Dawood's Mentor

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  Among all the divine messengers, the Holy Quran has mentioned Musa the maximum number of times compared to the others, including the last Prophet Muhammad. Nevertheless, it has also mentioned episodes of Musa’s physical prowess and strength as well as his volcanic rage.

  Musa was astounded by the man’s abrupt aggression and cut him off with a punch, which accidentally landed on the man’s face and turned out to be too much for him to handle. The legendary punch was so powerful that the man crashed to the ground and died instantly. The act of throwing a punch was a reflexive movement of self-defence and Musa did not deliberately intend to kill the Copt. The news of the homicide reached the pharaoh, who issued summons for Musa. The army of the pharaoh, meanwhile, had begun searching for the man who was capable of killing another man with a single punch. Consequently, Musa did not want to be incarcerated and had to migrate from Egypt.

  There are also other controversial and apocryphal stories mentioned in the Islamic books of Bukhari about Musa punching the angel of death, which made his eyes pop out and made him turn back without extracting his soul. The rage and punch of Musa became iconic in the history of civilization; it was eventually misappropriated by the Bombay underworld who began using it as a proverb. Whenever a man acted in self-defence, or, rather, crushed his adversary into submission, then that reflex was described using the proverbial phrase of Musa ka ghoosa.

  This phrase is far too fantastic and aspirational in many ways. The dons and gangsters have often used this term, saying, ‘Ek Musa ka ghoosa will suffice.’ However, none could achieve this kind of glorious domination in the annals of Bombay’s underworld history, except once. Ironically, this prestigious exception also belonged to Dawood’s mentor, Khalid, who actually launched an all-pervasive assault to save the life of Dawood’s protégé, Shakeel Shaikh, better known as Chhota Shakeel, and Dawood’s brother Anis Ibrahim, who had also begun throwing his weight around in the gangland.

  Dawood’s gang had now grown so big that he also had a group of mercenaries who were referred to as the B-Team; the team that comprised Dawood and Khalid would always be the A-Team, while Anis and Shakeel were at the helm of the B-Team. With the changing gang equations and loyalties, many gangsters were switching sides continuously. One of them was Mehmood Khan, alias Mehmood Kalia, so called because he was dark-complexioned. Kalia had changed sides and joined hands with the Pathans and was now gunning for Dawood and his cronies.

  Shakeel had been tasked with the execution of the hit job on Kalia. Kalia’s father had a shop in the Tardeo Air-conditioned Market, known as the AC Market, which was regarded as a prestigious business address in the city. However, the market had serpentine corridors and the layout of the entire multistorey plaza was quite confusing for the uninitiated.

  When the Shakeel–Anis duo, along with their men, accosted Kalia in the market with the intention of killing him, Kalia, who also had his own men there, managed to get into a duel with them. In the desperate hand-to-hand combat, Kalia’s men began to dominate. Soon, the tables were turned on Shakeel and Anis. Both of them suddenly saw more of Kalia’s men joining the skirmish. Kalia’s reinforcements made Shakeel’s position weaker. They then separated and began using firearms against each other. It was this sudden firing and shooting that created panic among the traders and businessmen. Someone called the police control room about the confrontation in the market.

  To add insult to injury, Shakeel also ran out of ammunition and realized his survival was at stake. Displaying great presence of mind, he decided to make his escape from the market, while his aide, who had already seen the balance of scales tilting against Shakeel, managed to get out and make a call to Khalid about Shakeel being in danger.

  At the time, Khalid was in Bohri Mohalla and knew that while Anis was Dawood’s sibling, Shakeel was also an ace lieutenant of Dawood’s and they both could not be left in the lurch. If anything happened to Shakeel, Dawood would find it unbearable. The wound caused due to Sabir’s gruesome death was still fresh. Another such incident, after such a short interval, would completely shatter Dawood, who was still lodged inside Sabarmati Central Jail. Khalid’s true test of friendship lay in him acting on his own and doing whatever Dawood would do if he were around. In a lightning hurry, Khalid, who was dressed in a kurta and lungi, did not even think of changing his clothes, immediately opened his hidden enclosure in the wall, grabbed an AK-47 and a few rounds and dashed towards his car.

