‘Detective fiction’ back in vogue, courtesy Bengal cops

Shubhadeep Choudhury 

Tribune News Service 

Kolkata, September 2 

Saradindu Banerjee, creator of the fictional detective “Byomkesh Bakshi” (played by Rajit Kapoor on TV) died long back and when filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who wrote the popular “Feluda” stories (Shashi Kapoor had played Feluda in a TV series), also died, it appeared the ‘detective fiction’ genre in Bengali will never recover from the blow.

But that was till the Kolkata police started posting crime stories on its Facebook page every Sunday. The real-life stories of crime cracked by the police in the recent past have turned out to be a big hit with the readers. Since June last year, the Facebook page of Kolkata police has been carrying the stories of crimes solved by its officers. A Bengali book containing those stories was launched earlier this year. Written by Additional Commissioner of Police Supratim Sarkar, the book has been one of the bestselling books on Amazon and has found its place among books of the “Feluda” and “Byomkesh” series which have been featuring in the bestsellers category on the Amazon India portal for quite a few years now.

The story posted on Facebook today by Kolkata police is about an ATM fraud in 2010. The crime was relatively new then but the detectives managed to crack it. It was a gripping story and people enjoyed reading it. “Terrific. Every Sunday, I wait for “Rahasya Rabibar” (meaning “The Sunday Mystery”, which is the name of the column) space on your Facebook page. Something seems to be missing until I read the column”, commented Souvik Sen, a student from Siliguri.

Over the seven hours it has been posted, the story has picked up 800 likes. It has attracted 101 laudatory comments and has been shared 145 times.

Saptarshi Biswas, award-winning poet who also has a great appetite for detective stories, says that the weekly posts on the Kolkata police Facebook page may be first such stories since the “Darogar Daptar”.

Noting the popularity of the stories, the police have also started posting English translation of these on Facebook under the name “crimeinthecity”.

Real stories a big hit 

• The Kolkata police posts real-life stories of crime cracked by them on their Facebook page every Sunday. These weekly stories have turned out to be a big hit with readers 
• The initiative is gaining similar popularity that Kolkata police officer Priyanath Mukherjee’s “Darogar Daptar”  (Inspector’s File) garnered in the late 1800s  
• Mukherjee is credited with pioneering the ‘detective fiction’ genre in Bengal. He served in the detective department for 33 years (1878 to 1911) and compiled the real-life stories