Murder, he wrote

New Indian Express

18-06-2025

It was a March night in 2011, when Saraswati, a newly-married wife, asked her husband to take her to a movie the next morning. Her husband, Ravi, felt happy that Saraswati had proposed this as he felt she had not opened up to him after their marriage. Ravi thought of this as an opportunity to get to know her better. Little did the poor soul know this was a plan hatched by his wife and her paramour to kill him. As it turned out, Saraswati's lover Karan with the help of his driver dumped his body in Rajasthan's Bhiwadi after the crime.
It took nine years for the Delhi police to crack the case. They used a narco-analysis test on the accused to unveil the truth. Former Navy officer, screenplay writer, actor and entrepreneur Kulpreet Yadav documents it in his latest book Dial 100 (HarperCollins), along with six other crime stories spread across the nation. Yadav's acting credits include Jawan, Sirf Ek Banda Kafi Hain, and A Husband's Story, among others, and his screenplay writing includes Olive Green +ve, a web series released on the Waves app of Prasar Bharati.
All these cases have the police in common and the cracking of all the cases with the help of technology. 'Our police have to deal with many problems. There are only 150 officers for approx 1,00,000 citizens—so it's a case of overwork. A single police officer has to be involved in investigating multiple cases at the same time. We are also laggards in training. This book covers incidents where they put forward their best efforts. In all these cases, they used technology (CCTV, DNA sampling, narco-analysis test, and other techniques) to catch criminals,' says Yadav.
From the very first page, the stories unfold like cinema. 'I have been a screenwriter for three years, so the visual aspect is an important part of my storytelling,' says Yadav.
The Delhi connection
The book fictionalises three true crime cases with Delhi as setting. The first one is a rape and murder of a minor girl; the second one involves the killing of a newly-married man by his wife and her lover' and the third one is a case of job scam. 'There are many 'famous' crimes that have happened in Delhi, and those have been well discussed. However, many interesting angles often lie hidden in so-called 'smaller' cases. I decided to talk about them,' says Yadav.
The three Delhi cases involved cross-border travel and technology so as to get hold of the criminals. For instance, the case of the rape and the murder of the young girl brought up the India-Nepal extradition treaty. 'These cases also fascinated me because the cops showed their human side during investigation. The extradition treaty, signed in the '50s, includes a lot of bureaucratic hassles. However, the cops went to Nepal to catch the criminal because they were pained to see the girl's parents waiting outside the police station. In the Delhi-Alwar murder case, the way the cops utilised the lie-detector test and the narco analysis test, interested me. At first, they neither had the permission nor had the wherewithal to use these two to make the killer confess the crime. So, again, it was the patience of the cops and their brilliance that helped the criminals get caught,' adds Yadav.
Crisply told
Crisp writing and the short staccato sentences of the book will also appeal to the reader. 'I have been a writer for 19 years, and I have understood that for the majority of Indians, English is not their first language, and many find it difficult to understand. That's the reason I have always tried to write in an English that is easy to understand. I do not want to impress my readers with my language skills. Instead, I want them to be impressed by the story that I am telling,' says Yadav.
In Dial 100, Yadav has also used conversation as a device to re-imagine and flesh out the story. For instance, before killing her husband, Saraswati indulges in a romantic conversation with him and gently requests him to take her out the next day. 'Without changing the main facts of the stories, certain scenes have been recreated, and certain dialogues have been introduced, so that they build up suspense for what happens next without giving the game away,' concludes Yadav.