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Monday morning, 9:17 AM. Vidya Lakshmi, HR head of a tech firm in Bengaluru’s Whitefield area, greeted 27 team members on their weekly Zoom meet. Sabke cameras on theek thaak chal rahe the, kuch video backgrounds curated tha—beach scene, bookshelf, kuch toh blurred.
Suddenly, 9:48 AM par, Priyanshi Gupta ke mic se ek cheekh sunai di. Confused faces popped up on screen.
“Kya hua Priyanshi? Aap theek ho?” someone asked, but her screen blank thi. She reappeared 10 seconds later, looking pale.
“Sorry, network glitch,” she said. “Mic auto unmute ho gaya shayad.”
Ek ghante baad, office WhatsApp group pe HR ne ek shocking message bheja: “With deep regret, we inform that Mr. Rajeev Chhabra from Data Security passed away this morning at 9:55 AM.”
Office stunned ho gaya. Naukri ke ek din mein virtual condolence meet bhi organize ho gaya.
Magar Vidya restless thi. Something off tha. Jab Zoom recording dekhi for record-keeping, usme ek moment pe Rajeev’s camera froze at 9:53 for 15 seconds, then went blank. Mic mute tha.
Police initially assumed heart attack. Rajeev ghar par akela tha. Par autopsy ne bataya—he had inhaled carbon monoxide. Close up inspection ne reveal kiya ki uske home inverter system mein modification thi—battery se ek leak connected tha to a mini pipe leading into AC vent.
Matlab, someone ne deliberate gas leak kiya tha to cause asphyxiation. Magar us waqt toh sab Zoom par the—aur Rajeev ka ghar locked tha. Entry forced nahi thi.
Then came the loophole—building ke terrace ka CCTV backup crash ho chuka tha ussi subah. Coincidence?
Vidya ne Rajeev ke pichle emails check kiye. Ek strange mail dikha dated 3 days ago:
“If anything happens to me, start by questioning the silence between digital noise.”
She stared at the line. Silence between digital noise—Zoom?
Vidya ek idea ke saath IT security head, Tapasvi, ke paas gayi:
“Can you isolate all microphone background noise between 9:30 to 10 AM?”
He agreed. After 2 hours of audio filtering, Tapasvi pulled out a faint recording—ek whisper like command: “Hum do passcode se andar ayenge. Tu Zoom chalu rakh.”
Mic auto unmute nahi hua tha. Kisi ne Priyanshi ka system remotely access kiya tha, unka mic unmute karke background mein signal diya tha—aur issi shear shot pe poison gas chalu hua.
Now, Priyanshi ek programmer thi, remote tools banane mein expert. Par kyun kisi apne ko fasaana?
Vidya ne uska coding repo dekha. Ek private folder mila—hidden shell script jisse kisi ke WiFi-enabled home appliances ko hack kar sakte the. Including inverters.
Par real shock tab laga jab Vidya ne ek aur screen-capture trace kiya. 2 weeks old. It showed Rajeev aur unka legal team ka email trail—he was going to expose a massive employee stock fraud scam involving none other than…
…CEO’s sister Poonam Mehra—zoom call ka koi member nahi thi. But IT logs showed she used a guest login on Zoom that day for 8 minutes. Invisible to participants.
Conclusion?
Poonam ne Priyanshi ke pure freelance background ka use kiya. Threaten kiya tha by framing her in an older intellectual property theft case—jiska ek fabricated FIR draft bhi mila computer se. In return, Priyanshi ko bola gaya to create a kill-switch, disguising as accident.
Automated remote gas leak. All triggered precisely through Zoom audio input. Priyanshi ne background mein voice-on-command system activate kiya. Kisi ko shak nahi hua.
But Rajeev’s one cryptic line saved everything.
Police used TAPASVI’s audio extraction to present non-repudiable forensic proof. Priyanshi cracked under pressure. Poonam arrested.
Zoom screen par dikh raha jeevit duniya ka scene—andar se kitna poisonous ho sakta hai, is case ne sabit kar diya.
Most chilling part? Priyanshi ne kaha, “I never even met Rajeev.”
Rajeev ne toh sirf ek virtual system expose karne ka try kiya tha… but in the end, woh khud ek glitch ban gaya.
