Black Friday

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  Hingora was in his late thirties, much younger than his partner was. He had a thick moustache and his hair was parted down the middle. He seemed to be in a state of shock, but he recovered somewhat on seeing Kadawala. Maria ordered that Kadawala be taken out. He wanted to interrogate them separately, match their statements and confront them if there were any discrepancies. After a few preliminaries, Maria straightaway came to the subject of Sanjay Dutt. Hingora spoke without much prompting.

  ‘On 15 January, Abu Salem and Baba Chauhan came to my office and told me that Anis bhai had asked me to help them to deliver arms to Sanjay Dutt. I told them that it was not possible. After a few minutes, Anis himself called and ordered me to do it. Hanif and I were reluctant, but finally we had to agree. Salem, Chauhan and I went to Ajanta, Sunil Dutt’s bungalow. Sanjay was talking to Anis on the phone and was eager to know when he would get the arms. He hugged Salem and shook hands with us. When Sanjay asked about weapons, Salem boasted that he could deliver them that very day. Sanjay told him to bring them at 7 a.m. the following day.

  ‘On 16 January, all three of us went to Ajanta. I went in my car and the other two in a blue Maruti van. There were two constables—security cover for Sunil Dutt. Sanjay asked them to go away for a while. He instructed his driver Mohammed to remove a couple of the cars from his garage, so that Chauhan could drive the van inside the garage. Chauhan asked for a spanner and a screwdriver, and he and Salem prised open the lid of the secret cavity in the floor of the van. Salem asked for a bag and a large cloth, which Sanjay got. Salem asked Sanjay how many weapons he wanted. Sanjay asked how many he had with him. Salem said that he had nine AK-56s and eighty hand grenades. I peeped into the cavity—it was amazing how many weapons were crammed in there.

  ‘Sanjay asked Salem to give him three AK-56s and twenty-five hand grenades. Salem put the hand grenades in the bag Sanjay had brought and wrapped the rifles in the bedsheets. Sanjay asked Salem to keep the rifles in his Fiat, and to keep the bag in my car. I protested but Sanjay persuaded me, saying that he would remove the bag in a couple of days. He asked me to leave the car at his house.

  ‘I had to take my children to school, so I rushed home. Later I told Hanif everything. Then, on 18 January, Sanjay went to Hanif’s house and returned the car and the keys to him. Hanif said Sanjay had told him that he had kept only one rifle and returned the rest. The other two guns and grenades were kept in my car, and were picked up by Manzoor Sayed, who Salem had sent to collect them.

  ‘Then we all forgot about the entire episode. We were just glad it was over. Sahab, I swear by God that I know nothing beyond this.’ His eyes were pleading.

  When Maria cross-questioned Kadawala, his statements matched Hingora’s, with hardly any discrepancies. He asked his officers to record the statements of the two men. It was almost dawn. He decided to stretch out in his chair for a couple of hours. As soon as it was morning, he would call JCP Singh and CP Samra.

  CP Samra was very concerned that the evidence seized, such as the cartons of RDX and Arges 69 hand grenades, should be sent for proper examination not only to the CFSL but also to the international agencies. As the grenades were of Austrian origin, they were sent to Austria for investigation.

  He was proud of the work that the Bombay police were doing, and vociferously turned down many pleas from politicians to turn over the investigation to the CBI.

  Since the beginning of the police investigations, Samra had been holding press briefings at 4 p.m. every day to report on the progress. There were often more than sixty reporters, from both local and national newspapers, though the numbers diminished as time went by. Samra believed that meeting the press ensured transparency and that people had the right to know how the case was progressing. However, these briefings caused resentment among some politicians.

  On 12 April, Samra announced at the briefing that the police investigation had taken a new turn. He said that the police suspected that some film industry people too were involved in the blasts, and this would be closely looked into.

  The reporters sniffed a major story. There was an immediate clamour for names. Some reporters had heard that Samir-Hanif’s names were amongst the list of remand applications—police requests for the custody of an arrested person—from the metropolitan magistrate in the city’s Esplanade court. Someone asked for confirmation that they had been arrested. Samra gave a sheepish grin and admitted that Samir Hingora and Hanif Kadawala had been detained for questioning. The next question brought a stupefied silence in the room. ‘Is Sanjay Dutt also involved with Samir–Hanif?’

