Dangerous Minds

From victims to victims to victors, this collection of stories contains intricate details of 13 women who went on to leave their permanent mark on the face of the Mumbai Mafiosi.

Among the first female journalists in India to investigate crime and the underworld, Sheela Raval has had an eventful three-decade-long career in print media and television that has seen her track India's most notorious criminals across different parts of the globe. Always hot on the trail of a story, Raval broke the news about Chhota Rajan surviving a brutal assassination attempt in Bangkok in 2000, attended Dawood Ibrahim's daughter's wedding in Dubai and is the only person to have interviewed Samira Jumani.

Meena Menon was The Hindu's correspondent in Islamabad till she was expelled by the Pakistani authorities in May 2014. In spite of her truncated stay and the restrictions placed on her movements, Menon managed to write on a range of subjects covering swathes of life in Islamabad. 

As Khushwant Singh wrote in the preface to the hardbound edition published in 1990 of this true account of Mohanlal Bhaskar's mission to find out about Pakistan's nuclear plans: 'He was betrayed by one of his colleagues, presumbly a double agent, and had to face the music on his own. The interrogation, which was done by the army and police, included torture of the worst kind imaginable. Many of his comrades went insane or ended their own lives.'

The Kolkata Police is one of the oldest and most illustrious police forces in the country. In Murder in the City, Supratim Sarkar digs deep into their archives and chooses 12 astonishing cases to recount, bringing investigators, criminals and indeed the city to life in startling detail. Among the cases described are one where the method of ‘photographic superimposition’ was used for the first time ever in India to identify a body; another where a single word led the police to a ruthless killer’s hideout....