‘I think you are well aware of the consequences of your actions on 12 March. You must have also realized that one cannot run away from the long arm of the law. The world may look large to a fugitive but it is always small for a policeman.’
‘Sahab, I was hardly involved ... I ...’
‘Shut up ...’ Maria interjected brusquely. ‘Don’t you dare lie to me! This file here is full of statements that clearly show the extent of your involvement in the blasts—Asgar Mukadam, Imtiyaz, Mushtaq, Shoaib and several others. It is better if you start talking or we know how to make a stone statue sing.’
Badshah Khan looked at Maria with despair in his eyes. The last two days had been shattering for him. He used to be a daredevil, and unperturbed by authority. But all that had changed now.
He began to talk. He started from the communal riots, the destruction of Tiger Memon’s office, the killing of Muslims, and the rape of their women. He spoke of the community’s desire for revenge, and out of that desire, the gradual evolution of a plan.
‘Tiger Memon was the only person brave enough to come forward. He began garnering support and manpower for his mission. He picked his people carefully, those whom he knew and trusted and wanted to work with. Javed Chikna, Anwar Theba, Imtiyaz and Yeba Yaqub were his men and through them he got more trusted people. Thus he built up a team of people ready to take revenge, ready to give up our lives for the holy war.
‘Tiger had sent some twenty people to Pakistan for training. I was one of them. We were trained in handling AK-56s, grenades and imported pistols. But the most important part of our training was making bombs. We were taught how to connect the RDX putty to pencil detonators.’
As he listened, Maria was again amazed at how these youths were brainwashed into agreeing to sacrifice their lives for a cause which had no direct benefits for them. This was not crime for money; they saw it as a larger, nobler cause.
Badshah Khan finished, ‘Allah helped us and we emerged victorious in our battle against the disbelievers.’ There was a smile on his face.
Maria walked to the window behind his chair. He stood there for a while, and then went over to Badshah. ‘No, you are wrong. Allah is not biased in favour of Muslims. He always helps those who are righteous and believers of the truth. This time he helped us.’
Badshah broke in, ‘No. Impossible. How can you say that? Allah helped us. We managed to kill hundreds. We avenged the blood of innocent Muslims.’
‘Nonsense ... Allah will never help in the killing of innocent helpless people. After all, He is their God as well, and does not discriminate ... And that day I think Allah helped Hindus more than he helped Muslims.’ Maria was yelling at the top of his voice, while a part of his mind wondered how he could substantiate this statement. He continued, ‘You had to abandon that Maruti van because Allah wanted to help us and not you. That van gave us our first breakthrough. It was with the help of Allah that we managed to arrest over a hundred people in less than two months. If Allah was on your side then we would not have been able to arrest anybody, we would not have had any clues.’ His conviction grew with each sentence.
Badshah Khan was silenced.
Suddenly, Maria was exhausted. He called an orderly and asked him to escort Badshah Khan to his cell.
11
The Other Teams
There are many Salims in the Bombay underworld, so many that they have to have nicknames to distinguish themselves. Usually the nicknames are related to their area of specialization, appearance or residence. Thus, Salim Passport could make multiple passports, Salim Tempo was formerly a tempo driver, Salim Talwar had once famously used that weapon for booth capturing in Dongri for a Congress candidate, and Salim Mazgaon and Salim Dongri came from Mazgaon and Dongri respectively. As Salim Bismillah Khan lived in Kurla, he was known as Salim Kurla.
Salim Kurla was one of those accused in the blasts case who had no qualms about informing the police about his former colleagues and fellow conspirators in order to save himself. He was picked up in mid-April, and after that he had been summoned to the Mahim police station repeatedly and questioned. Kurla and his family sought solace in the fact that at least he was a free man. He alleged that he had to pay the police large sums of money to maintain his freedom, but soon they demanded that he tell them about the whereabouts of some other suspects.
Kurla was the son of a criminal lawyer, Bismillah Usman Khan. He had dropped out from Class X at a local English-medium school at Deolali, Nashik. After Bismillah Khan died in 1978, the family was forced to sell off their house at Mazgaon and move to downmarket Kurla in the eastern suburbs. Salim started anxiously seeking a job. He was forced to borrow frequently from his father’s friend Jaffar Khan, whom Salim called Jaffar chacha. Jaffar was a partner of Noora Ibrahim, the brother of Dawood Ibrahim, in Suhail Tours and Travels at Nagpada, which specialized in recruitment and export of manpower to the Gulf countries. Jaffar offered Salim a job in this firm.
Salim Kurla
As soon as Salim joined the agency, he realized that the real business was hafta wasuli, the Marathi term for weekly protection money collected from businesses in the locality. Noora Ibrahim took full advantage of his connections with Dawood.
Kurla soon became an expert and earned accolades from Noora. In 1989, when Noora had to flee from Bombay to join his brothers Dawood and Anis in Dubai, Kurla virtually took over the running of the extortion network.
