The case of the budding detectives: Meet this forensic psychologist creating games and puzzles around crime-solving

Nishar’s Forensic Funhouse stalls at Charni Road’s Joy Avenue have drawn as many as 200 participants, ranging from the ages of five to 60

There is Bingo with a Forensic Twist, where, instead of numbers on a card, there are pictures of serial killers. Psychological characteristics of a notorious criminal - say Ted Bundy - are called out, and participants are urged to strike off the photo of the figure they feel those characteristics describe most accurately. Then there is Mind Maze, where a treasure hunt follows a walk through a carefully orchestrated crime scene. There are also theatre games (The Absurd Act) where scenarios such as hostage negotiations or bank robberies are played out.

"The idea is to help participants understand who all end up becoming part of a crime. It's not just about the criminal and the victim. There are spectators too who become eyewitnesses. There is also the police," says Krupa Nishar (@officialkrupa.nishar), a forensic psychologist who has been using her training and knowledge of the Indian crime landscape to devise crime puzzles, detective games, quizzes and workshops on the art of profiling, deception detection and crime-solving.

But Nishar's workshops are not just about play. "There's insightful learning too," she points out, with the overall aim of bringing forensic psychology to the masses. A game called Judgement Day, for instance, involves a case study where although the police have deemed someone guilty, the participant is allowed to preside over the case as a judge with the aim of understanding the nature of bias-based policing. Nishar also conducts field observation games focused on geographical profiling where participants are sent off to interact with people in a designated area and then report back on factors that might identify the area as vulnerable to crime.

Krupa Nishar

Nishar graduated from the Gujarat Forensic Sciences University, now known as the National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), and has enrolled in internships at institutions like the juvenile home in Dongri and the women-focused One Stop Centre, participated in a Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) project on recidivism in Tihar Jail, and has also had experience training police personnel at the NFSU in forensic tools like polygraph, narco analysis, brain profiling, and technologies like LVS and LVA that focus on analysing changes in human speech to detect deception and understand emotions and stress levels.

"I wanted to do something that was uncommon and a little bold, while working with the government, the police and prisons, something that would make an impact on the systems," the 28-year-old tells us about why she got interested in the field. Her teaching experience at NFSU led her to conduct online classes on forensic psychology for high-schoolers deciding on future career paths, classes that she says were always infused with games conceived around crime scenes, criminals and suspects. These then led to first online and then in-person workshops in the city.

Besides her academic training and internships that exposed her to real-life investigations, police behaviour and resources, Nishar credits the theatre workshops and personality classes she attended as a child for her game designing abilities. "I felt that simulation exposure was missing in India, and tried to fill that gap. I wanted to make forensic learning fun, real and exceptional."

Given how strongly popular culture has shaped our perceptions of crime and the criminal justice system, we ask Nishar who is attempting to familiarise people with her field through her forensic games, about how different real crime is from its screen representations. She has appeared in DocuBay's The Dupatta Killer as an expert, and mentions a few other shows like Delhi Crime and Trial by Fire for being suitably nuanced and realistic. Most crime shows however, she insists, are "too glamorous".

"In reality, crime is messy; it's not so cinematic. We deal with so much trauma. There is paperwork, bureaucracy, evidence-dealing, policy and research. In reality, the mind is the actual crime scene where [as professionals] we are dealing with the criminal's mind, the victim's mind and then our own minds."