The history chronicler

Did you know that the Mumbai police has several scores of books published? Some of them biographical and some about the cases and some educational?  But no one knows that 65-year old Rohidas Dosar is the force’s most prolific writer till date. As ex-police officer, he has published Mumbai Police Tapas Katha (Mumbai Police Investigation Stories), a collection of anecdotes from his career, which was published in 1998. Apart from this, he has written a dozen more non-fiction books, including a biography of Charles Forjett, the legendary Anglo-Indian police officer; a volume for children about the police; a history of police athletes; and an account of the 1925 Bawla murder case, which is considered a landmark in investigation.

Dosar is very well known in the circles as the one-stop person to get any historic information about the Mumbai police; almost like a living, talking archive. He is labelled as the “history expert” and is currently completing work on this PhD thesis which is about the history and development of Mumbai city police training.

From writing in the police monthly publication, Dakshata, Dosar has come a long way. After being raised as a farmer in Raigad, he later became a teacher, acquiring an MA and a Bed. He passed the state examination to qualify for the Mumbai police in 1981. Posted in police stations across the city, the state CID, the crime branch and the traffic division, he eventually retired in 2011 at the rank of deputy commissioner of police.

It is indeed a very noble deed which Dosar is doing. His books are published by a private publisher in Pune and books are sold at a very reasonable price, ranging from Rs.100 to 200. Obviously, for Dosar keeping track of history and writing is a passion; money is not the motivator. Now that’s something very rare and hope, his work gets translated into English (he writes in Marathi) so that it reaches a much wider audience.