Upgrade the Detective
The petrol pump was located in Devanahalli just outside the city of Bangalore. It was a convenient spot for people to tank up as they would head out towards the airport. The eight police constables were in not in uniform today. They sat on rickety steel chairs, sipping tea in silence. The young lady who was sitting with the cops seemed uninterested in the tea. She suddenly nudged her colleague, who looked up from his laptop and nodded at the driver who had just stopped to fill up petrol.The man was in his thirties. He stopped at the petrol pump and asked the attendant to fill up petrol worth a hundred rupees. The eight constables looked at the dusty Honda City that had just driven in to the pump. They were all tuned in to the tiny speaker that was hooked to the laptop that was picking up the conversation between the driver and petrol pump attendant. The pattern was exactly as Ajmal had predicted.“How much?”“Are you deaf? I just told you. Fill up petrol for one hundred rupees.”“Cash or credit?”The driver handed over his credit card to the attendant, who looked at the name on the card and nodded to the policemen who were waiting for the signal.Suddenly the sleepy petrol pump on the highway came to life. The policemen in plain clothes appeared with guns pointing at the driver and seconds later, they had whisked him away. The man protested weakly, “Is it a crime to buy petrol? Do you know who I am?”“Gullu Shivraj, we have been on your trail for the last two months.” One of the policemen had emptied out his wallet while checking him for arms. “Why are you carrying twenty nine credit cards – each one with a different name?”Gullu’s bravado and confidence simply evaporated. He meekly surrendered and boarded the Police jeep that was waiting across the road.The young lady gave Ajmal a high five as he picked up his speakers and laptop and walked with him towards her motorbike.“Shaoli, I need to buy cigarettes.”----------
Shaoli was sharing the stage with ACP Vishnu Reddy. Gullu Shivraj had confessed to his crimes.The journalist from The Alternative asked, “How sure were you that you had the right person?”Detective Shaoli tossed her shampooed hair with a careless brush. She was wearing dark trousers, a white shirt that had been starched and ironed to perfection. She had once told Ajmal that maybe one day she would give it all up and become a journalist going after the land mafia.She stood up, surveyed the room and said, “Every criminal believes that he or she will be able to commit the perfect crime. What they forget is their humanness. Each one of us has fixed behaviors. You button your shirt in the same sequence every day. You wear the shoe on the same leg first every day. When people commit a crime, all we need to do is to look for a pattern. Our department of predictive analytics has a full compendium of such behaviors.”Shaoli walked up to a rather nervous looking Ajmal dressed in jeans and a T Shirt. She said, “This is Ajmal – India’s best known analytics expert. He has a PhD in Predictive Analytics and has written a book on The Psychology of Crime. He had predicted that Gullu would stop to buy petrol at this petrol pump within an hour of stealing the credit card. This is a pattern that every credit card theft follows.”“Shaoli, you know I don’t like …”Shaoli ignored him and continued, “When a criminal steals a credit card, they need to assure themselves that the card is still valid. And that the cardholder has not got the card cancelled. That is a very short window of opportunity. The criminal has to find that out by swiping the stolen card for a petty purchase to avoid arousing suspicion. Buying fuel for a hundred rupees is a part of the criminal’s predictable behavior. Ajmal will tell you that Predictive Analytics is the most powerful tool that the Police Department has today.”Ajmal seemed uncomfortable being the cynosure of attention in the room. He tried to cover his eyes as he tried to get used to the lights of the television cameras that had turned to him waiting for the sound bite. Ajmal was the typical nerd. He was more comfortable with his books, his laptops, a mesh of wires and an ashtray that always seemed to be full of half smoked cigarettes.Ajmal did not know where to begin, “Predictive analytics is all about extracting information from huge piles of data and using it to predict trends and behavior patterns. The computer wades through massive amounts of data and spots any deviations from the past behavior. Most crime is all about one tiny deviation from a pattern. Identifying suspects after a crime has been committed, or credit card fraud as it occurs are probably the two most powerful applications of analytics. By studying your credit card bills, the computer knows your buying patterns, how much do you spend every month, which shops do you frequent, the kind of things you shop for. The criminal who uses your card will surely break the pattern. That sets off the alarm. If you live in Bangalore and have always shopped in Bangalore, when the card is swiped in Ukraine, it is a deviation. ”The reporter smiled at Shaoli and said, “Or I could have traveled to Ukraine on vacation?”Shaoli chipped in, “The credit card company will call to verify that it was indeed you who made that purchase. Then there are also logical conclusions one can draw. Don’t forget that your mobile phone is constantly beeping out its location. So if your mobile signal is from Bangalore and the credit card is being used in Kiev to pay for a purchase, the computer will send out an alert. This could be a potential fraud.”Ajmal was always fascinated by Shaoli’s ability to explain something. She could easily pass off an Analytics expert. She had told Ajmal, “You have the curse of an expert. You always believe that you need to give every little detail. I tell them the same thing like a story. Try simplifying stuff when you speak about analytics. ” He smiled to himself and tried to imagine how Shaoli would have explained this.“Retail stores have an eternal problem of dealing with shoplifters and employees who pilfer stuff – usually clothes and then sell them on e-commerce sites. I wrote a program to find out that would automatically track the accounts of all people who work in clothing stores and also active on eBay. I had noticed that there was this man in his forties who was selling loads of clothes and accessories on eBay. The descriptions matched the list of clothes his employer had declared lost in the insurance claim. The rest was easy.”-------------We have plenty of films that are inspired by Hitchcock’s style of narration. Those are mysteries. Bollywood has had many examples of thrillers and mysteries. We also have plenty of examples of films that are about the hero bringing criminals to justice. After all, Iftekhar and Amitabh Bachchan played cops in numerous movies. They chased smugglers and brought the murderer to justice.Where are the examples of detectives in Bollywood? Bollywood has had limited success to show for its hundred years of existence when it comes to powerful detective characters. When it comes to women detectives, the best example would be the Sushmita Sen starrer Samay. Television has seen many detectives. Whether it is the carrot chewing Karamchand of yesteryears, or the current “CID” series, to name just two, there have been detectives who solved crime or even simple mysteries. Why is there such a shortage of powerful sleuths who leave us wishing we had their smarts?After all, the real world has enough examples of white collar crime. Whether it is insider trading or fraud or forgery or medical malpractice, there is enough fodder to write about. So why do we not have enough sleuths in Bollywood. By that I mean the Hercule Poirot kind and not the James Bond kind.This genre depends on a tightly woven script. The crime or mystery is solved by the analytical prowess of the sleuth. The best detective stories invite the audience to solve the crime or mystery along with the detective. Neither the investigator nor the audience should have an upper hand when it comes to getting information. Both need to stay in hot pursuit of the criminal complete with false leads and red herrings. The number of characters in the plot needs to be just right – enough to generate suspicion and false leads, but not too many that would make viewers lose interest. Finally, the detective must not have any ability that gives him or her, an advantage.