How a well-oiled network of Interpol and CBI helps avert offences

This is one of the many alerts, of varying profiles, that the Mumbai Crime Branch receives every day.

Mumbai A three-hour coordinated effort between United States’ National Central Bureau (US NCB) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Mumbai, saved a 25-year-old IT professional in Kurla, burdened with a loan of ₹2.95 lakh, from taking his life on Wednesday. This is one of the many alerts, of varying profiles, that the Mumbai Crime Branch receives every day.

The Jogeshwari resident had been running Google searches on ‘painless ways to die by suicide’ on Tuesday and Wednesday. The searches became more aggressive on Wednesday at around 2 pm, when a chat window popped up (cops are unclear about the profile of the chat window and how a Google search could lead up to it) on his screen. (AP/Image for representation)

The Jogeshwari resident had been running Google searches on ‘painless ways to die by suicide’ on Tuesday and Wednesday. The searches became more aggressive on Wednesday at around 2 pm, when a chat window popped up (cops are unclear about the profile of the chat window and how a Google search could lead up to it) on his screen. The person on the other side wished to know what had led him to the search. At 2:30 pm the CBI Interpol received an email from US NCB in Washington about the online exchange taking place in Kurla. The nodal agency in Delhi forwarded the mail to the Joint Commissioner of Police, Mumbai crime branch, by 4 pm, whose office put its Unit V (in Kurla) on the job in a flash. By now the IT professional was running searches on his mobile phone; tracking the internet protocol (IP) address, cops landed up at his office in an hour and dissuaded him.

A smooth system

This swift and efficient operation, the result of a well-coordinated system for facilitating international cooperation, has been sharpened over time. Last year, the same system also helped the Mumbai Crime Branch delve into the supposed kidnapping of a Mauritius native, which ultimately turned out to be a prank gone wrong.

The flow of information was not by accident. The Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Mumbai, is also the official Interpol Liaison Officer (ILO) for Mumbai. The same duty is assigned to the Additional Director General, Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Maharashtra, for the state. Similarly, the US has several NCBs all over the country.

In Mumbai, the Crime Branch chief is assisted by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection), who is the Assistant ILO for the city – the post currently occupied by DCP Prashant Kadam.

“We have a separate cell headed by a police inspector rank officer, who monitors a dedicated email account for Interpol alerts, which are passed down to us through the CBI. This monitoring is done round the clock and alerts are passed on to the agency concerned as soon as they are received. Wednesday’s alert was received through this email ID and as soon as we traced the IP address to Kurla, we put Unit V of the Crime Branch on the job,” said Kadam.

The incident, which has earned plaudits for the Crime Branch, was only among the most serious of the scores of alerts that the city’s apex agency receives daily. According to sources, at least five to six such alerts are received from various member countries of the Interpol, which are immediately disseminated to the concerned units. Most alerts are about people of interest in investigations overseas. At the same time, the Crime Branch, too, sends similar queries and alerts to the CBI, to be conveyed to the country concerned through Interpol.

The hoax call

In December 2022, an alert originated from Port Louis, Mauritius. It went through the CBI and landed in the dedicated email inbox of the Mumbai police. A woman from Mauritius had received a call from a man in Mumbai, who claimed that he had kidnapped her son, Jayprakash Kalicharan, and demanded ₹50,000 as ransom. The panic-stricken mother sent all that she could – around ₹9,900 – to the account specified by the ‘kidnapper’ and then called her local police station.

“We were informed on December 19, 2022, that Kalicharan, a spine cancer patient, frequently visited Mumbai for treatment and would stay at a hotel in Juhu. We immediately dispatched a team from the Unit IX to the hotel, and the team found Kalicharan in his room, along with two other men. He was safe and all three were astounded when the cops turned up,” said a senior Crime Branch officer.

Subsequent investigation revealed that Kalicharan had met a Mumbai native, Tausif Khan, through social media and they, along with Tausif’s friend, decided to have a party in Kalicharan’s room. However, Kalicharan lost his debit card earlier that day and had it blocked subsequently. Hence, when they ran out of money, they decided to prank his mother into sending money.

The Unit IX team made a video call to Kalicharan’s mother from the hotel room itself and had him come clean to his mother, who was not amused.

Officials said that Wednesday’s operation was a success partly because the US law enforcement has a great working relationship with tech giants like Google, who inform them about impending situations immediately. “We just wish that our request for information were also honoured by tech giants with equal sincerity,” an officer lamented.