  Samra had not expected this question. ‘We don’t know. We are yet to investigate his role.’

  A frail-looking girl asked, ‘Are you saying that Sanjay Dutt has been framed by the producers and that he is actually innocent?’

  Samra did not want to talk further about this so he merely said, ‘Sanjay may be innocent, maybe not. We are yet to investigate it fully.’ He announced the end of the press conference for the day.

  On 13 April, all the papers carried headlines about the involvement of people from the film industry, especially Sanjay Dutt, in the blasts. Some reporters had begun investigating other film stars who were known to be close to the Dawood Ibrahim syndicate. The weeklies and fortnightlies began planning their cover stories around the criminal nexus of the Bollywood moguls. People commented that even before investigations, Samra had called Sanjay ‘innocent’. Columnists noted the friendly relations between Sunil Dutt and Samra, and of Sunil Dutt’s close connections with the Congress leadership. There were rumours that Sunil Dutt had pulled strings, so that Prime Minister Rao had personally instructed Samra to be lenient with Sanjay.

  Samra’s phone had been ringing constantly since the news broke. Callers included Chavan and Pawar, as well as many others who were simply curious, and tired of the calls he asked his personal assistant to take them. But in the late morning, there was one call he took. It was Sanjay Dutt calling from Mauritius.

  ‘Sir, Sanjay speaking. I heard that you said in a press conference that I am involved in the bomb blasts.’

  ‘Samir Hingora and Hanif Kadawala mentioned your name which is why we said we need to verify it.’

  ‘Right now I am shooting in Mauritius. If you want I can cancel my shooting and return immediately.’

  ‘No son, finish your work and return whenever you were scheduled to. There is no hurry.’

  ‘Sir, I really mean it. I can come right away if you want me to.’

  ‘As I said, we can make verifications whenever you return.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir.’

  That afternoon, at the press briefing, Samra informed the media that Sanjay had called him and offered to return immediately to aid the investigation. Samra said that he had assured him that there was no hurry.

  Sanjay also called the Bombay office of UNI, and issued a denial about his involvement. Some newspapers carried this on 14 April. Over the following days, some newspapers also carried lurid accounts of how three truckload of arms and ammunition had been parked in the compound of Ajanta, and how close Sanjay’s links were with Anis Ibrahim.

  The pristine beaches of Mauritius, Bollywood’s favourite locale for the moment, failed to soothe Sanjay Dutt as these increasingly distorted accounts appeared. Sanjay was then at the peak of his career. He was unable to concentrate on the climactic scenes of Aatish. The Indian media had begun speculating about whether Sanjay would ever return, or whether he would go to Dubai instead. Sanjay called Samra again to reassure him that he would be returning to Bombay, but did not mention a date.

  Despite the fact that Sanjay was in constant touch with Samra, the Bombay police force got swept away by the media frenzy and began monitoring the passenger lists of the Air Mauritius flights to Bombay. There were only two flights a week. They found out that Sanjay had a seat booked for 19 April.

  Samra was aware that this focus on Sanjay, whose involvement at the moment seemed peripheral, was taking attention away
from Tiger Memon and the masterminds behind the blasts. But the police seemed to have lost track of that, excited at this exposé of perhaps the top cinema hero of the time. Various people in the police force wanted Sanjay arrested, though they knew that Sunil Dutt, with his political connections and his reputation for unimpeachable integrity, would raise hell if the arrest was unjustified.

  Y.C. Pawar and Maria were assigned the task of arresting him. The flight was scheduled to arrive at 3 a.m. on 19 April. The scene at the Sahar international airport was grim, with some 200 policemen swarming around the arrival lounge.

  Sanjay Dutt was a person whom everyone sympathized with. He was the son of Nargis and Sunil Dutt, one of the most respected and loved couples in the film industry. His mother had died when he was young. Sanjay had become a drug addict and only after painstaking efforts and treatment in a clinic in the US could he be rehabilitated. His wife Richa Sharma was ill and had been hospitalized in the US for a long time. Despite his impeccable pedigree, Sanjay’s career in films was full of ups and downs. He had been criticized for sometimes doing films without applying his mind to the character. He was also notorious for his impulsiveness and quick temper, which often landed him in unpleasant situations. However, the masses adored him, and in 1993, he seemed to have established himself as Bollywood’s most promising star. But there was an undeniably child-like quality to him. As Sunil Dutt would explain to journalists, ‘He may be a grown man, but thinks like a child. Years of drug abuse have eaten into his grey cells.’

