BP Singh, creator of CID and Aahat, dies at 77

Brijendra Pal Singh, known as BP Singh, the creator and producer of the crime series CID, has died at the age of 77, the Indian Express reported on Tuesday, 27 October.

Dayanand Shetty, who played Inspector Daya on the show, told HT City that Singh had been unwell for some time. "Today morning he just did not wake up. It was age-related," he said, adding that Singh "had no other life, other than making content" and was "one of the best cameramen we had".

"BP Singh" was among Google's top trending searches in Pakistan on Tuesday as the news spread.

The man behind CID

• Training: an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, he started as a cameraman.
• First detective show: Ek Shunya Shunya for Doordarshan.
• Aahat (1995): the horror anthology that became one of Indian television's best-known supernatural shows.
• CID (1998): with Shivaji Satam as ACP Pradyuman, Aditya Srivastava as Inspector Abhijeet and Dayanand Shetty as Inspector Daya. It ran for more than two decades and passed 20 years on air in 2018.
• A record: one CID episode was shot as a single continuous take lasting 111 minutes, which earned the show an entry in the Limca Book of Records.

Why it mattered on this side of the border

CID's catchphrases, from ACP Pradyuman's "Daya, kuch toh gadbad hai" to Daya breaking down doors, became memes far beyond India, and the show built a following among viewers across South Asia, including in Pakistan.

Shivaji Satam, who played ACP Pradyuman for more than 20 years, paid tribute to him on Tuesday, NewsBytes reported.

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