In the initial years, the Angadias used to transport legitimate diamonds, and later this unofficial route was appropriated as a channel for moving smuggled diamonds and unaccounted cash sent through the hawala route. They were never caught by the customs or the police. Recently, however, for the first time, Bombay customs officials had intercepted two Angadias while they were boarding a train to Surat after suspecting their role in smuggling diamonds.
Khalid decided to go underground for a couple of months until the pursuit got cold. But while in hiding, his unfinished business with Bashu kept niggling him. He couldn’t sleep well, feeling restless all the time. One night he sneaked into Teli Mohalla to confront Bashu. He knew Bashu stayed awake until the wee hours of the night while the other residents slept. Khalid managed to walk into Bashu’s baithak as he was surrounded by his acolytes.
Bashu’s face was ashen, like he had spotted a ghost. He didn’t expect Khalid to reappear so soon and walk into his lair.
Bashu was not only Khalid’s first boss but also his benefactor. After meeting Bashu, Khalid had grown from strength to strength. He had become wealthy and enjoyed the comforts of life. He was hugely indebted to Bashu. In return, he was unswervingly loyal to Bashu. He had never raised his voice with him nor had he been impertinent. Though Khalid came to seek answers, he didn’t breach the line. Khalid just stood transfixed in front of Bashu and looked at him for a long time without uttering a single syllable. Bashu was aware of Khalid’s unflinching devotion and subservience. He had never anticipated such an awkward moment. After searching for his answers in Bashu’s eyes for a long time, Khalid could only manage to utter with great effort:
‘Kyun (Why)?’
Khalid had never questioned Bashu earlier. They had been working together for years by then. Often, Khalid’s Hindu friends ribbed him, ‘Bashu ka Hanuman.’ Khalid had then laughed it off and never taken offence. He had then taken it as a compliment. Khalid swallowed his bitterness and asked again: ‘Kyun, Bashu Dada? Kyun kiya mere saath aisa? (Why, Bashu Dada? Why did you do this to me?)’
Bashu took a long time to answer. He took a deep breath and said, ‘The customs officer had reached my doorstep and wanted to make a smuggling case and needed an accused to be booked. I tried to ward them off initially but they began threatening to arrest me under COFEPOSA [the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act]. It was either you or me.’ It seemed to take an effort for Bashu to speak coherently.
‘So you decided to make me the sacrificial lamb and protect yourself?’ Khalid questioned him, his voice turning hoarse, eyes full of disappointment and hurt.
Bashu was finding it really difficult to convince Khalid. ‘I felt that if they arrested me, then you would not be able to get me out while I would be able to get you out of jail in a jiffy with my contacts.’
Khalid was not willing to buy this warped logic of his supposedly omnipotent boss. The Bashu he knew had access to people in the police department, in the government and elsewhere. He could have easily protected Khalid from arrest, instead of leading them directly to his house.
‘Bashu Dada, you could have offered any of your turds as a scapegoat for this purpose. Why did you snitch on me? Why throw your best man in the slammer? Why?’ Khalid persisted.
He was now staring straight into Bashu’s eyes, locking his gaze with him. Bashu looked away. One thought kept resonating in Khalid’s mind: if Bashu could so easily crack under pressure and get the cops to arrest him, then he could also, as easily, get Khalid killed by his rivals without any qualms.
Bashu was unable to explain that he had actually become overcome by jealousy and felt insecure about his protégé’s growing popularity and influence. Bashu could not honestly tell Khalid that he believed that a stint in jail would have made Khalid more humble and him happier.
The Bashu–Khalid saga of friendship and betrayal was so much like the legendary story of Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Despite Salieri’s seniority and clout, he became insecure of the much younger composer, Mozart. Finally, Salieri’s jealousy and insecurity led him to plot the downfall of Mozart. In a similar vein, when Bashu got Khalid to Bombay, the boy was impressionable and raw. In the initial years he was just a muscleman. Bashu did not want Khalid to grow. Though he encouraged him, he thought he was indulging him. He didn’t realize Khalid was more than just mere brawn.
