Azim Premji University Alumni and 28-year-old Delhi-native, Abeer kapoor is a journalist with a pronounced flair for scaling murky waters and exploring sensitive spaces branching from communal politics to gut-wrenching crime sagas. A critically-acclaimed writer with pieces featured by media-heavyweights like The Wire, Scroll and Quartz, Abeer’s latest literary offering is ‘The Most Notorious Jailbreakers’.
The Most Notorious Jailbreakers
Issued by Indian publishing giant, Rupa Publications, the non-fiction book documents sixteen different tales of mind-bending prison breaks involving some of the most harrowing convicts in the nation’s penal history. The crime anthology is a gritty portrayal of India’s most notorious convicts and debunks the physics behind their seemingly impossible escapes. The stories featured in the book encompass the country’s convoluted crime timeline and span from ancient escape accounts of post-colonial India to the 21st century’s more recent break-outs.
A chronicle of the life and times of some of India’s most infamous inmates, ‘The Most Notorious Jailbreakers’ allows readers to slip into the shoe of every escapee by teleporting them to the doom and gloom of their respective penitentiary. Long-forgotten fables of ill-famed prisoners on the lam are brought back to life by Abeer’s dark, grim, and intriguing narration. Furnished with stories from bandit queen Phoolan Devi’s killer Sher Singh Rana’s disguised escape to charismatic conman Natwarlal’s vamoose in broad daylight, the book is fodder for true-crime enthusiasts.
The ironic incident where Sher Singh Rana’s entourage walked out with him after duping prison-guards with their police-liveries makes for an interesting read. How Natwarlal fled the coop after promising his warden a hefty sum of cash in exchange for aiding his escape and how the entire wad of currency was mysteriously found ablaze, are narrated by Abeer in great detail. Other spine-chilling yarns that have found mentions in the crime compendium range from a gangster’s blood-ridden escapade to the story of a math professor who is covertly a rapist on parole.
Inventor of India’s first election-based board-game, ‘The Poll’, Abeer over the previous years, has directed his efforts towards unmasking the dirty games of corruption and religious propaganda at play in India’s political scenario.
Abeer who enjoys the company of furry canines and strums tunes on his guitar in his spare time is currently developing concepts for several other ground-breaking board games. His new book is simply a culmination of his profound fascination with crime, prison breaks and political-ties that foster such enigmatic escapes.
You can fine Abeer Kapoor’s new book here
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