"Crime Patrol" on Sony TV and Dirty Politics. And a Faint ray of Light?

 

"Crime Patrol" on Sony TV and Dirty Politics. And a Faint ray of Light?

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

"Crime Patrol" is a Hindi serial which has been airing on Sony TV since, I think, 2003, and, before moving on, let me state right at the beginning that if I were asked to name a single serial on TV which I think is the best serial there is, I would name "Crime Patrol", and have done so many times when the context arose. Of course, there have been many substandard episodes in this long-running serial, but by and large I would consider it (particularly in view of the very large number of episodes till now — possibly 3000 or more) perhaps the most consistently well-made serial I have ever seen.

Three or four years ago (of course, at some time before the COVID Lockdown), I was contacted by someone and told that a director wanted to make a film based on the OIT and would come and discuss the subject with me. That director did come and meet me, but, as I had suspected, he probably found the subject too difficult, and nothing came of it. But what thrilled me was that he was apparently the director of many episodes of "Crime Patrol" in the past. I mention this only because it shows that the serial has clearly not generally been an anti-Hindu enterprise, and was true to its objective of depicting crime episodes.

The compere or conductor of the serial till a few years ago was Anup Soni. I do not know his political views (though I suspect he may be a Secularist), but whatever his personal views, I don't think he imposed them on the viewers through his commentary during the episodes, and, at least so far as I know, was a very good compere/conductor. However, he resigned from that position in 2018.

After that, I do not know who controls the narrative in the serial, but, although, as a crime serial, it continued to be as good as ever, I did notice one or two indications that there were now Leftist or Secularist persons in charge. For example, in one of the parts (sorry I do not remember which one) there is a scene of a neighbour (to a crime scene) telling the investigating inspector that the murderer could be a "terrorist" since he saw a Muslim person arguing with the murder victim a few days prior to the murder, and he is soundly reprimanded by the inspector who also gives him a preachy lecture about how every person with a Muslim beard or a burqa is not necessarily a terrorist: the scene and the moral were quite irrelevant to the story.

However, suddenly, the serial itself came grinding to a halt very recently after 215 parts of Season 2 of Crime Patrol. Apparently the whole ruckus was triggered off by an episode clearly based on the recent Aftab-Poonawala-Shraddha-Walkar murder scandal, where the serial makers had the temerity to change the religions of the murderer and his victim: in the episode, called "Ahmedabad-Pune Murder", the murderer Muslim Aftab Poonawala became a Hindu Mihir, and the victim  Hindu Shraddha Walkar became a Catholic Anna Fernandes! I myself saw the episode and commented on the strange phenomenon. [Note: both the names Aftab and Mihir mean "Sun"].

It must be noted that criminals can in general belong to any religion and victims can likewise belong to any religion (and indeed this is what we have been seeing in "Crime Patrol" episodes till now), but this deliberate act of falsifying an incident which is even now reverberating in the media in order to fulfill the Secularist agenda of showing people belonging to the "minorities" as good and Hindus as bad (something I have often described in my writings) in such a blatantly insolent manner, to make the murderer a Hindu, and the victim a member of a "minority", was an intolerable act.

The point is that such intolerable acts, beyond count, have been peacefully tolerated by Hindus for decades, and Bollywood has become a den of anti-Hindu propagandists. But this time it was not tolerated!

I have heard recently (though never sure of the veracity of such claims) that sections of Hindus have in the last year or two started objecting, and objecting strongly and effectively, to this kind of anti-Hindu misrepresentation, by successfully enforcing boycotts on some of the recent Bollywood productions of this kind, and that these boycotts have resulted in these productions going into losses and becoming "flops". I still do not know if this is true, and, if it is true, how long it will last, and to what extent it will be effective in loosening the hold of anti-Hindu propaganda tendencies in Bollywood. However, in the case of this "Crime Patrol" episode, there was apparently a strong reaction from many Hindus on the social media, and strident calls for a boycott of Sony TV itself, and it actually seems to have worked.

I am writing on this subject because the serial is close to my heart, and even more because, in spite of the fact that it is close to my heart, the closure of that serial for this reason strikes me as a faint (although very faint) ray of light in a dark, stormy, Dirty-Parivar-Politics world, and shows that maybe all Hindus are not yet sold out or cowed down, and that strong action can yet yield results. Of course, it is a very tiny "victory" and may well be reversed tomorrow in some unwanted way (a "wanted" way for me personally would be to restore the control of that serial into more neutral hands). But, in times of famine, even a tiny illusory crust of stale bread can appear sweet.