After the gold-smuggling business picked up, Bashu realized Khalid’s potential. But instead of channelizing Khalid’s talent, he kept nursing his jealousy all the time. Khalid was young, Bashu was not. Khalid had a hunger for success and motivation to get ahead in life, and now he had the contacts too. Bashu was an ageing don with his circle of loyalists who were limited in their understanding of the world. Khalid was worldly-wise, and if he could manage to impress the Galadaris, who were very powerful at the time, it meant that he was no ordinary hanger-on gang member. Bashu did not want Khalid to topple him and take over the reins of the gang.
Old records were hard to find from the marine and preventive wings of the customs department, but an officer, who has long since retired, confided that it was indeed Ahmed Khan, alias Bashu Dada, who had facilitated the probe and promised cooperation in exchange for his own amnesty from prosecution. Khalid had been offered to them on a platter.
Feeling intensely drained, exhausted and heartbroken after his conversation with Bashu, Khalid walked away from Teli Mohalla, never to return to that street again. It would have been good for him if he could have just let off steam by beating the person who had caused him so much grief. But this was Bashu, the man he adored and protected.
That night, a great relationship and strong alliance was severed. Months passed and everybody forgot about the incident. But neither Khalid nor Bashu got over their wrenched parting. After Khalid’s departure from the scene, Bashu’s power and position was seriously undermined.
Khalid too suffered a major setback in his path. He could not go back to his village and become a recluse. He had placed loyalty over everything else in life, but Bombay had no place for such feelings. For a while he quit smuggling and disconnected from the mafia. He retreated into a shell. But money is the oxygen of life. Everyone has to make a living. Khalid could not mope around for long. He opened a social club in Bombay Central. ‘Social Club’ is a euphemism for a gambling den. The club got him decent earnings and he began spending his time there.
Elsewhere, Dawood’s star was on the rise. In a fortuitous turn of events, Dawood had been slowly building his resume in the mafia—he was inching up the ladder of notoriety and power among the mafia ranks. He had now grown into a strapping youth and was proficient in the art of self-defence, being able to use any weapon with felicity.
Considering the kind of rebellious youth that he had become, Dawood rarely respected anyone any more. But in the Bombay mafia, Dawood only respected his own elder brother, Sabir, and then Khalid, not necessarily in that order. Khalid was his first hero and mentor. Dawood had heard about Khalid’s separation from Bashu, but he did not broach the topic with Khalid.
Dawood often visited Khalid at the club, their friendship continued and became stronger. Dawood also brought his brother Sabir and his other cronies to Khalid and they all hung out with him in the club through the night.
As time flew, Dawood crossed his teenage years and began causing havoc in the Dongri area along with his brother Sabir. Both the brothers were known for their high-handed behaviour. They were a menacing duo and were known to rough up those who failed to do their bidding. Their policeman father, Ibrahim Havildar, had long resigned himself to their ways.
Dawood had become very ambitious. He wanted to topple all the big daddies of crime and stake his claim for the numero uno position. Haji Mastan and Bashu Dada were the two most powerful dons at the time. Sabir and Dawood had witnessed their father’s humiliation at the hands of the moneybags. Now that they were grown-ups, it was time to square up.
The first major crime that D
awood committed was a bank robbery on 4 December 1974. He thought he was plundering Mastan’s money but it turned out to be cash that belonged to the Metropolitan Bank. But Dawood was not deterred. He kept chasing Mastan and his minions until the smuggler was finally upstaged; to counter this aggression, Mastan actually had to seek out Ibrahim Bhai and ask him to intervene by eating humble pie, by literally sitting on the floor while he was on the chair.
Bashu Dada was not so lucky, and Dawood was in no mood to forgive him. Besides, Dawood’s mentor, Khalid, had left Bashu, so there was nobody who could stop him any more. Dawood attacked Bashu in such a way that the latter had to summon boys from his home town of Hyderabad to fend off Dawood. The boys turned out to be duds and were no match for Dawood’s ferocity. He was a raging bull ready to trample anyone who crossed his path.