Tired of working for Noora, Kurla started his own extortion business in 1990. As a front for the business, he also started a film production company, Shabnam Art International. The firm was registered with Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association (IMPPA) and operated from a posh office at Oshiwara, Andheri. Within a couple of years, business prospered. Kurla started travelling to the UAE frequently. He enjoyed the hospitality of Noora Ibrahim, and was introduced to Dawood and Anis Ibrahim.
After the communal riots, Anis Ibrahim sought Kurla’s services. In the second week of January, he telephoned Kurla at his office, where the latter was talking to some of his most trusted assistants—Hanif Shaikh, Mohammed Sayeed, Raees, Yasin Shaikh Ibrahim and Usman Man Khan. Anis inquired if Kurla wanted to avenge the blood of Muslims. When Kurla replied in the affirmative, Anis asked him to find some youths who were willing to become terrorists. Kurla recommended his assistants, and Anis spoke to each of them personally. They were asked to keep their passports ready, as they would have to meet Anis at Dubai.
Anis Ibrahim
On 22 January, Kurla, accompanied by Hanif, Sayeed, Usman and Yasin, boarded the Air-India flight 739 to Dubai. Their visas were sponsored by Noora. Anis Ibrahim and his lieutenant, Abdul Qayyum, received them. Kurla was parted from his companions, who were taken to the White House for discussion, after which they left for Islamabad for two weeks of intensive training. Kurla returned to Bombay on 26 January.
Anis offered Kurla two guns towards the end of February. Kurla was reluctant to collect the weapons. But Yasin and Raees, who were in the office and overheard his conversation with Anis, were keen to do so. Raees collected the guns from Ibrahim Chauhan and hid them at a safe place.
But Kurla and his men could not take part in later events. Kurla had been demanding money from a Gujarati businessman, who lodged a complaint with the crime branch. The crime branch laid a trap for Kurla on 3 March, and arrested him and his men. They were remanded into custody until 17 March. Soon after, Kurla was released on bail.
When Baba Chauhan was interrogated, apart from Sanjay Dutt, he had also named Salim Kurla as someone to whom Anis Ibrahim had delivered guns. Subsequently, the Mahim police had picked up Kurla and grilled him. Kurla stated that it was his men, not him, who had collected the weapons, which was corroborated by Chauhan’s statement. The Mahim police kept him in custody for a few days, but then allowed him to go after— as Kurla later claimed in the TADA court, leading the judge to institute an enquiry into the matter—he paid them Rs 90,000.
Allegedly, the demands did not stop with th
at one sum. In April and May, Kurla reportedly had to pay several times, the total amounting to several lakhs of rupees, to preserve his freedom.
He was also being asked to provide information. The police wanted to arrest those who had gone on training to Pakistan. His assistants had fled after Kurla’s arrest and divided up into groups, but they had stayed in touch with him. Towards the end of May, the police stated that unless Kurla provided them with their whereabouts within a week, he would be taken back into custody.
As the days passed and he waited at his office for one of his men to call, he grew increasingly nervous. He tried tracing them to Delhi, Indore, Bangalore and Hyderabad, but to no avail. Finally, on the afternoon of the fifth day, the phone rang, a long-distance call. Kurla picked it up gently, as if afraid that the line might get disconnected. It was Usman.
‘Have you people gone back to your mother’s womb that you could not call all this time? I was worried that, God forbid, you were caught by dresswalas. Where are you?’
‘Bhai, we are at Vadodara, Hotel Tulsi, Room 204. We plan to be here for a week and after that we may move.’
‘That is a good idea. You should not stay at the same place for more than a week. You never know when the police will get wind of your location.’
‘Can you send us some money?’
‘I will send you Rs 5,000. Keep in touch and let me know if you change your location.’
‘Okay bhai, khuda hafiz.’
Kurla heaved a sigh of relief. He had been given a direct number to the Mahim police station, to contact the officer he was dealing with.
‘Sahab, I finally got a call from Usman. They are in Room 204 of Hotel Tulsi at Vadodara.’
‘You are not lying to us, are you?’
‘No, sahab, how can I dare to do that?’ He said later that he had asked for some of his money back but was told that that was not possible and that if he even referred to the money, the consequences would be fatal.
Kurla hung up. He had expected that he would get back at least half the amount. He and his wife packed their bags and left the city the same evening. They had no destination in mind, they just wanted to be far from the clutches of the Bombay police.
A crack team of officers, comprising SIs Virendra Vani, Dinesh Kadam, Srirang Nadgouda, Ganpat Kirdant and E.D. Jadhav and Assistant Police Inspector S.D. Angadi, was sent to arrest the men from Hotel Tulsi. They reached Vadodara on 24 May and, on making discreet inquiries from the hotel management, found out that Room 204 was occupied by three youths called Mohammed Sayeed, Usman Man Khan and Raees.
The team roped in additional men from the local Vadodara police. The hotel compound was cordoned off and surrounded by policemen in plain clothes. Special attention was paid to the corridor of the second floor and the area below the window of Room 204. Around 5 a.m., Vani knocked on the door. There was no response. Vani knocked again, but there was still no sound inside the room. The police team wondered briefly whether the hotel staff had alerted the occupants. Then Vani punched heavily on the door.
