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The mahogany podcast studio on the 17th floor of Phoenix Tower smelled faintly of coffee, stress, and showbiz. A soft buzz of air-conditioning hummed as India’s most-followed life coach, Advait Kashyap, adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses and leaned toward the studio mic.
“Remember, truth is not just said—it’s heard,” he declared authoritatively.
Three guests flanked him for Episode #200 of his wildly popular podcast ‘Unmasking You’: Zeenat D’Souza, a fiery social media therapist with one million Reel followers; Tarun Mehra, an ex-cult member turned spiritual critic; and Priya Jain, his calm and softly smiling long-time producer, seated just outside the frame.
The theme: ‘Influence, Illusion, and Inner Damage.’
Twenty-five minutes in, Advait’s monologue took a darker tone. “Would you forgive someone who ruined your life publicly but whispered an apology privately?” he asked. Tarun raised an eyebrow. Zeenat’s eyes didn’t blink. Then came the final words.
“But the truth is… the mic hears everything.”
A strained pause. Then, a sudden cough from Advait—sharp, guttural. He grabbed his throat, knocked over his branded copper water bottle, and slumped onto the table.
Silence.
Then gasps. Priya rushed in. Tarun froze. Zeenat instinctively reached for her phone, then stopped.
Paramedics declared him dead at the scene. Cardiac arrest was suspected due to a pre-existing arrhythmia. But when Priya pulled last-minute audio logs for tribute content, something peculiar emerged: a six-second metallic buzz overlapped his final sentence—only on the raw backup recording. The studio mic had gone oddly silent just before he choked.
Detective Inspector Ravi Joshi, more tech-savvy than his demeanor suggested, was unofficially called in by Priya. “Do not announce this,” she whispered. “Please just listen.”
And he did. Over and over. Something wasn’t right.
The studio had no CCTV inside—Advait insisted on ‘organic’ interactions. But Joshi found details in decay: the spilled copper bottle hadn’t been used that day. It was full, unlabeled. The fingerprint film was conveniently wiped.
He studied the guests:
Zeenat had a public spat with Advait over ‘performative psychology’. She once tearfully accused him on IG Live of gaslighting her.
Tarun was quieter. His tell-all memoir ‘The Cult Whisperer’ called Advait a “charismatic parasite”. Book sales plummeted after Advait publicly critiqued him.
Priya, the producer, was the only one with access to all audio sequences. Her loyalty was well-known, but recently, she’d removed her tag from the podcast’s credits.
Joshi asked about the microphone—an advanced condenser made in Denmark. Priya hesitated: “We’d recently added a voice-gating filter. It activates only when set tones are detected.”
That explained the gap. Someone could’ve used a device mimicking those tones to override or jam the mic—erasing crucial sounds in real-time.
He dug further.
The copper water bottle tested positive for a high concentration of digitoxin—lethal in milligram amounts. But how was it administered?
In audio logs, a very faint fizz was heard 1 minute before Advait drank. Like a tablet dissolving.
Zeenat denied access to the bottle. Tarun never neared him. Priya? She’d placed the bottle with others before stepping out.
A breakthrough came when a forensic analysis of sound wave anomalies pointed to a tiny infrared sonic pulse—a remote mic disruptor—activated at 33:41 via mobile app.
Joshi traced the IP logs from the studio Wi-Fi.
One device matched.
It belonged to Priya.
Confronted, she didn’t flinch.
“He told me I owed him everything. He said removing my name from credits gave me freedom I didn’t deserve. So, I gave him silence in return.”
She had crafted the perfect setup—a real-time muting of the murder moment, delivered through a bottle swapped at the last minute. Digital illusion eclipsing physical truth.
Advait died speaking about truth, unable to have his heard.
