Crime in the capital, but who is writing?

Inside the posh neighborhood of Panchsheel Park in New Delhi, a gentleman was found dead outside his ground floor bedroom. Until the police declared him "murdered," the colony was abuzz with rumors about the circumstances of his death. This confusion was further aggravated by a message from the victim's son on the colony's WhatsApp group announcing his father's unfortunate death and urging everyone not to speculate about the reasons behind it. This message was sent on November 25th. However, it wasn't until November 28th that Times of India reported the incident. Up until then, there was no mention of the murder in newspapers or on noisy TV channels. There were no OB vans or reporters with video cameras flocking the lanes to investigate the murder, which was fraught with many possibilities.

Three days after the incident, Times of India finally reported the murder. This was unusual as, in the past, they were usually the last to report crime stories, which were typically the staple diet of tabloids or the local Hindi press. I'm unsure whether anyone had reported the story in Hindi language media or the local pages of Delhi newspapers, but lately, there has been a decline in interest among reporters and publications regarding crime stories. Politics, and a certain kind of politics at that, has captured the imagination of ordinary people. It's not that crime has decreased, but rather the definition of crimes that can outrage society is rapidly changing. Someone needs to document whether the conduct of the police has changed since secularism was the defining principle of our law and everyday conduct. Now, with right-wing politics and morality casting a long shadow over politics and society, identity crimes and crimes against women have given way to financial and cybercrimes.

This doesn't mean that old crimes have disappeared. The horrific truth is that drugs, theft, murders, and crimes of passion continue to coexist with new-age crimes.

When I was the editor of a local daily newspaper in the early 2000s, we were constantly searching for space in an extremely crowded news and magazine market. At that time, controlling Islamic terror was the big issue that troubled the police. Every arrest of people from minority communities was linked to the spread of terror by Islamic groups from the Kashmir valley. I remember that in December 2002, there was an encounter between Delhi Police and Kashmiri terrorists. When my reporter informed me about the encounter, I told him to stay on the ground and not leave when the cops left. My instincts paid off.

As soon as the police and the posse of reporters left, my reporter heard someone scream that it was a "fake encounter." A person who was in the basement to park his car had witnessed two men being dragged from a car in a drugged state. A practicing doctor, he was shocked when he allegedly saw the drugged passengers being shot in cold blood. The next day being a holiday, no newspaper was published except the local daily I worked for. We managed to put our scoop on the front page about the fake encounter in Ansal Plaza. The exposé set the cat among the pigeons.

Around this time, 7 or 8 dead bodies were found on the railway track. I asked my crime reporter to investigate the story and check with the hospital where the post-mortems were conducted. We discovered that most of the dead had been organ donors. Did they donate against their will or otherwise? We would never know, but we managed to highlight this issue through our exposé.

Another interesting investigation I managed to conduct through my young team of reporters was tracking beggars after they were arrested by the police. The reporter doing the story followed the police vehicle and found himself at the beggars' court. Surprisingly, the beggars weren't without support. A well-heeled lawyer bailed them out. A day later, they were back on the road. What we couldn't figure out was whose brief the lawyer was holding.