Data detectives — The mysterious dog theft
This story is the first one of the sequel data detectives, where I with my sister use data skills like r and spreadsheets to tackle mysteries around us. Join us on this adventure to be a part of this mystery.
Dear readers,
Hope you all are doing well. Recently on the day of Diwali this 2021, my grandfather’s elder brother died of cardiac arrest in the hospital. So all through these days it kept the elders busy. I was sitting alone at one corner of room musing about what I was gonna write next on climate change. Rescheduling meetings and texting friends and tweeting online about climate actions. It was the afternoon time. The sun was about to delve under its haven beneath the clouds and it’s radiance enshrined the sky orange red and the white clouds all around, it was the call for the moon to rise and shrine bright, but the tender grace of the day and the call that disappeared would never come back and nature would still be so indifferent. I sat down to pen down some algorithms and watch some lectures of UCI online, when my mother gave me the even more irritating news that my third class assesment tests were about to begin and that teacher already had started giving syllabus.
That night after all work, I sat at night with mummum deciding on how to study and plan my revision. After doing all that I sat to play with my sister. When she brought an interesting thing to my notice. Recently many a dogs were barking at night and that sound was unusually loud and intense. I thought little of it before until Urja told me so as well. We came to our new sweet home in October last year and at that time of the year we also heard the same kind of noise, that same loud barking sound. This last for 2 months from middle of October till November middle.
When I used to stay up at night and read Sherlock Holmes till 2 and 3 at night, I used to dream myself as Sherlock Holmes, that same gesture that same deer hunter cap and that same wit. But everybody wakes out of dream into reality. I don’t like petting animals, but I love animals and I have also done some projects on wildlife conservation. Now that this has happened, I wished to know why the dogs were barking at such high intensive shrill sound, what was that agony, why this bone chilling shrill. I started recording the shrill and analysing the sound and comparing with other dog sounds and clustered it. It feel into the category of painful or forced bark. I was scared to find that out.
My mind started weaving plots on why they were in pain. Slowly the story started to unfold. We went out after 2 days to watch the newly released movie of Sooryavanshi. My father worked in media for 20 years. He always advised me to keep my eyes and ears open and notice everything precisely and minutely. I saw multiple posters of Dogs Missing. Atleast 20 to 25 unique posters of dogs. The dogs were really very expensive ones and they were quite young actually, like 2 to 4 years. I went back home. No one knew what I was up to. I started researching on the following topics and worked closely to listen to their voices. Then my sister came to me and suggested something that I never thought of. It was that maybe they were kidnapped. She said this without much thinking but it strung a chord in my mind and my fingers repelled in the nerve water and typed the prices of the dogs. I carefully studies it and made a dataset. The dataset consisted of the prices and the amount of prices that escalated and dropped with time and which age of the dog was better for buying and selling. And very soon the story was unfolding quickly. I then thought that maybe if someone is catching and capturing dogs, he or she might be bitten by them. I searched the health centre and hospital dataset for the frequency of dog bite victims. Things were coming toghether every year on the same mid October to mid November festive season many dog bite victim cases increased, as well as the prices in pet shops and also the online market. Now the only missing link was number of dogs missing cases. I sat down to code in R the spatial analysis of dog missing cases over the time period and location from the police records and estimates as well as organizations. When I was about to sit to code it, my mom came and told me to study hard for the exam was knocking standing on the threshold. I suddenly had to realise that my condition would become worse than those dogs if I neglected my studies and my future,I also had to think about myself.
The next I sat down to code the spatial analysis. I saw that in my locality and around and near the khardah region of Mahaspota, Ruiya and the nearby regions. The map clearly was periodic and surprisingly all these matched the same date. I now thought about taking some risk. No more sitting at home and investigating. Story starts to get interesting here.
When I discussed this with my parents, they did not agre for 3 big reasons. One my age, second my security, third my studies and forth the need to do all these. So going out is cancelled all out. So I had to chalk out all plans. But then a idea struck me that was not that risky maybe but I had to manage my studies. I printed copies of my contact details and spread it all over the places where the cases are occurring. This was done and some official people helped me spread the word and paste the poster. Now many people called me. When I interviewed them, they all broke into tears and I understood that day the pain for pets that get lost. Their pain is so painful, that even I could not bear it for long enough. They were mourning as if it was a family member maybe more than a family member sometimes. Sometimes children and sometimes people who are so lonely, who only have a dog as per in their life. And the most interesting part is that people buy pets more in the festive season for many reasons one being a harsh one. People feel most lonely when around them ther eis so much joy, so much happening and they are having no one to share moments of life with.
So now what did I mean to do? Well, I was unsure. But I by now had a vivid and clear intuition that the dogs were being kidnapped and the numbers getting aligned was slowly proving my suspicions but I could not still frame anyone.