  As the roaring, impatient Fiat, jumping all signals and cutting off several lanes, dangerously zoomed out of Pakmodia Street and made an exit from Nagpada coming out on to Bellasis Road, it got shoved aside by a police vehicle that had come ahead of it. The police jeep was in a tearing hurry and was responding to the control room’s dispatches of panic about a firing incident inside the AC Market. Initially, Khalid thought of overtaking the jeep, but on second thought he decided to take advantage of a police vehicle rushing at full speed with its whirling orange lights and blaring klaxons and sirens. Soon, Khalid realized that perhaps this police jeep too was headed to the same spot and he asked his driver to stick close to the blue-coloured jeep with the yellow-orange stripes so that they could reach the spot faster and without any hurdles.

  In the meanwhile, Shakeel realized that the gang of pursuers behind him was only increasing. Whichever corridor he was moving into, whether at a higher floor or lower, he found his enemies to be always behind him. Soon, they were crawling on all storeys and had also begun manning both the lifts.

  However, after a lot of ducking and dodging, Shakeel and Anis both managed to reach the ground floor. The building did not have a wide portico. So, the distance between the entrance to the building and the main gate was barely 50 metres. They thought that if they managed to cross the main gate then they would be safe as they would easily be able to melt into the crowd outside. But Kalia’s men saw them from afar and started rushing towards them. For Shakeel and Anis, the gate was in sight and within reach. They had to just beat their pursuers to the main gate. The distance was just 50 metres but it must have felt like the longest 50-metre sprint of the duo’s life while they were being stalked by death. Though being chased by half-a-dozen men, they were still quite confident of escaping.

  Their self-assuredness was only growing with each step towards the gate. But, suddenly, they stopped in their tracks. They were horror-struck to see six more men materialize from nowhere and stand like a wall at the main gate, while one of them closed the wrought-iron gate behind them. This seemed like a dead end for them. They both stopped at a distance from the gate, sweating profusely, panting furiously, with the realization that they had lost today writ large on their faces. Soon their pursuers too came close and halted behind them.

  Anis and Shakeel were surrounded from all sides. While they were totally unarmed, their adversaries seemed to be well-equipped with iron rods, crowbars, Rampuri knives and choppers. Now, every ticking second was a bonus for them as they could see their death inch closer. They were so unequal in number that putting up a fight was unimaginable. They were just waiting for their enemies to attack—a ruthlessly painful and excruciatingly slow attack.

  At that very instance, a white Fiat came to a screeching halt outside the gate and from it emerged a raging expletive-spouting man. He had an AK-47 in his hand and seemed to be angry enough to spray the bullets at whoever came in his sight.

  In fact, as police officers who witnessed the scene later recalled, this seemed to be a scene straight out of a Bollywood potboiler of that era, where the hero showed up right in the nick of the time when his friend was on the verge of almost getting killed at the hands of goons.

  The police jeep that was ahead of the Fiat was about to halt, when the cops turned behind to see the screeching car. The police driver thought that he should avoid a rear collision and moved ahead, but in the scramble the jeep climbed the divider and crossed over the road to the opposite side. A police jeep gone awry will always block the free flow of traffic. The smooth plying of vehicl
es on both sides of the road came to a grinding halt. As the policemen trooped out of the jeep to restore some semblance of order, they had to immediately duck for cover. They saw a giant of a man gone berserk with a big gun spewing bullets all over the place. A stray bullet, or even a ricochet, could mean death for them. Better safe than sorry was what the policemen were obviously thinking.

  Khalid had flung open the gate with one hand and with the other was holding the Kalashnikov rifle, which was a rare sight in those days. During one of their smuggling expeditions, Dawood had managed to get two AK-47s smuggled into Bombay along with gold and other contraband. Dawood had kept one for himself and given the other to Khalid. In the Bombay underworld, until then, only these two men owned a pair of these guns, with none of the other gangsters being able to lay their hands on the weapon.

