Jagmohan Singh Barhok

Dear Friends, my interest in reading crime stories started when I was thirteen years old. We lived at Almora, a hill station & a district in Kumaon, Uttar Pradesh. After 6 pm, especially in winters, when the town engulfed in darkness reading crime stories remained the choicest option. I remember having finished three Hindi novels on a Saturday night in 1964.The environ created a habit of reading- sort of a shot in the arm. I read most Hindi crime series like Vinod-Hameed, Chakram Jasoos & later Surendra Mohan Pathak followed by Gulshan Nanda and some other known novelists during my three-year stay there.

I started reading English crime series at Kanpur in 1968 starting with James Hadley Chase ,Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie & some other American & British authors including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I liked Stanley Gardner because his novels were mostly ‘Court Dramas’ highlighting many a complex nay interesting situation & finding including medicolegal aspect, ,eventually prompting me to try my hand at writing crime stories few years later .To familiarize myself with the criminal terminology & medicolegal aspects I read IPC & Modi Jurisprudence after joining the SBI at Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh where I spent evenings mostly in a cinema hall where top brass of the district gathered, including a photographer-turned advocate who claimed expertise in medical jurisprudence.

It would be news to many readers that medical jurisprudence has increasingly important role in cases involving rape. Surprisingly, & Interestingly, too, many doctors have been debarred from practice by the Hon’ble Courts for failure to prove their point of view during cross examination by the defence advocate.