Queens of Crime : True Stories of Women Criminals from India — by Sushant Singh and Kulpreet Yadav
Publisher: Penguin eBury Press
Pages:216
Price: Rs. 299 INR(paperback), Rs. 171 INR(Kindle edition)
ISBN: 978–0143445852
Buy here: https://amzn.to/2VEu7j1
Dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, sheer greed and sometimes just a skewed moral compass. These are some of the triggers that drove the women captured in these pages to become lawbreakers.
Queens of Crime demonstrates a haunting criminal power that most people do not associate women with. The acts of depravity described in this book will jolt you to the core, ensuring you have sleepless nights for months.
Based on painstaking research, these are raw, violent and seemingly unbelievable but true rendition of India’s women criminals.
About the authors:
Sushant Singh: A film and television actor, Sushant Singh hosted the crime-based reality show Savdhaan India for almost seven years. He is the honorary general secretary of the Cine & TV Artistes’ Association. This is his first book.
Kulpreet Yadav: A bestselling author and motivational speaker, Kulpreet Yadav retired voluntarily from the armed forces to pursue a career in writing in 2014. He was the winner of the Best Fiction Writer for 2018 award at the Gurgaon Literature Festival. He lives in New Delhi.
My take on the book:
Queens of Crime is a collection of ten real life accounts of crime involving women set across the towns and cities of India. Each story is different, set in a different part of the country, against a different backdrop and involving people from different financial backgrounds, and different timelines. Some of these crimes which happened in the 80s and 90s continued for a long time without facing resistance from law enforcing authorities owing to loopholes in judiciary system. While some of these stories represent women, who got into organized crime, others committed crime due to unwarranted circumstances.
These are stories of women who are into every imaginable crime — drug peddling, water mafia, contract killing, honey trapping men through online portals, kidnapping babies, prostitution. All of them have started off from modest backgrounds and are believed to have committed their first crime out of desperation for money or under extreme circumstances. However, soon they turned full time to these crimes for various reasons — continuous flow of money, the power and control they have over other individuals, people around them fearing and bowing to their demands; sometimes committing crime became a habit and obsession.
Each story explores the background of these individuals and the circumstances that lead them to turning into criminals. Few important incidents are also narrated in detail. There is an interesting fact mentioned at the end of each of these stories, which stands as highlight for some of stories, since the reader must have empathized so far with some of these women, but these trivia question about whose truth is real. Some stories have detailed description of gruesome crimes committed which highlights the irony of how simple women could got to such lengths.
The fact that these are all true-life incidents render authenticity to each of these stories and makes the readers delve into their psych. The narration is gripping, the backgrounds of these women offer much variety and the content is well researched. While I understand the reason behind the title is to highlight and draw attention from readers, hailing them as Queens probably is not what the authors would have intended to.
My rating:
5/5.