  In fact, even Hindi films did not show AK-47s on screen. It was only in the 1990s and post the 1993 serial blasts in Bombay that these rifles were sighted frequently on and off the screen. Many a killing in the city was orchestrated allegedly through AK-47s, especially by Dawood’s duo Sunil Sawant, alias Sautya, and Subhash Singh Thakur.

  Despite all that anger and rage brewing inside him, Khalid had not lost control over his senses. He knew very well that a Kalashnikov is regarded as one of the most lethal weapons in the world. Also, it is known to be an assault weapon and not a defence weapon, so one is supposed to use it with utmost discretion. The gun, if mishandled, is capable of mass killings. With clinical precision, Khalid opened fire on the people who had surrounded Shakeel; he was cautious and aimed below the waist and on the legs, not on the torso. This ensured that the volley of bullets was used as a deterrent and a weapon to frighten and not kill.

  As someone later said, that day, Khalid’s wild bellowing persona at the dramatic scene would have been enough to scare off the goons. The speeding car, police jeep and blazing gun were a bit of an overkill. In no time, the toughies who had surrounded Shakeel realized that they should escape to safety. Khalid took Shakeel by the arm and got inside the car. Even before the police could move and take charge, Khalid had stormed the place, rescued his friends and decamped—all in the blink of an eye.

  Seething with fury and frustration, Kalia decided to exact his revenge in a gruesome manner. Kalia, along with his top aide, Ranjeet, made a ‘sutli bomb’ and decided to hurl it at Khalid to kill him. However, they had not conducted their recce well enough and so, when they reached the spot, they did not try to verify whether the burly man reclining against the car was indeed Khalid. They just saw someone in a kurta and lungi, with a large back, and presumed it was him. It turned out to be someone else. The bomb, too, turned out be a dud and was only able to injure the man. Khalid decided to settle scores with Kalia for this attack, but he was never able to lay his hands on Kalia, who had by then escaped to Dubai.

  Shakeel had a narrow escape that day and survived because of the sheer courage of Khalid. Till today, he remains grateful to him. It has been over three decades since then, but even today, if there is a slight conflict between the two, Shakeel, in deference to Khalid, invariably backs off—something that he never does for anyone except his boss, Dawood.

  Retired ACP Malgi, who had long ago tried to help and sponsor Dawood’s education, later recalled that Khalid’s attack that day had been devastating, just like a Musa ka ghoosa, the likes of which was never seen again.

  22

  The Gold ‘Wave’

  The area boasted the densest mangroves in the coastal belt of Jampore Beach in Gujarat. People would be reluctant to enter it even during the daytime. But these eight to ten men, some desperados from Mumbai, and other burly locals from Vapi and Bhilad in Gujarat had stepped into these thickets in the wee hours of the morning. They were barefoot and found walking in the marshy quicksand a big challenge.

  But they kept walking tenaciously for over 2 km. As they kept walking further, the level of sea water kept rising higher and higher. Finally, they reached a spot where the water levels were higher than chest level. The men gathered in a tight circle and waited. After some time, one of them noticed a motorboat a little distance away. The boat killed its engine and waited a while. The men on the boat then beamed a torchlight in the direction of the waiting bunch. In response, these men shone a torchlight back. The boat edged closer.

  The men on the boat, upon reaching the group, asked for the code word. Those were the days when codes were pre-decided and with the mere exchange of a few words, precious cargo worth lakhs of rupees was handed over. The codes ranged from funny to ridiculous and absurd. Sometimes it was foul expletives. At other times it said things like ‘naak mein rassi (rope in the nose)’. The huge consignment of RDX intended for the 1993 serial bombings changed hands just because the recipients had used the code words ‘We are from Bombay’.

  These men were handed several jackets and asked to tightly button up. Each one of them wore three to four jackets one on top of the other. The motorboat, after handing over the jackets, turned around and left. These men then once again began the arduous walk back towards the shore.

