were surprisingly supportive of his decision.

"He was a good student and very enthusiastic. But he wasn't very close to anyone in class. A bit of an introvert.", a girl from Rizwan's batch stated.

"Why? Was he involved in anything illegal? Drugs? Terrorism?"

The girl gave him a look of disgust and went away.

Partho went on interviewing other students on campus who had nothing much to add until one of the Professors gave him something of a lead.

"Yes, it is very unlikely of Rizwan to do something this reckless. He's actually a very decent well-mannered boy."

The professor continued, "The last I heard from him was two days before he had gone missing. He told me he's making a documentary on alleged haunted places around Kolkata for a project. For the last couple of weeks he had been going to Putulbari, National Library, Hastings house and some other places."

Partho wrote all of this in his little notebook.

"Do you think he went somewhere out of station to make that documentary?"

"Yes, I would've," The Professor looked worried, "But the police found his video-cam near some forest right? That is why I'm concerned. Maybe he met with an unfortunate incident."

"Thank you for your time, Professor."

Partho put the notebook in his bag-pack and left the campus.

The case finally became a little interesting. Unfortunate for the boy but interesting for the paper. Partho's eyes lit up.

-

Assistant Sub-Inspector Banerjee was assigned to the task of viewing all the video logs that were present in the video-cam found near the railway tracks. His main goal was to extract any kind of information from those videos that would help in finding the missing Rizwan Ahmed.

He started playing the videos chronologically.

VLOG-1:

The hand-held video-cam focused on the steps of the National Library of Kolkata.

Rizwan's voice could be heard.

"These are the the famous steps of the largest library in India. Established more than 180 years ago... Wow."

"My father brought me here once when I was a child. Just being here gives me chills every time. The history, the heritage."

Rizwan goes on shooting different parts of the library. He stops at a spot and points to a hall.