Dawood also smashed up Bashu Dada’s gym and baithak in Teli Mohalla. The disgrace and insult suffered by the ruling don at the hands of a young boy was unbearable for him. Bashu Dada left the city overnight and migrated to Hyderabad.
After Bashu’s exit, Dawood Ibrahim finally got the chance to reign supreme in his turf. There was only one obstacle in his path—the Pathan gang led by Amirzada and Alamzeb. He also longed to step into the world of smuggling.
Dawood was in a hurry to surmount the Pathans and realize his dreams.
16
The Art of Smuggling
Political iftars in the holy month of Ramadan are most exciting for those aspiring to climb the social ladder and others who want to do some serious networking. The grand feast after the fast is generally well attended by aspirational Muslims as well as non-Muslim politicians who want to make inroads into the community’s vote bank.
It was during one such iftar that Ibrahim Havildar and A.R. Antulay were introduced to each other. Abdul Rehman Antulay was, at the time, a most sought-after politician in Maharashtra, despite the fact that he was a Muslim. He was a natural-born politician who knew the pulse of the masses. The public loved him as he was good with rhetoric. And he was a rising star. Antulay was also riding on a major streak of luck (that he could make inroads into the Maratha bastion in Maharashtra and live to tell the tale itself was no mean achievement). He also had a winning smile.
And, of course, the most important thing that swung the political dial in the right direction for him was that he was Indira Gandhi’s favourite. When she appointed him as the minister for law and justice, Muslims felt it was a well-deserved appointment of a member of their own community, especially since Antulay had studied law. Grand felicitation functions were organized by the community for him. It seemed as though he would eventually weasel his way into the chief minister’s throne itself given the way Mrs Gandhi was tilted towards him.
The grand iftar feast at the Anjuman-I-Islam school bang opposite the Victoria Terminus railway station was well attended by the community’s prominent members. Antulay, of course, did not shake hands with Ibrahim Havildar. While they shared the same religion, hailed from the coastal belt of Konkan and were Konkani Muslims, they were separated by social hierarchy. Antulay was a barrister who had schooled in London while Ibrahim Havildar was a suspended cop trapped in a hand-to-mouth existence with half a dozen wayward children, two of whom had already sullied the good name of their father by constant run-ins with the law.
It took a couple of more iftar feasts at Madanpura and Agripada in south Bombay for a friendship to forge. Antulay wanted to tap into Ibrahim Havildar’s grass-roots connection with the Muslims in south Bombay.
It didn’t take much time for Ibrahim Havildar to unofficially join Antulay’s political bandwagon. He even made trips to his assembly constituency, the scenic picture-postcard coastline of Srivardhan, to help boost Antulay’s image. He also visited his village, Ambet, in Mhasla taluk.
Antulay was open to ideas that would endear him to the masses. When Ibrahim Havildar drew his attention to the illegal hooch centres in Mumbai and Ratnagiri, and suggested incognito visits to bust them, Antulay lapped up the suggestion. Antulay and his journalist friend Pramod Navalkar, who was with Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, set out on this challenging assignment along with Ibrahim Havildar. The plan was that once Antulay and his friends exited the liquor bars, the secret raiding squads of the police and CID officers would show up to seal the place. Needless to say, the flamboyant Navalkar publicized the tryst in his weekly column in a Marathi paper. The fallout of this was something that Navalkar himself had never anticipated. It was Antulay who walked away with all the kudos.
The media was all praise for Antulay’s public relations exercise. In one such frenzied instance, some columnists even referred to him as Napoleon, because of his astute political moves. Antulay earned many more such titles. But it is interesting what finally endeared him to the Muslim community.
In a Muslim public gathering, Ibrahim Havildar once addressed Antulay as ‘Iss daur ke Haroon Rashid (Today’s Haroon Rashid).’ There are apocryphal stories of Haroon, an Arab ruler of the Abbasid dynasty in 786 AD, who apparently went out among his subjects in disguise during the night to find out how happy they really were. But historians have seriously disputed Haroon’s rule as a judicious one and attributed severe violence to him. However, since common perceptions seem to mostly gain precedence over historical facts, the despotic Haroon was hailed as a legendary ruler. This title was lapped up by the Urdu newspapers and Antulay began riding on a new crest of fame and popularity among the Muslim masses.
