Shine Jacob steps into a school for sleuths to find a septuagenarian teaching the tricks of the trade to aspiring investigators
It’s around 10 on a chilly December night. Anindya Mitra is shadowing a woman in the narrow lanes of Kolkata’s satellite township, Salt Lake. The 25-year-old business administration graduate is investigating a case of extramarital affair. The woman suddenly realises she’s being followed and raises an alarm. Within minutes, Mitra escapes and his partner takes over from where he has left.
This isn’t a scene out of one of Satyajit Ray’s Feluda stories in which the fictional private investigator cracks one case after the other. This is the on-field practical session of possibly India’s first school for detectives which offers a diploma in private investigation. The course, offered by Anapol Institute of Management Studies, was started by S R Banerjee, himself a detective, in 2010 and has produced about 30 detectives so far.
Reaching the Anapol classroom through the narrow lanes of New Alipore is a mission in itself. Banerjee, who is past 75, looks every bit the storybook detective — complete with the detective lens and dark sunglasses. But through his book, Bastaver Feluda (The Real Feluda), and his lessons, the one thing he tells his students is that a stereotypical image isn’t what makes a detective.
An interactive class is on and S K Naug, the former director of the Finger Print Bureau, is explaining to the batch of some 10 students how to read fingerprints and analyse handwriting. The institute’s faculty includes former police officials, fingerprint experts, document examiners, as well as graphology and body language experts. Besides Naug there are Santanu Ghose, director of Sri Institute of Graphology, Body Language Institute of India, and retired deputy commissioner of police, Pratap Ghosh.
Banerjee, a former Calcutta police official, explains the importance of the art of impersonation through an experience. “A major fan-maker had a total production of 50,000. But its fake was selling more than 100,000 pieces a year. We planted trainee detectives in the company and found out the origin and major sales points of the spurious products. In a single day, we raided 10 such centres in Odisha and solved the case.”
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The fee for the eight-month course —six months of classroom teaching and two months of on-field training — is Rs 12,000. Classes are held on Saturdays and Sundays from 2 pm to 6 pm. Age and gender is no bar, though the minimum qualification is a Class XI pass certificate.
The students come from diverse backgrounds. There are government and private sector employees, college students and even housewives. Among them is Bhaskar Kayla, a fruit-seller who hopes this will help him get a better life and social status. There’s also Shyamal Kumar Haldar, an official of the National Insurance Company. At 45-plus, he’s the oldest student and wants to start a detective school once he retires. Women like Krishna Kumar and Fulu Banerjee, who were part of the earlier batches, are now working with the Anapol Group, which was started in 1977 and is a pioneer in private investigation and security services in eastern India. They’ve handled many cases of premarital and extramarital affairs.
The syllabus includes coaching in forensic science, handwriting analysis, corporate, personal and financial cases as well as specialised investigation. While it deals with subjects like corporate wars, espionage, surveillance, cyber crime, insurance investigation, it also offers coaching for solving extramarital cases, kidnapping, sting operations and thefts.
Ananya Banerjee, a student from the second batch, says a detective also needs to know his limit and be cautious. “In cases involving spurious products, we have to be extremely cautious and might have to post ourselves in some location for a long period of time,” she says. Her septuagenarian teacher says the importance of knowing when to retreat from a case if it becomes too dangerous cannot be emphasised enough.
He remembers the time he started out as a detective. “I had nothing to follow — no guidelines for detectives, no books, no teachers and no online assistance,” recalls Banerjee, who has been recognised by the United States Association of Professional Investigators. “After 35 years as a detective, I wanted to come out with something useful for the budding sleuths.”
As a parting shot, he says, “Even you’re not safe if my students and I decide to shadow you and put you under surveillance.”