So no more sitting at home I thought. Our school luckily postponed the exam to 25 th November. I went out with my father to surf this wild jungle. I followed the trail of the map I designed. While walking on those paths, I felt thrilled that I was about to solve a case like the detectives and also felt somewhat sorrowful. Roads that were once filled with dogs and happy children, and evenings that were filled with old senior citizens going on a run with their pets was now so empty, so grey. As it is November, the cold blues in the sky added to my feelings.
I started off with visiting the police station. Though till then I beleived policemen to be stout hearted strict people, that day mad eme realise that even they were like others, like normal people but their burden of responsibilities is responsible for their strictness. They treated me kindly and as I asked for the FIRs and Mising Cases filed, they gave me all the files. I quickly took out the phone and made a Google form and started filling in the dataset using the form, in about 45 minutes, I was done. These cases have started since 2017, and it is been 5 years now. This pattern was a little bit periodic, like a normal distribution with a steep little variance.
Now that I had enough solid data, I went to all veterans and hospitals. I filled in the form of when the dog bite victims increased and when most dogs were hurt and since when this pattern is there. This was not a big data if you say that 3000 columns is not that big.
Now the next step, I went to all the small and big pet shops and they as we’re private institutions were a little uneasy in sharing information with me, but as I am a minor, they thought it didn’t matter much. I prepared the list of people who traded or rather sold the dogs. The list was quite big, it was like 50 people.
Now all those people were my suspects. Now I gathered even more data, on when they sold, how many they sold, how much money they got, and their appearance. Now I was ready to plan further analysis or draw deduction, you got it. I filtered the data out using the filter() in r, a quick tip, in r filter() is great but for simpler tasks use subset().
Now I had 6 names. I was truly getting my hands closer to the culprit of stealing smile. Latter next day inspector called my mother,and asked for me. He told me that I had done a commendable job in figuring out this pattern and that they would like me to further investigate and join the team in further investigation. I was launched into cloud 9 instantly, but then my conscious told me to speak some important words. I told the inspector that maybe I had researched but my sister pointed it out first and that I also made a list of 6 highly probable culprits of my suspects list. Next day I went forward and submitted all my research, assimilated data, reports, and suspect list and list of pet shops.
The uncles and aunties over there were really impressed and I was so happy. But something that I was unable to catch was that people also give money to those who down their dogs and maybe somebody is doing all these to get ransom in that manner, so no one can point even a finger at them nor would any proof be found. I quickly gave the team the list of contact numbers I had gathered and I found in the reports, and I had many recordings from all the calls I made and received. Then the team made a list of people who very frequently rescued the dogs and returned them. This time the list was far smaller with only 15 some names. These 15 names wee of people who appeared frequently, were not part of any organisation, were not non profits and were active during the mid October November chain. Things started to get interesting. We found that out of the 15 names, 3 names were common with the prior suspect list I compiled. So now we have 3 highly critical suspects and 18 probable suspects.
This time I got the chance to work closely with a police team, all professionals and geniuses at their professions and they had multiple sources that they could trust. Their resources were invaluable and I once again self understood the value of information. We made a dataset and report on the financial transactions of these suspects, their criminal record, their citizen ranking, their housing details and their travel records. Policemen have a resource that is quite queer, they have moles planted over vast areas, who spy and reports information, you don’t know who they are, and they might appear to be the most naive people and most non disturbing people you know in the community or locality, but they are everywhere, even around you the moment you read this. They are the eyes and ears of the police.
We now started digging into their social spheres like their social life on Facebook or WhatsApp. I would clear beforehand that these softwares did not help us in investigation and protected the privacy of its user but we have many a ways to crack a lock.
We started to make our list smaller, and slowly started chalking names out. Now we used their locality and sightings of dogs in their locality and homes as our indicator.
Now we were closer than ever to the culprits. Our list now had only 3 suspects, those 3 critical suspects. The following day was the last day of theft and the last day when the sale closed and our analysis marked the end of the theft and sale.
2 policemen were planted after those 3 suspects , I was with one team. When I stepped into the car, the team lead greeted me and I was so excited, I felt a pride in sitting with the men in blue, who do their jobs in silence. With all the teams went one veteran doctor who would check for the health of all the dogs if they were god forbid anyhow hurt or had any other problem. As the car bumped through the roads and the siren played, my heart also went on to beat the same way. We were now finally at the point were this intensive research and analysis, what started as a small project had taken a turn for the big catchup of international dog kidnappers.
But often as we walk down the trail, we land up on the stretches we tried to avoid, and yet again true randomness win the show. After catching the 3 of them, we came to know that, the dogs weren't kidnapped for being resold to pet shops, they were also kidnapped to cater to the black market for flesh trade.
Though they were caught, I am sure that in the big wide nation, they aren't the only people, and this is an international crime. They named the locations that are known for buying this meat, and also let us in on a vital information, the main head chief behind all this, Lucifer, the main leader of the eco terrorism fronts, he is the mastermind behind this seemingly decentralised business.
Though we won in the small fight, the bigger battle is yet to come. And I would stop at nothing, until I solve these cases and catch him.
Thank you
