The One day Reporter.....

After seeing the movie “Page 3”, I always thought that crime reporting was a very interesting field, though I never imagined myself; being one of them. But I guess providence had better plans for me. I had gone to Delhi recently for giving a couple of interviews as well as meeting a couple of friends. One of my friends was (and is still) a crime reporter with a national daily there. I just wanted to have a casual meeting with her since I had not met her for a couple of years. Initially I thought we would meet over a cup of coffee and chat for a while and then go our separate ways. Fortunately for me, my interviews got over sooner than expected and so we decided to meet in the morning itself.

We were just getting along with a casual conversation when she had a call regarding a hit and run case. She, being a crime reporter had to leave and I not being one didn’t want her to go. She finally came up with the solution and invited me to come along with her for that day. I, on my part volunteered to be her driver. More importantly I did want to know what and how the crime reporting world works and why did she chose this field as her career.

Basically the day of the crime reporter starts with a phone call, either from the police control room or from a colleague who informs them about a fresh incident. Then comes the running around part where the reporter finds the crime scene, meets the affected and the not so affected people, takes the photographs and creates the draft for the story. This is if the reporter is having a good day. On a normal or a bad day there are multiple crimes at various locations. I believe a reporter uses the ‘traveling salesman algorithm’ in their lives more than anyone else. The have to go to different police stations, different villages and slums and that too all at peak traffic hours to meet all kinds of people right from the commissioner of police to the road side Romeo. Their desk day at the office starts after 7pm when they go to their office, consolidate their stories, prepare the reports and submit it to the editor. After all this running around they would be lucky if their story gets published and luckier if they get the byline (i.e., their name printed at the end of the story).

So we started my first and so far the only day as a crime reporter. I was initially a bit disappointed when we came to know that the hit and run story was not true. But we later came to realize that the location information supplied was incorrect. Just when we thought all was going well (at peak hours in Delhi traffic) we got a call regarding a custodial death of a caddie who was arrested for a chain-snatching incident.

Regular crime stories are not too hard as the cops provide most of the details to the reporters and the reporters just have to do the back-end and field research. A custodial death is a different ball game altogether. Here most often the cops are at fault and hence do not co-operate at all. Not only that they do not co-operate the also try to mislead the reporters.

So now we had two stories to cover, multiple police stations to barge in and out of and that too at different locations in Delhi. My day was getting better and better. The hit and run case was cake walk. We found the bus which was the culprit, the bike which was the victim and the story of their romance from the SHO (station head officer). With the love story securely stored in our cameras we headed for the more sensational of the two cases.


As mentioned earlier this being a custodial death case we were (actually she was) pretty sure the cops would not be of any assistance. We short-listed 3 different police stations from where we planned to drain out the information. I did not have any prior experience dealing with cops and that too when we were to interrogate them and not the vise versa. She decided to train me by showing how it is done in one of the stations. I was astonished to see how well behaved these cops act while dealing with reporters. I was introduced as the assistant reporter. The comfort with which the cops treated us really made me feel at home in a place, whose thought gives nightmares to people. I was introduced to a long list of officers and their subordinates. Some of them even claimed that they knew me and were aware that I had joined the news paper daily very recently, though in reality I haven’t been to Delhi in 15 years and was definitely not a reporter. All we could gather from the half hour discussion there was the name of a village.

We split up for the next round of enquiry as we had to cover 2 police stations and we did not have much time. I dropped her at the first and went on to the second one. Fortunately the SHO was on leave and the person in charge was a lady. I introduced myself as a reporter and as if out of instinct said “hello DiDi aap kaise ho”. As soon as she heard the word “didi” she felt very happy and started an animated but very casual conversation. I had to very careful here because if blew my cover I would be in really deep shit (phew..I feel like a spy already). To my surprise she did not get the slightest clue about me ( this I came to know much later through my friend). Anyways I had to really make up a lot of stuff but all I could find was a name. My friend on the other end had fared much better (of course.. she was a pro..) and she also found some details about this boy.

Our next destination was the village where this guy lived. I was dumb-struck to see that, this village (yup it was an old fashioned village) was located in the heart of the city. We found a couple of street rowdies (the self appointed bhai types..) whom we asked for directions. I was scared to talk to them initially. My friend passed a sarcastic comment that if we had to fight them, she would take on two of them and I just need to find my way through one. Going by her proportions, I knew she could take on two of them with easy. Anyways such a confrontation was not required because these guys fled as soon as used the word “police” while asking direction (..phew…).

Somehow we managed to locate this boy’s house. Almost the whole village was assembled there. We went and introduced ourselves ( actually she did…I was too confused to do anything). As soon as they heard who we were the mother of the boy thought I was the main reporter and she fell to my feet and started crying. I never felt so helpless in my entire life. I did not know what to say to this lady or to anyone assembled there who were staring at us as we were their only ray of hope. I felt ashamed of my helplessness. We asked them a few questions and got the picture of the boy. They all had the same story to tell that their kid was innocent and the cops should be punished and we should help them get justice. As the time we spent with those people grew longer the crowd started becoming hostile. The people started shouting slogans against the police. This was the time my friend told me that we should be leaving as we did not want to be the reason behind a riot.

Since we had both the stories now we went back to a coffee shop. The same shop from where my journey as a reporter began and ended. Though it was a big day for me, my part got over here. Now she had to go to office and convert the drafts to story.

I was to leave Delhi early morning the next day. I was sitting in my berth and reading the newspaper. To my pleasant surprise I found the news story printed in the 2nd page itself. Though my friend got the story printed she did not get the byline. As I was reading the story the scenes from what happened yesterday passed through my mind as a movie and then I thought of the movie ‘Page 3’ and knew how Konkana Sen would have felt on her first day as a crime reporter. All I could think of was that sometimes…..Sometimes Reel life and Real life are not that different………