  In the early hours of 19 April, Sanjay strode rapidly through the immigration area of Sahar Airport, his shoulder-length hair dishevelled. As he stepped out of the green channel, gun-toting commandos and uniformed police officers thronged him. It seemed like a scene from one of the action films he specialized in.

  An officer walked up to him and said, ‘Mr Sanjay Dutt, you have to come with us.’

  ‘Why? What have I done?’ Sanjay protested mildly, though he knew that it would be to no avail.

  ‘We cannot answer the question. We have to take you to the police headquarters.’

  Sanjay did not say a single word after that. He was escorted out of the airport through a private door, hemmed in by police personnel from all sides, and whisked away to the Unit VII office of the crime branch at Bandra. The operation was so swift that the group managed to avoid the waiting lensmen and reporters.

  Later the media made a huge fuss on using such excessive force to arrest one person, who had not tried to escape arrest though he could have had he wanted to.

  At 11 a.m., Sanjay was driven to the police headquarters complex at Crawford Market, to the office of the crime branch. There, media persons and curious onlookers, including police personnel from other departments, who had heard of Sanjay’s arrest, had gathered to catch a glimpse of him.

  Sanjay was taken to meet JCP Singh and Maria. Initially, Sanjay simply denied that he had any association with Anis Ibrahim or that he had bought any weapons from him.

  Maria picked up the phone and issued some inaudible commands. Within a few minutes, two men were ushered in. Both seemed to be in bad shape, dishevelled and haggard. With a sudden jolt Sanjay realized that they were Samir Hingora and Hanif Kadawala.

  Sanjay’s resistance crumbled and he broke into sobs. After a while, he admitted that he had acquired an AK-56 through Samir and Hanif.

  ‘I have liked guns since my childhood. I have three licensed firearms: a .270 rifle of Bruno make, a .375 Magnum double-barrelled rifle and a .12 bore double-barrelled gun. I normally use these for hunting. I used to hunt with my friend Yusuf Nulwala.

  ‘My first brush with the underworld was in December 1991 when I visited Dubai with the unit of Yalgaar. A fellow actor introduced me to Dawood Ibrahim and his brother, Anis. I had of course heard of them before, but I had not met them or spoken with them.

  ‘Anis seemed to develop a liking for me and began visiting me regularly on the sets. Dawood Ibrahim also hosted a dinner for the entire unit at his bungalow, the White House, which I attended along with everyone else from the unit. At that party, I met several other dons and syndicate leaders like Iqbal Mirchi, Sharad Shetty and Chhota Rajan. I was also introduced to a man called Qayyum, who is a member of the Dawood gang. We returned to India soon after that.

  ‘In September 1992, Qayyum met me at RK Studio. He offered to sell me a sophisticated .9-mm pistol for Rs 40,000, which I liked and instantly bought.

  ‘After the riots of December 1992, my father was branded pro-Muslim and assaulted by furious mobs. We began receiving threatening calls from Hindu fundamentalists claiming that they would kill my father and rape my sisters. I was very upset and tense. When I sought help from the police, they were not cooperative.

  ‘Finally, I decided I had to do something. I acquired an AK-56 through Samir and Hanif, who had come with one Abu Salem. They wanted to give me three rifles and also hand grenades. But I kept only one gun and ammunition and returned the rest. I wrapped the weapon and ammunition in a black bedsheet and hid it in my room on the second floor of the bungalow.

  ‘After the riots were over, I contacted Samir and Hanif and asked them to take away the gun. Although they agreed to take it back, they never got around to doing it. The gun was bothering me as I knew that keeping an AK-56 is not right. When I realized that they had no intention of taking back the gun, I refused to give them dates for their film Sanam which was in production. We had several altercations on the issue.

  ‘I also thought of informing the police about the rifle. But I was afraid that it would tarnish my father’s reputation and affect his political career.

  ‘I heard of the blasts when I was in Jaipur, shooting for the film Jai Vikranta. On 2 April, I left for Mauritius to finish the shooting of Aatish. On 13 April, friends in Bombay told me that Samir and Hanif had been arrested and that my name was being mentioned. I was appalled. My fears had come true.

