Ananda Doshi

NOTABLE CHARACTER
Name	Ananda Doshi
Gender	Female
Occupation	SAPS Lieutenant
Status	Alive
Portrayed By	Bahni Turpin
Appeared In	"Iqiniso"

Ananda Doshi is a notable character who appeared in Season One of Beyond Borders. She is the premier profiler working for the South African Police Service (SAPS), where she holds the rank of Lieutenant, but she has very unorthodox ideas about her occupation.

Background

Little is known of Ananda's early life besides the fact that she was born in South Africa and speaks English and several Southern African languages. She was trained in forensic psychology at Scotland Yard, but she rejects the "profiler" label and believes in the supernatural. Before the formation of the International Response Team, she worked with Garrett in profiling Gabriel Imani, a criminal in Madagascar who was nicknamed "The Archangel". Ananda and Garrett had different ideas about how to approach the case, and Garrett eventually dropped out before Imani was identified and apprehended by Doshi. They appear to have some unresolved hostility left from this incident.

Iqiniso

Ananda is called by Brigadier General Yazeen Zwane to assist in the IRT's investigation of Timothy Smit's ritualistic murder and the abduction of Timothy's brother Brandon. Garrett and Seger find Ananda at the unsub's dump site in the Azaria district, intoning a Zulu prayer before several candles and soliciting Timothy to speak. Ananda greets Garrett and is introduced to Seger. Garrett then asks Ananda if she lit the candles after the scene was processed and she reassures him that she did. Unfortunately, in Ananda's opinion, this also meant that too much time had passed since Timothy's murder and that she has been unable to contact him there. Clara asks her if she means Timothy's spirit, and Ananda explains that she does not believe in the West's dualistic view of the physical versus the spiritual. In her opinion, it is not a spirit that remains alive after death, but the whole being of a person that morphs into a new state.

When asked about why Timothy would then linger at the scene of his murder, Ananda replies that homicide victims get scared by the abruptness of their "transmigration" and try to stay on the place where they were killed. Jack says that the blood evidence indicates that the crime scene is not where the murder occurred, just where the body was left, and that it was why Timothy didn't come back to this place, therefore Ananda couldn't contact his spirit. Ananda agrees and points out that Timothy was found in close proximity to the unsub's first victim, Lara Bosch, who was abducted miles away in Pretoria. She goes on to call the unsub a "poacher" that likes to hunt across a wide terrain and hypothesizes that the mutilations are an elaborate way to tell others not to mess with him. Back at the South African police headquarters, she disagrees with Jack's cold, logic-based approach, and defends her more emotional methodology.

Doshi and Garrett examine Kurt Adams' body.

Ananda then admits that she was surprised when Jack agreed to work with her again and wonders if he trusts her. She also tells him that an unidentified body was found in the Botes neighborhood, also in Azaria. Botes, a scene of conflict, is controlled by the Ibhuloho gang and Zwane is only willing to allow Ananda to come with them because she "talks to the dead" and the dead don't remain at the scene for long. He asks the IRT if they can talk to the dead; Ananda says that Garrett can, allowing him to come with them. At the Botes crime scene, the convoy is attacked by two Ibhuloho members following orders from their leader, known only as Ingwe. Garrett and Ananda inspect the body while Zwane's men secure the area. They see that it is not Brandon but a new victim. Ananda tells Garrett to not move in order to not frighten the decedent and begins to pray, but she pronounces him gone when a sheet falls from the wall. Garrett says that the unsub was prepared and acted with military precision, leading Ananda to propose that he is a former child soldier. She then admits that Clara was right when she said that the unsub is living a psychotic fantasy, and says that he must be posing as another person or an animal.

Zwane identifies Ingwe as an alias of the incarcerated gangster Paul Ntombi. Ananda recalls that Ntombi was a suspect in the 1989 murder of a female constable, Sara Miller, who was ritualistically staged like the recent victims. Miller's murder set the South African military and secret service on high alert and served as a pretext to create a covert unit code-named Pretorius, which tortured and killed fourteen anti-apartheid activists. The three Pretorius operatives confessed to their crimes before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995, but were pardoned and allowed to keep their identities secret. Ananda and the IRT propose that the victims are all children of the Pretorius operatives and that the unsub is avenging one of the killed activists. She studies the families of the activists, but none match the unsub's profile. It is matched, however, to Miller's brother Curtis. Before Garrett departs, Ananda tells him that they are not so different, because the dead also talk to him when he examines the evidence. Garrett says that she is right in a way, but that the fact that he speaks for the dead is more important.

Real-Life Comparison

Ananda is likely inspired from Micki Pistorius, who was the first profiler in the SAPS (and for a while, the only one). Like Ananda, Pistorius rejects some profiling labels and methods (preferring to be called an "investigative psychologist" rather than a forensic psychologist), claims to have psychic powers, and prayed at the crime scenes before examining them (although unlike Ananda's, Pistorius' prayers were Catholic). The previous history of Ananda and Garrett working a case in Africa together mirrors Pistorius' investigation of the ABC Murders, in which she was assisted by FBI profiler Robert Ressler. Like Garrett, Ressler also left this case before the culprit was identified and apprehended.

Appearances

• Season One
  • "Iqiniso"