Opinion To set a thief to catch a thief
What an incident in Jamshedpur in the 1980s can tell us about the CBI director’s comment.
Sudha Pal came late at night and was able to convince me of his innocence and that a rival gang, in connivance with some police officers, was responsible for spreading canards about him. Pal was a true whistleblower and assisted us in solving a series of crimes.
The career of a police officer is full of incidents and anecdotes, but sometimes you need a trigger to jog your memory. The recent statement by the director of the CBI, that to catch a thief one needs to set a thief on him, reminded me of an incident when I was the superintendent of police in Jamshedpur in the mid-1980s. I had joined the district replacing a police officer who was straight out of Bollywood and Dabangg in Salman Khan style, except even more imposing at 6 feet 3 inches. He had been SP there for five years and was extremely popular and respected. For me, the task was to prove that I could be equally effective and efficient, but in a less flamboyant way.
Soon after I joined, there was a spate of chain snatchings in the posh circuit house area of Jamshedpur, where senior Tata Steel officers lived. As the women went for their evening walk, a gang would come on motorcycles and snatch their gold chains, jewellery, watches, etc. The public and press started questioning the competence of the new SP and began comparing me with my predecessor — negatively, of course.
When local SHOs were asked as to who was responsible for these snatchings, they would invariably name Sudha Pal, a notorious criminal, and his gang. Pal had by then attained almost a mythical dimension, as every crime that took place would be blamed on him. It was therefore of utmost importance to me, in order to establish myself, to arrest him. The police officers in the district had been given strict instructions that he had to be apprehended at all costs, and progress was monitored on a daily basis.
As the pressure mounted, an informer came and said that Pal wanted to meet me as he was being falsely implicated in the chain snatchings. We agreed to meet on the condition that I would not have him arrested. The meeting was held where else but at the SP’s residential office. In those days, no registers were maintained!
Pal came late at night and was able to convince me of his innocence and that a rival gang, in connivance with some police officers, was responsible for spreading canards about him. He also assured me that he was trying to reform himself by getting into legitimate business activities, but was unable to do so because of police harassment.
In order to test his sincerity, I asked him who was responsible for these snatchings, if it wasn’t him. He gave me two unknown names and said, “SP sahib, you catch them and your problem will be solved.” He assured me that he would never in future be involved in any criminal activity and would keep me informed of the activities of various gangs in the district. I let him go, as he had approached me of his own volition and because if the information he had given was not correct, we could always catch him again. This was a chance I had to take.
In the next few days, we caught the two boys he had mentioned. They were 17- and 18-year-olds with no criminal record. I was sceptical when they were produced before me. But sure enough, after the local police had interrogated them for a few days, they confessed to all the snatchings and we were able to recover the gold ornaments and chains from the fence to whom they had been sold. As I
was only a few months in the job, my stock among my subordinates as well as the press and public immediately spiked. My subordinates had no clue as to how I had got the information leading to such an important detection.
Pal came and met me again a few days later and I thanked him for the valuable tip he had given. I never saw him again. A few months later, his body was found in the middle of a jungle about 30 kilometres from Jamshedpur. He had been kidnapped and murdered by a rival gang.
The local press and the general public were convinced that he had been killed in an encounter by the local police, but that was not true. However, to keep the police’s aura alive, we never confirmed or denied it.
Pal was a true whistleblower and assisted us in solving a series of crimes in order to prove his innocence. But in the end, those who live by the sword die by it. He was one of many criminals who wanted to reform but were unable to get out of the cesspool of crime. This incident also reinforced the conventional wisdom, “set a thief to catch a thief”.
The writer is a former director of the Central Bureau of Investigation
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