Mumbai: Mumbai Police have in their ranks a new-age Midas, the man with the golden touch, who has solved every missing person case he has handled. His name is Constable Rajesh Pandey. From 2011 till date, Constable Pandey has assisted in solving over 1,000 cases of missing persons. Impressed by his abilities, former commissioner of police Dattatray Padsalgikar had set up a procedural in 2018, which he named the Pandey module, for solving kidnapping cases.
Pandey has a birthday coming up shortly - December 31. But he has never celebrated it at home since he joined the force in 1993. Before being deployed at various police stations throughout his career, Pandey worked with the Local Arms (LA) unit for 12 years, where he picked up a knack for communication and efficiency.
In 2011, he was transferred to Santacruz police station, where he was deputed with a case of a missing child later traced to Uttar Pradesh and rescued. Pandey told The Free Press Journal, "Having found the child within a fortnight, I had fulfilled my professional duty, but the happiness I have gained on the personal front is something I can never express in words. While my job helps me earn my livelihood, tracking down missing people gives me a purpose."
From the LA unit, Pandey was transferred to Malad, Santacruz and Andheri police stations and at every 'halt', he has ensured that all the missing person complaints and kidnapping cases have been solved, and has left behind the legacy of a 'zero missing persons' record.
Till date, Pandey has found 400 missing minors and 600 adults. "I am a simple SSC-fail who could not muster the courage to complete my education once I reached my mid-20s. But I never took special training, and learnt everything on the job, from communication onwards. The credit for my undying need to solve a case goes to my late father, who was also a policeman," says Pandey.
Giving its due credit to the technology at hands, Pandey says, as much as in-person questioning, field duty helps build contacts and track the missing persons, the technological boom is equally helpful to reunite the missing people with their kin. "I am a part of many WhatsApp groups, including an All India Poice WhatsApp group, where policemen from all over the country post leads, photos in the group with the point of contact details.
Over the past nine years, Pandey has traced missing children and adults from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, Delhi, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Ranchi, skillfully using tower location tracing and social networking websites. Pandey has travelled in different parts of the country like Kolkata, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and north-eastern cities like Gangtok, Darjeeling and Assam. "Whenever I get leads of any missing persons case in a different state, I directly seek permission from the deputy commissioner of police to pursue the leads and then get in touch with the respective superintendent of police of the said state/city, using the local search engine portal, Justdial. This direct approach led to less wastage of time and quick results," said Pandey.
In 2018, former Mumbai Police Commissioner, Padsalgikar, had named a module after the constable, 'The Pandey Module' where policemen were asked to have a positive approach like him and talk with graciousness, keep an eye out for wrongdoings and have a track record of 100 per cent detections, like no other.
Having dealt with challenging cases on the job, Pandey said the canine squad comes in handy when infants and toddlers are involved. The body of a two-year-old boy was found stuffed in a gunny bag inside a drum, hardly metres away from his residence in 2017. The dog squad helped crack the case.
In one of the cases, Pandey managed to trace four run-away youths, including a minor, who had gone to Gujarat and then settled in Palghar. Since the youths were technologically sound, they had changed their mobile phones and numbers, making it difficult to trace, however, based on technical evidence, Pandey got a lead after one of the girls called a friend. "We learnt that the youths-- two girls and two boys-- were living together and had escaped to live a life independently. After five months of continuous probe, we rescued the youths and reunited them with their kin," Pandey said.
Pandey said, the experience with the missing persons' kin was not always sweet, as they often lost their calm on one another, but only to make the drive to trace them even stronger. After having traced more than 1,000 people in his police career, he has become the go-to person for policemen, who is approached for guidance with his enormous expertise in tracing the missing persons
