Murder he wrote

This year, the centrepiece at the Kolkata Book Fair (aka Boi Mela ) was not an award-winning novel or a writer from foreign shores. The buzz was around Murder In The City , a book on the murder mysteries that the detective department of the Kolkata Police has investigated in the last five decades. And the writer is Supratim Sarkar, additional commissioner.

Writer in uniform: Supratim Sarkar,additional commissioner of Kolkata Police

The blurbs on the book read like a cross between a futuristic Robert Ludlum thriller and racy crime pulp fiction:

“Brother kills brother using the plague bacteria as a murder weapon.”

“A man is killed in his sleep and his body walled up in the house.”

“A seemingly docile housewife masterminds a gruesome twin murder”.

Sarkar scanned the archives of the department, and zeroed in on 12 nail-biting cases that highlight the old and new methods of detection (for example, how photographic superimposition was used to identify a body), and some really ingenious ways of murder.

The stories are a compilation from the Kolkata Police Facebook page and website (www.kolkatapolice.gov.in) — both part of a recent initiative to make the force more accessible. They were compiled as a Bengali book — Goyendapith Lalbazar: Ek Dozon Khuner Ruddhaswas Nepathyakatha . Murder In The City is the English translation.

Murder in the City: Twelve Incredible Case Files of the Kolkata Police; Supratim SarkarSpeaking Tiger; Non-fiction; ₹299

The book’s popularity is a case in point about the efficacy of social media. The Facebook page was launched about a year ago (though the city’s traffic police has had a Facebook presence for seven years or so).

“Social media is something you can’t afford to ignore, more so for a public service institution like the police,” Sarkar tells BL ink . We wanted to reach out to the citizens… And communicate directly — listen to their problems, grievances and try to redress them. We also wanted to share with them our success stories, which are often not given due coverage.”

It was Rajeev Kumar, the commissioner of police (who has also written the foreword for Sarkar’s book) who came up with the idea of social media participation. Within a year, the number of followers was touching 1.5 lakh. Their Twitter account has close to six lakh followers as on date.

The social media platform has reduced the force’s response time to complaints and other messages. “We try to respond to social issues on our digital platform as best as we can,” says Sarkar. For instance, when the #MeToo campaign was gathering momentum, the city police urged its Facebook followers to share complaints of sexual harassment. Initially, the posts were in English; Bengali was introduced when they realised that a large chunk of the population was being alienated. “We post our day-to-day crime detection stories in a simple, reader-friendly fashion, and many look forward to them. We share our community policing initiatives and other important events, we issue public interest advisories and the connection is evident by the growing number of followers,” adds Sarkar.

It was in July 2017, when readers of the Facebook page asked about old cases the department had cracked, that the idea for the book was born. “The commissioner asked me to scan the archives and recount the real-life stories of some landmark cases every Sunday. That’s how the Rohoshyo Robibar series began...”

A case would be played out over several Sundays with colourful, minute details. For instance, how the “police source” heard snatches of a song from Guru Dutt’s Baazi as he approached a near-drunk suspect in a shady south Kolkata joint. There is also information on how “sources” were cultivated in an era that hadn’t yet heard of electronic surveillance gadgets or cell phones. The response of the people living in a city obsessed with crime fiction was overwhelming.

While filtering the many cases in the archives of the department, Sarkar kept in mind the following: “One, it should have the ingredients to satiate the reader of crime and thriller stories. And the journey of the investigator through the detection process, as also the post-detection investigation to secure conviction should underscore the trials and tribulations that a police officer has to weather.”

Sarkar says he has been inspired by writers like Agatha Christie. “I am a die-hard Christie fan. And PG Wodehouse is an all-time favourite. Among contemporary writers, I like reading Amitav Ghosh. And in Bengali literature, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s work never ceases to fascinate me.”

He feels good that both Goyendapith Lalbazar and Murder In The City have been well-received. “I feel happier for a different reason, though,” he adds. “The purpose of the book, essentially a police procedural, was to showcase the investigating heritage of the detective department... That the outstanding efforts of the unsung real-life sleuths, our very own Felu-das and Poirots, have been recognised by the readers is quite satisfying.”

People who loved the book will be happy to know that there’s more to come. After the Rohoshyo Robibar wound up after a three-month run, Sarkar dug into the archives for another Facebook series called Purono Sei Diner Katha ( Tales From Another Era ). This one about lesser-known revolutionaries of Bengal who had laid down their lives during the freedom movement and how the pre-Independence Lalbazar (the police headquarters) took these freedom fighters head-on. This, too, has been well-received and a book is being planned.

Anuradha Sengupta is a freelance journalist based in Kolkata

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