  ‘My father also heard the news. He called me on 13 April and asked me if I had an AK-56. I lied to him and assured him that it was not true. I called up Yusuf Nulwala on 14 April and asked him to destroy the weapons that were in my room.’

  The room was silent after Sanjay finished. It was mid-afternoon by then. A police team was sent to Nulwala’s house to bring him over.

  When Nulwala arrived, he completed the story. After Sanjay called him, he had gone promptly to Sanjay’s room and located the black bundle, inside which he found the AK-56, two magazines, 250 rounds of ammunition and a pistol. Nulwala had brought along his toolkit, which contained a hacksaw. He cut the AK-56 to pieces. But he realized that this was not enough. He needed to melt the pieces.

  Nulwala contacted his and Sanjay’s friend Kersi Adajenia, a Parsi businessman in his sixties who had a steel fabrication business. Adajenia agreed to help. Nulwala and Adajenia went to the godown behind the latter’s house where they tried to melt the pieces of the rifle with a gas cutter. But it did not melt fully. The task of melting the AK-56 was completely exhausting for Adajenia. He started having breathing problems because of the strong odour and thick smoke. One eighteen-inch rod and a spring of the AK-56 still remained to be melted when the two friends decided to abandon the effort for the day.

  Nulwala had given the pistol to Adajenia and instructed him to melt that as well later. He had collected the melted down pieces of the AK-56, made them into a packet, and thrown it in the sea at Marine Drive.

  Sanjay had called Nulwala again on 15 April to check if the weapons had been destroyed. Nulwala had assured him that the work was done. Nulwala had then called Adajenia to inquire about the pistol. Adajenia had told him that he had taken care of everything. However, as he was still feeling unwell from the previous day’s work, he had decided to melt the pistol later when he had recovered fully.

  Soon after, Adajenia had to go to Calcutta for some business. He had left the pistol with his friend Russi Mulla who in turn had given it to a friend, Ajay Marwah. Marwah still had the weapon.

  Af
ter hearing the whole story, Samra gave permission for the arrest of Sanjay Dutt under TADA and not the Arms Act, as had been expected. Sanjay was lodged in a third-floor cell of the lock-up in the crime branch, to await further interrogation. The police also arrested Nulwala, Adajenia, Mulla and Marwah. The rod and spring of the AK-56 were recovered from Adajenia’s godown, and the pistol from Marwah’s house.

  The day dawned dark and dismal for Sanjay Dutt. It was 20 April. Time seemed to stand still and the four walls of his cell drew closer in.

  A constable had delivered a cup of tea and bread but Sanjay could not eat. He was too worried about what the future held for him.

  At 9 a.m., two crime branch officials entered his cell and summoned him down to JCP Singh’s office. Singh informed him that he was going to be taken to court and put in custody, after which the police would continue their investigation.

  Sanjay was taken to the specially designated TADA court in the City Civil and Sessions Court premises in a jeep, accompanied by four officers. The jeep was preceded by an Ambassador and followed by a Gypsy.

  As the car stopped at the VSNL traffic junction, Sanjay could see a massive protest march. For a moment, he hoped that these people were his supporters, protesting his arrest. But he was sure that was not it.

  He was produced in front of Judge Jai Narayan Patel, who remanded him to police custody until 3 May.

  As the days went by, Sanjay’s family rallied strongly around him. His father Sunil Dutt, sister Namrata and brother-in-law Kumar Gaurav were there each day to visit Samra and Singh. As he was escorted each day from the lock-up to the interrogation room, his family would be waiting to catch a glimpse of him; his father would walk up and say a few words. Kumar Gaurav especially did everything possible to ensure that his ordeal was as short and painless as possible.

  The news of Sanjay’s arrest swept away everything else from the front pages. Fundamentalist organizations immediately dubbed him a terrorist and traitor, and slogans censuring Sanjay were raised at meetings. The Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, surrounded the Maratha Mandir theatre near Bombay Central station and stopped the showing of Kshatriya, which starred Sanjay. Gradually, his other films were also withdrawn from the theatres. Effigies of Sanjay were burnt, and the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna vilified him. Members of the film industry did not publicly rally to his support either.