Former top cop life on silver screen

Patna: The super cop behind the formation of Special Auxiliary Police (SAP), with the help of retired army personnel, and the man who later gave the concept of Super-30 to teach hundreds of underprivileged students to achieve success in IIT entrance exam, has attracted documentary film makers from Mumbai.

Sujit Kumar Singh, a Mumbai-based film director, is making a docu-drama on the former director general of police (DGP) Abhayanand to depict the works done by him, which has so far gone unnoticed.

Titled The Cop with a Chalk, Sujit is about to wrap up the shooting work and is hoping to release it by February. It is expected to be anywhere between 45 and 60 minutes in length.

"We were reading about Bihar when we saw a few interesting reports about Abhayanand in different newspapers, which whetted our curiosity," said Sujit. "We started researching further and found that he worked to modernise the Bihar police and taught the under-privileged in his spare time, but was never given due credit. It was then that we decided to make a documentary."

The director, who has made over 400 radio shows, is credited with short films and music videos like Talk to me, Asha wali dhoop and several others, hails from Ara in Bhojpur and said the docu-drama is being made with the help of crowd-funding.

Talking about the need for the documentary, Sujit said the society should know how the Super-30 model to prepare under-privileged children for higher technical education was conceptualised or the fact that the former DGP was an educationist at the core of his heart, which led him to set-up a modern school for the children of constables.

The documentary will focus on the creation of SAP, which raised the self-esteem of thousands of retired army personnel, who would end up as security guards at various installations previously. The former DGP's focus on making the state police a superior force with latest technology will also figure in it.

Abhayanand, who was DGP from September 2011 to June 2014, launched strategic anti-Maoist operations which broke the back of the Left-wing extremism in the state. He was the one who successfully planned the operation to liberate Bhimbandh forest area in Munger that was lost to Maoists for the past several decades and also put his brains and might to create a separate economic offences unit (EOU) on the directions of the chief minister to launch offensive against corruption at high-levels and to hit at the financial aspects of crime.

Sujit said actor Himanshu, a Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) graduate, will play the role of a younger Abhayanand in the docu-drama. He added that the current project will be followed by a biopic on the super cop.

Asked about the superlative documentary in the making, Abhyanand said he is focusing full-time on teaching, which is his passion. "I didn't know Sujit, but he says he had met me around nine years ago. He is making a documentary as per his perception about me and I have no role in it," added the former DGP.