  Vapi, Daman and Jampore Beach were some of the favourite haunts of smugglers for landing gold in Gujarat. Gold was brought to Gujarat and Raigad, and it was these coasts that were considered safe by smugglers as they were not exposed to surveillance or vigilance by the customs authorities.

  This walk through the mangroves was quite difficult, risky and fraught with several dangers. It was painfully slow and those walking were vulnerable to getting caught as the whole exercise took several hours to execute. The slightest carelessness or slip-up could cause a massive intelligence leak, which would alert the authorities. As it was a tedious and slow process of going into the waters and waiting and then again taking the same amount of time to return, the authorities could net them easily if they found out.

  Once the team got back to the shore, they would empty the jackets from the gold biscuits and open the hidden cavities in the jeep where they stashed the gold to be transported to Bombay’s markets. There were so many chinks in the whole plan that they could easily get busted. The smugglers’ syndicate needed to devise a plan that would ensure the elimination of the risk and make the cargo landing convenient without depending on so many men.

  Khalid was trying to devise new ways and means to actually improve on the logistics and transportation of the gold consignment from Dubai to India, which resulted in enhanced security for the smuggled gold in its journey to reach Bombay’s coasts. Since the risks were minimized, Khalid ensured that the turnover was increased and revenue maximized. Actually, Khalid had applied simple mathematics and the basic laws of commerce to generate more business and make bigger profits, even if there was a ceiling on the margin ratio.

  Each gold biscuit that the Bombay smugglers procured from Dubai cost Rs 150 per tola (10 gm). Each biscuit weighed 10 tolas (100 gm), costing somewhere around Rs 1500. By the time it reached Bombay’s shores through boats or launches, greasing the palms of the customs officers and landing in the gang’s warehouse, the gold biscuit’s value increased to Rs 300 per tola, or 3000 per biscuit. The smugglers used to keep a margin of 25 per cent on the consignment when it was sold to the gold traders in south Bombay. So, every tola of smuggled gold was sold at Rs 375.

  The gold traders faced the maximum risk with regard to hiding the gold from the customs and the police and showing it as legit procurement. The big buyers and traders then passed it on to small traders and then the dealers’ chain down the line. This escalated the gold prices in the 1980s and the yellow metal, or peela, was sold at retail in the range of Rs 1375 per tola. Despite all the hurdles, smugglers found gold to be the most lucrative and profitable contraband smuggled into India from Dubai.

  On the smugglers’ speedboats, which the gold cartel organized from Dubai, gold biscuits were packed in jackets. Each jacket had over 100 biscuits in various pockets, which means there was 10 kg of gold in each jacket, with every speedboat carrying between seventy to eighty jacket
s stacked discreetly, depending on capacity. In terms of money and investment, each speedboat was valued at a minimum of Rs 2–3 crore in the 1980s. So, every seizure meant a massive loss in millions for the mafia.

  One of the smartest moves in this entire gamut of operations was Khalid’s ingenious strategy, which emphasized that the speedboats carry the gold, cross the international waters of Dubai Creek and reach the territorial waters in the Indian seas, all without getting intercepted.

  The DRI and customs motorboats start patrolling in the Indian territorial waters around 12 nautical miles, or 22.2 km into the sea. Beyond the territorial waters or transboundary limits, as per the maritime delimitation, the naval vessels monitor the intrusion of enemy vessels or spy boats breaching sea borders. While the navy and the DRI were already monitoring traffic in the sea, the Indian government added another line of surveillance by introducing the Indian Coast Guard in 1978. A dhow or motor launch carrying gold had to cross these three sentinels of surveillance and security, the navy, the DRI and the Coast Guard, supplemented by the boats of Yellow Gate Police, Station of the Bombay Police, before it reached the Indian coast.

  The agencies’ main leitmotif was national security and vigilance against illegal intrusions, but they ended up intercepting a lot of smuggling boats. Many a times, innocuous and harmless fishing trawlers would get hauled up by the agencies. The solution provided by the government for amnesty to these fishermen was to get their boats listed with the agencies and provide them with some kind of document, which later became known as a fishing licence and which helped establish their credentials as bona fide fishermen.