Inside a Detective's Mind

I love 'Homicide Detective stories' cracking mysterious crimes in ways similar to Bhyomkesh Bhakshi or Shelock Holmes. Any news, or talk about homicide investigations, spy stories and intelligence operations catch my eyes and ears.

In a densely populated country like India, solving a crime can be herculean task. Investigators often are forced to work with stale information and little evidence to pursue the offender. Particularly in terror cases, crime scene will contain no clues but only burnt remains and perpetrators would have fled the crime scene before the incident using their connections across the country and beyond the borders. Adding to their woes are tough Indian laws which tends to shower benefit of doubt to suspects. So investigators are forced to build foolproof case against their suspects by gathering enough evidence and ensure a fair trial or conviction in the courts. The job of Indian cops in particular is more challenging than any other police force in the world. Despite having very little or no technological support such as computers, better communication facilities, advanced forensics etc, some of our brilliant cops were able to solve some sensational crimes.
The conviction rate of CBI is about 70% which is a best score by its standards around the world. No wonder, our former CBI chief was the prime contender for the post of Interpol Chief. I decided to throw some light on some of the cops smart works and ingenious investigation cases in this article....


One quote often heard from Holmes is "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"
A good cop's primary intellectual detection method is deductive reasoning of the solution to a crime. Attention to Details, methodical process of surveillance, of collecting information and sifting through data, of connecting dots are the most sought after skills for any good cop.

During the mid 1960's Raman Raghav a psychopathic serial killer who killed people in their sleep had created so much panic in Mumbai, that people were afraid to go to sleep in the night. Finding one unknown criminal in a city of 1 crore may sound impossible for many but then DCP CID (Crime) Ramakant Kulkarni caught the elusive killer using a theory of ‘Environment Criminology’ or ‘geometry of crime.’
The theory suggests that crime occurs ‘within a safe distance’ from the perpetrator’s home but at the same time not too far away as he likes an area he is familiar with. Furthermore, they identified the personality of killer as tall and
well built guy by looking at heavy objects used for the murder. Thus, after the DCP and his team got hold of Raghav’s old file (which had his fingerprints, photographs and names of acquaintances), a massive manhunt was launched for the man, with a special focus in the area where the murders were being committed. Searching entire Mumbai would be impossible task, eliminating the possibilities such as underworld, suicide etc and reducing the scope of search to one area was the key to solving the case. The DCP Kulkarni went on to become the police chief of Maharashtra.

Another high profile serial killer, torturer, poisoner, thief and jailbreak artist, Charles Sobhraj also known as ‘The Serpent’ ( for his smart escaping means) and ‘The Bikini Killer’ ( as most of his victims were in Bikini). His ways of killing were a showing of a mastermind and a intellect which made him popular and even while he was in prison he earned for his interviews with the media. He used be very normal and lead high profile life living in 5 star hotels and visiting bars and parties. His string of murders left a trail of his lavish lifestyle which was pursued by a smart Mumbai police leading them to finally lay a siege at a rich country club.

AP anti terror 'Octopus' chief Mohanty cracked the hyderabad terror blast case just by pursuing a single clue of torn slipper made in bangladesh. This led to busting the entire HUJI n/w in Bangladesh. An officer from Delhi Police Special Cell, M C Sharma was so fluent in all dialects of urdu/arabic that he could correctly guess the exact native of speaker just by listening to the dialect. This helped Delhi Police trace the origin of many suspiciously sounding calls right down to exact village/tribes in Pak or Bangladesh.

Highly decorated IPS officer Karkare cracked the malegoan blast case by tracing the mangled bicycle (which concealed the explosives) all the way to Indore. He also connected the dots with other similar samjauta express bombing using a piece of burnt newspaper daily which was printed in Indore, eventually uncovering the involvement of Indore based terror network.

Couple of years back, a new terror group had surfaced branding itself as 'Indian Mujahideen'. They had terrorized the entire nation with series of bombings across the country. What left our cops puzzled was, its unique style of sending an email minutes before the blast and challenging the security forces to stop it. The emails were being routed through proxy servers abroad with an intent to mislead the investigators. The unsecure Wi-Fi networks of US nationals were carefully picked up and used to send the emails leaving the cops clueless about their whereabouts. Clearly the terrorists were tech savvy. Their games of outfoxing cops was short lived.... when the eyes of an officer in Intelligence Beaureau caught something more than what others could get out of IM emails. The smoking gun was writing style and some phrases quoted in the threat emails. He was able to identify a particular news editor's website from which most of the email content was sourced. Quickly, investigators realized the terrorist had a connection with the print media. All the calls, activities and movements of that media was kept under secret surveillance. When terrorists were caught, guess what ? they turned out to be highly skilled software engineer working for reputed MNCs drawing salary of more than 20 lakhs per annum. The terrorists had used their technical skills and hacked in to wi-fi n/w, websites, servers etc but still couldn't evade the prying eyes of investigators. Thanks to ATS sleuths of Mumbai who managed to halt the spat of bombings and IM terror threats despite not being any software geek.

Delhi Police team nabbed the delhi serial blast suspects just by analyzing the mobile calls made throughout the operation. Police noticed some unusual calling patterns of some mobile numbers before and after the blasts. They had traced a high volume of calls and text messages between three phones (later turned to be those of assassins) before the blasts. However there were no sign of any calls between those numbers after the blasts. They quickly eliminated the possibility of those numbers belonging to blasts victims and then launched massive manhunt to trace users of those numbers. After the blasts, the group had dispersed and lead a normal life. None of the suspects made a direct call to any other suspect fearing one arrest would lead the investigators to all others. The terrorists were cautious on not leaving any form of trail. When there hideouts were located and arrested, all of them were caught either napping or watching TVs in their homes thinking themselves to be invincible. None of their ploys of using disguises such as– beards, floppy hats, sunglasses and wigs helped.

Unfortunately, some of these smart officers are martyrs of terror attacks. Though they could have safely stayed inside a AC room giving directions to their juniors, they chose to get on the ground and lead by example. Nevertheless, their success stories will serve as examples to the new 'want to be' cops.