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It was a regular Friday townhall at BluRupee, a buzzing fintech startup based in Noida. Employees logged into Zoom from their 1BHKs and café corners, cups of chai in hand. The CTO, Rahul Desai, was hosting this month’s AMA (Ask Me Anything). Tabhi ek sharp noise aayi, jise logon ne initially socha kisi ki plate gir gayi hogi background mein.
Lekin jab Anish Agarwal, the Head of Data Science, screen se gayab hua suddenly—aur 10 minutes baad Slack pe news spread hui: “Guys, Anish collapsed at home and he’s not responding. His flatmate found him unconscious.” Within 2 hours, came the final word: he’s dead. Suspected cardiac arrest. Age? Just 32.
Itna healthy banda. No medical history. Friends were shaken.
Weekend mein sab kuch already buzz kar raha tha. Lekin Monday ko HR aur IT ne ek close-door session rakha — sirf senior management aur IT se kuch log. Kyunki Zoom session ke ek screen recording mein kuch anomaly mili thi. Ek second ke liye — screen pe ek ajnabi chehra dikha tha. Framed between two video tiles. As if kisi aur ne session join kiya ho bina link ke.
Par Zoom logs clean the. No unknown participants.
Tab CTO ne ek plan socha. They asked Megha Sharma, BluRupee ki junior Security Analyst, jo hacking forums exploit karne mein mahir thi, to trace the video stream backward using their custom bandwidth monitoring tool.
Megha discovered something bizarre: Anish’s webcam feed, jo usually normal dikhta tha, suddenly distorted tha for 3 seconds. Aur us distortion ke ek frame mein kisi ne ek UV injection device flash kiya tha — ek tech jiska use kuch hi logon ko pata hai. Is device se high frequency light se epileptic reaction trigger kiya ja sakta tha—lekin sirf un logon mein jinki brain sensitivity elevate ho kisi neurological anxiety medication ke side se.
Anish was on low-dose anxiety pills. Confidential, but HR digital health benefit logs mein tha.
Kya ye murder tha?
Tabhi Megha ne aur deeper jaake ek suspicion raise kiya. She found that in the last three months, Anish ne ek new code monitoring plugin develop kiya tha, jo live fraud tracking karta tha insider threats ke liye. Jab Megha ne us plugin ka backend dekha, to pata chala ki Anish internally point kar raha tha ek unusual wallet address pe — ek anonymous crypto funnel connected to… Rahul Desai.
CTO.
Anish was slowly collecting proof. Aur townhall ke baad vo open karne wala tha ek whistleblower email anonymously.
Rahul, technical genius, realised it. Toh usne pre-recorded Zoom background stream inject kiya during the live townhall, using employee Sameer’s compromised machine — jo kaafi carelessly VPN chhod deta tha on sleep mode. Aur usi stream ke beech 3-second UV flash insert kiya, jise Anish ke screen pe directly flash karwaya gaya. An extremely rare method of remote light-induced neuro-attack.
Final clue jo sab confirm karta hai? Megha found a deleted version of Rahul’s pre-recorded video — minus the UV flash — in the Zoom temp cache. Proof of tampering.
When confronted, Rahul stayed silent — par ek din baad resignation de diya. Suicide note-type kuch nahi, bas ek seedha mail: “Some risks aren’t technical. They’re personal.”
Anish’s death was marked down officially as a medical death. Murder kahoge toh kehne ko koi haqiqat nahi. Par Megha ne ek airtight digital trail HR ke secured archive mein submit kiya… future ke liye.
Kya Rahul jail gaya? Nahi.
Kya sach samne aaya? Sirf un logon ke liye jinhe code ki language samajh aati hai.
Real world mein, sab kuch visible hai — par dekhne ke liye pehli nazar nahi, teesri aankh chahiye.
