Julio Ribeiro: Two books that reflect life In Mumbai

Madhukar Zende was a Mumbai Police officer who achieved fame for arresting the notorious international criminal, Charles Sobhraj, also known as the “bikini killer” for having murdered numerous young women he had befriended across Asia. Zende traced him to a popular restaurant O Coqueiro in Goa and detained up from there.

Zende’s book Mumbai’s Most Wanted reflects the more important investigations entrusted to him in the course of his career. The very first account was of how he brought to book the man who in 1980 murdered a college professor, Shanta Devi, when she was travelling alone in a First Class women-only compartment of a Mumbai local train. Two years after the murder, in 1982, Zende solved the case. The culprit was a petty criminal who operated on trains.

I happened to be the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Railways, when this murder was reported. It created a sensation because the victim was a middle-class South Indian woman. When such an incident occurs, citizens from the same economic bracket as the victim get alarmed.

The case kept me occupied for a month or two till I was transferred to Thane as its first police commissioner in early 1981. Even after I demitted office in the Railways. I kept...

Read more