IPS officer Brijesh Singh’s crime thriller is a fictional account but it reveals lesser-known facts about the system and the response mechanism by the police. He shares details with Divya Kaushik
For someone who has handled bizarre and mysterious cases in last two decades of his career, it was not an easy choice to write fiction. But once he started weaving the story, he maintained that it read as realistic as possible. IPS officer Brijesh Singh thought that it will be too boring for others to read a fictional story by a cop they would otherwise expect some hard-hitting reality. He says, “I was told by my friends that what is boring to me will be interesting to the readers who do not know much about what happens beyond what they see and read.” So he took the challenge and started taking out three hours in the night from his erratic schedule and completed his debut crime thriller, Quantum Seige. The book revolves around Rudra Pratap Singh and his team at Anti-Terror Cell. The terror group lashkar has directly threatened the prime minister of India with ‘never before’ consequences, if referendum is not declared in Kashmir immediately. The UN Security Council has called for an emergency session scheduled to meet within two days to discuss the Kashmir crisis. So Rudra and his team faces the challenge to save millions of lives while India readies itself for war. The book gives an insight into what happens during the intense crisis, response mechanism of the police system and constrains that they face.
Though I was not at liberty to share too much details but you will find that the story discloses on how we handle issues, what kind of challenges and dilemmas we face. What we read is sometimes not the reality and people do not realise that if one terror attack has taken place, there are often 100 terror attacks that have been averted. Police officials, most of the time, are the unsung heroes. This book also brings to light the other side of cops that is not known to people. People never understand our work pressure and many things we have to deal with when something major happens,” says Singh, who informs that ample research went even for writing this fictional work.
Currently in Mumbai, Singh is also an engineer and holds master’s degrees in psychology and public administration. Thanks to his knowledge on so many subjects, Singh has been assisting many authors and Bollywood directors in their research work. Since he has been in touch with writers like Hussain Zaidi, writing a book was on his mind.
So far, we haven’t seen many cops taking to writing and talking about their system of working. Singh says that erratic schedules and the subculture of the profession that they are into, is such that it is not an easy task to come up with the book. “The subculture of the organisation is such that we do not speak often in a public domain,” he comments.
Singh’s book reads like an ideal script for a Bollywood film and the author looks forward to that. “I will be happy if the book will be made into a film. But I would only be giving it to the director who will be able to do justice to the story. I think Anurag Kashyap and Tigmanshu Dhulia will do a brilliant job. I already have some offers,” he concludes.