By Shevlin Sebastian
Best-selling author Kulpreet Yadav’s second true-crime book, ‘Dial 100,’ begins with style: Ravi Sunderrajan took the final sip of his whisky, placed the crystal glass down and looked around. Long-legged Indian and Eastern European hostesses were serving drinks to gamblers who were busy at different tables in the casino, their eyes focused and faces flushed. Instrumental jazz played, and the air smelled of whisky, skewered meats and expensive perfume.
This scene takes place in a floating casino anchored on the Mandovi River off Panjim, Goa. And just like that the reader is off and running.
Ravi, a bank clerk, tipped off two professional thieves from Guna in Madhya Pradesh about a scheduled transfer of Rs 300 crore being moved by his bank from Salem to Chennai for the Reserve Bank of India.
The motive? Money.
In the end it is a successful heist. The theft was discovered only nine hours later. This gave enough time for the thieves to get away.
The thieves left no clues. It took over two years to track them down.
In the next story, Kulpreet describes the rape and murder of a five-year-old in an under-construction building in Mumbai in exacting detail. It was painful to read.
Like many murderers, the assailant was an ordinary man. He studied in a convent school till Class 10, gained a diploma in engineering, spoke good English and worked in a company. Again it took clever sleuthing to bring down the culprit.
The next case is even more disturbing. In Kerala, a 29-year-old woman Jaya was raped. But Kulpreet’s description of the act was so lifelike it was almost like watching a movie. You get an idea of the horror a woman can go through when she is physically attacked.
Kulpreet writes about a child being kidnapped from a school in Delhi. The suspect, who was from Nepal, raped and murdered her, before fleeing the country. For three years, there was no movement in the case.
When the case was revived, the police, with the help of an acquaintance, lured the suspect back to India with the promise of a high-paying job. When the grieving parents — who had known the man — finally faced him again, the father delivered a resounding slap. It was a brief moment of emotional release.
There are seven cases in total. The crimes took place in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, Haryana, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.
Kulpreet keeps the pace brisk, often leaving the reader breathless as the investigations unfold.
Kulpreet had a particular reason to write about the stories. In the preface he cites a disturbing statistic. There is a low police-to-population ratio of 150 officers per one lakh citizens. This is far below the minimum 200 mark stipulated by the United Nations. In India, this is compounded by poor salaries, long working hours and lack of advanced training.
‘And yet, despite these constraints, countless police officers rise above the odds every day,’ Kuldeep writes. ‘They go beyond the call of duty, harnessing ingenuity, determination and cutting-edge technology – often self-taught – to solve crimes that seem impossible to crack. Their dedication, often at the expense of personal comfort and family time, deserves not just recognition but also admiration.’
Kulpreet worked for 23 years in the armed forces before voluntarily retiring as a commandant in the Indian Coast Guard in 2014. ‘I took part in many anti-smuggling and piracy missions in the maritime zones of India,’ he said. ‘That gave me insight into how the police work. Over time, I befriended several officers and spent time with them. I understood how their minds were wired.’
He said he hoped to send two messages through his stories. One is that the police are not as bad as we make them out to be. ‘The second message is for would-be criminals. No matter how ‘perfect’ their crime is, there will be some officer who will use his mind or technology to nab him. I hope this will deter a lot of people and make our society a lot safer.’
When asked why it is difficult to do the perfect crime, Kulpreet said, ‘The airwaves are monitored, there are cameras everywhere. Earlier, you just had to avoid leaving fingerprints and ensure there were no eyewitnesses.’
Reviving cold cases
What has excited law enforcement is that they are now able to find the murderers of cases that are over 30 years old thanks to advances in DNA detection.
Asked whether there is a particular mandate from the government to go after these cases, Kulpreet said, ‘As far as I know, there’s no such thing. But what happens is that these cases prick the conscience of officers who haven’t been able to solve them. So, an officer after 25 years might remember a case that took place years ago that has continued to haunt him. So he revives it.’
The odds are stacked against the police. ‘They don’t have the latest technology,’ said Kulpreet. ‘The forensic labs are very few and training in this subject is scanty.’
In an interview to this reviewer on the HarperBroadcast Channel, on World Book Day, Kulpreet was asked about why true crime always had readers.
He said, ‘More than the thrill of it, people want the bad man behind bars. In true crime stories, that’s how the story ends.’
He acknowledged that readers today have shorter attention spans. So Kulpreet has adopted methods to tackle this. ‘My strategy is not to beat around the bush,’ he said. ‘I get straight to the point. A story has two parts: description and dialogue. Better to keep the description between 10-15 percent. No telling, all showing is a technique I use. Short sentences. No difficult words at all.’
He said there was a time 30 years ago when people took pride in writing good English. ‘But if you write good English today, people don’t care,’ he said. ‘They want to understand a book.’
Flowery language, he believes, can sometimes become a barrier between the reader and the story. ‘I work hard to keep it simple,’ he said. ‘My writing should be like a window pane. We need to write simply to reach readers in the WhatsApp era — otherwise, we’ll lose them.’
The future looks difficult.
A few months ago, when Kulpreet was at the P3 Terminal at Delhi airport, he visited the WH Smith book store. He got a shock when he discovered that the store had shut down. ‘When book stores are not able to sustain themselves at an airport in the capital of India – a nation of story-tellers – we are in a difficult situation.’
Kulpreet has published 16 books so far. Apart from crime, he has written on military history.
As to whether he had any tips for new writers, Kulpreet said, ‘They should write on the subject they are interested in. Also read a lot of books in the genre they want to write in. Then they will be in a nice position to write a good book.’
(Published in katha.org (Singapore)
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