Fame has a fantastic way of finding fabulous friends and ferreting out formidable foes. Ibrahim Havildar never exploited his budding relationship with Antulay. Despite being summarily dismissed in the Suraiya case, without a fair hearing or an impartial probe, Ibrahim Havildar did not seek Antulay’s intervention in the matter.
In the meanwhile, Dawood was done with small-time thuggery. He wanted to join the big league. With little formal education, the boy thought of only one option. Actually, most Muslim boys with little education aspired to be smugglers, having heard of the mythical stories of Haji Mastan. Though Dawood was younger than Sabir, it was he who always came up with the ideas. He was always juggling plans, fielding them before Sabir.
If left to himself, Sabir would have preferred a different world. A world of women and their majestic presence, a world of love, and sex and poetry, of course. Sabir loved poetry, and he was a diehard romantic despite his street-ruffian status. Sabir loved the emotive poetry of Sahir Ludhianvi and romantic songs of Mohammed Rafi.
While Dawood believed in the mafia axiom of ‘milee toh maari nahin toh brahmachari (fuck her if you get lucky, else practise celibacy), Sabir was notorious for being a khidki-tod aashiq (staunch romantic)—someone who could spend hours staring out of the window for hours at the girl going about her chores in the opposite building.
At other times, Sabir was spotted at J.J. Square chasing girls passing through the area. Whenever he or his cronies spotted a good-looking girl, they would start following her discreetly. Sabir would stalk her to her house, her coaching classes, to the market and wherever else she went. He would try to woo her and establish contact.
Sabir’s other favourite hangout was a tea stall outside the newly established Maharashtra College in Nagpada. The girls who came to college were pretty. He tried to strike up conversations with them by showering them with praises in Urdu. He was fluent in Urdu and could conduct charming conversations. But no sooner did the girls realize that Sabir was a school dropout and a loafer, they shunned him. Sabir would feel heartbroken for a while but then move on to his next conquest in no time.
Dawood had often tried to reason with Sabir, saying, ‘We are old enough to find work and change the circumstances of our family. Why should we live in abject poverty and squalor? We need to support our siblings. We need to give our parents a comfortable life.’
Sabir being the elder brother didn’t take Dawood seriously for a long time. However, after Dawood attacked Bashu and went on to rob a bank van at Carnac Bunder, Sabir woke up to
the realization that Dawood had a propensity to court danger, which could have disastrous consequences for the family.
Dawood had to spend several months in jail for the robbery. It was Ibrahim Havildar who helped the crime branch of the Bombay Police in facilitating his son’s arrest. The crime branch had managed to arrest all the accused and had launched an expeditious prosecution. Sabir felt he had let his younger brother down. If only he had not whiled away his time at J.J. Square, he could have probably checked his brother’s recklessness. Dawood had been egging him on for so long but he had been careless, and now Dawood was branded a criminal for life. A jail record in a family where the father used to be a part of the police force was something that didn’t go down well with Sabir.
Sabir made up his mind to mend his ways. He would be there for Dawood at all times to prevent further misadventures. Despite his yearning for romantic rendezvous with beautiful girls, Sabir agreed to pay attention to Dawood’s plans. Dawood always kept Sabir in the loop, according him the respect due to an older brother. When the topic of venturing into the business of smuggling came up, it was Sabir who was told about it first. Dawood always sought his approval. And Sabir listened to Dawood because his brother was sharp and very clever with money matters.
‘All the big-league smugglers like Haji Mastan and Yusuf Patel need manpower and daring youths to assist them in landing. We can use our Young Party members for the purpose. Anyway, with hardly any education, the boys of the Young Party are jobless. On the promise of some income, they would readily do our bidding. We can help the big-time smugglers in the transport of silver to Vasai–Virar and land gold and other contraband items whenever the consignment arrives. I am told the landing happens only once a month.’
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