Morning walk is the time when D Sivanandan, Joint Director, CBI West zone, jogs his mind for solutions to solving crime in the City. Martin D’Souza investigates some more.

D Sivanandan is a mild-mannered man. There’s plenty on his mind but nothing ruffles his demeanour. Murder, extortion threats, thefts…he has seen them all, and solved them… well almost all. There’s no outburst of emotion from the Joint Director CBI (west zone) but simply that business-like attitude towards his work, and a passion to pry open mysteries.

The soft cop (on the outside), who is credited for nullifying extortion threats and preventing crime, opens a window of his mind for a sneak peek of how he cracks a case.

“What goes in my mind is rolling the facts over and over again and finding a glimmer of hope,” begins Sivanandhan seated in his office at Colaba. “In my case, most of the solutions to the problem were found while I was on my morning walk. Most of the time I had my dog for company. I never took a walking companion. During that one hour, I used to get most of the creative ideas and management solutions.”

Throwing light on how the Mumbai police reorganized themselves and brought their houses in order he reveals: “When I joined the Mumbai force, there were shootouts virtually every day. There were also extortion calls. How we organised that and how we came out of it is an interesting story. We brought the Mumbai police together as a cohesive unit. We had to create enough enthusiasm in them. Otherwise, no one was willing to come and work in the crime branch. We had to get our own house in order and have new strategies in place. 

“Then, we also had talent-spotting—bringing the right man from outside for the right job and making him work. The third was to find the resources and give it to them. For eg. finding the informant. We had to then assess whether the information was useful, and pay him accordingly.

“We also resorted to rewarding the police officers appropriately after the job was completed and arranged felicitation for them and recommended their names for medals. We also had to bridge the necessary relationship between all the agencies like the police, customs, DRI, and Enforcement Directorate. Another step was to bring in all the national police units like Calcutta, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, together and exchange a dossier of criminals.”

Commenting on the number of assassination attempts prevented by the police, Sivanandhan says, “The best part was bringing in the electronic intelligence where we know in advance the possible assassination attempts and prevented them. That group consisted of a lot of business people, industrialists, and cinema people, which included Aamir Khan, Mahesh Bhatt, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, J P Dutta, and many others. In these cases we knew the day and time of the attempts, we went and aborted these attempts.”

Making light of the police, he adds, “Earlier, the police used to go and detect the case after it happened… like they used to show in Hindi films. We changed that role completely and before the incident could take place we came to know about it and stood between the accused and the victim and prevented the crime. So many people are alive because of this strategy change—Subhash Ghai, Pehlaj Nihalani, Shah Rukh Khan…”

Finally, Sivanandhan throws in the clincher! The press, or rather the handling of the media, both print and electronic. “The best and the most important part is to face the press in a crisis. The police were being criticized when I came. I used to see the press very freely. At that time there was heavy criticism. I used to tolerate and then do a turnaround and continue to maintain the relationship with them. To carry the press was more important because whenever there is a crisis of confidence, it is the press that carries the message from the police to the public. I used to always conclude by saying, ‘Whoever has come to the police has not lost their lives’.”

True. Lives have been saved, as Sivanandhan says and the image of the police has been cleaned. Solving a crime is no mean feat and at his level, it is the leadership that counts. 

Being a good leader is half the battle won. The other half is on the battlefield, which the Mumbai cops, thankfully now, are willing to get on to.

As Sivanandhan concludes, “Organized crime has been given a chutti now.”

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