‘Who is that?’ somebody called from inside.
‘Sahab, tea,’ Vani spoke politely.
‘Tea! We don’t want tea at this time. Get lost!’
‘Open the door. This is the police,’ Vani roared.
The group outside the door could hear the scrambling sounds within, and muffled voices as if the men were whispering to one another. But the door remained shut. Vani pushed it open without too much difficulty.
Several things happened simultaneously. The police party barged inside with their revolvers drawn. Sayeed tried to push past Kadam to the door but was overpowered. Raees did not resist but Usman jumped out of the window, falling down after he landed but otherwise unhurt.
The men outside did not see him jump, but they heard the thud when he landed. It was still dark and they strained to see.
‘Grab him,’ a voice yelled from the window of 204. The men located Usman, still on the ground, and pounced on him.
All three were arrested, and Nadgouda informed Maria of the arrests. After formalities with the local police were completed, they started the drive back to Bombay.
In the two-and-a-half months since the blasts, Maria had been working closely with the crime branch in the police headquarters, and regularly briefing JCP Singh and CP Samra. Eventually, he was made a direct deputy to Singh, as DCP (crime) and shifted to the crime branch offices at the police headquarters.
On 27 May, he had the beginnings of a pounding headache when he reached work. Nadgouda informed him that Sayeed, Raees and Usman were waiting, he could interrogate them whenever he wanted.
‘Who is the most intelligent and easy to talk to?’ Maria asked.
‘I think interrogating Usman will be better than the others,’ Nadgouda said.
‘Send him in,’ Maria said, rubbing his temple. He took two tablets of aspirin and washed them down with a glass of water. The pain was growing. He raised his head and saw a haggard-looking man standing in front of him. ‘This is Usman Man Khan, sir,’ Nadgouda said.
‘Usman,’ Maria began wearily, ‘I don’t have the time nor energy to wheedle information out of you. Start talking.’
Silence.
‘Are you deaf? Can’t you hear what I am telling you?’ Usman looked at Maria and then at Nadgouda, but could not find a trace of mercy or sympathy in either pair of eyes. There was no option left.
‘Sahab, I was close to Salim Kurla. I used to hang out at his office a lot, and we used to collect hafta money. We made good money. It was a good life. But it all changed after the riots when many Muslims were killed.
‘We all were seething with revenge, but we didn’t know what to do. Then one day Salim bhai got a call from Anis bhai, who wanted some youths to train to bomb Bombay. Salim bhai told him about the four of us.
‘We went to Dubai and from there to Pakistan for training. The training was rigorous: we fired AK-56s and imported pistols, made RDX bombs, threw hand grenades. We were being trained to operate rocket launchers but this stopped after Ibrahim got injured ...’
‘What happened?’ Maria asked.
‘The rocket launcher has a very complicated firing mechanism. Once when Ibrahim was shooting, it misfired and he was badly injured. He was in hospital in Islamabad for a month, and came back long after us.
‘After Ibrahim’s accident, we didn’t use rocket launchers any more. We returned to Bombay after about ten days of training.’
‘Didn’t you meet others who were also being trained?’ Maria asked.
‘No, sahab, it was just the four of us.’
‘Don’t lie. We know that there were about twenty others,’ Maria said threateningly.
Cringing in terror, Usman swore that there had been no one else. Maria thought he was speaking the truth. Then there had been at least two groups being trained. He decided to start on a different line of questioning. ‘Did you meet Tiger Memon?’
‘No, sahab, I don’t know who Tiger Memon is.’
Maria was stunned by this disclosure. All this time, Tiger had been the focal point of the plotting. If Usman was speaking the truth—and Maria was inclined to believe that he was—then were there two separate conspiracies following uncannily similar lines? Maria’s headache returned with renewed vigour as he tried to puzzle this out. He decided to re-read the statement of Sultan-e-Room, which had earlier puzzled him, but which now suddenly seemed to fall into place.
■
His father Ali Gul named him Sultan-e-Room, king of Rome, because he dreamt that he would become as wealthy as that mythical monarch was. Young Sultan was religious, wore only traditional pyjamas and grew a long beard. His friends nicknamed him Maulana. Sultan failed to make the expected fortune in Bombay, and wanted to travel to Saudi Arabia and work there. But the medical test for the visa revealed that he had tuberculosis, and the application was rejected. So Sultan had another passport made in a different name to try again.
Sultan met Ejaz Pathan, who put him in touch
with Ehtesham who, Ejaz told him, would take him to Dubai. He was also told he would be given money, clothes and training in handling firearms and explosives in Pakistan. Ehtesham, who had aided Tiger Memon at the two landings, in turn introduced him to Babulal Qasim Shaikh, Shakeel Ahmed, Murad Khan, Aziz Ahmed and Manzoor Qureishi (Manju) who would be his fellow travellers. On 14 February 1993, they met at Sahar Airport and left for Dubai. However, when they reached Dubai they were not allowed to leave the airport as they did not have visas. Murad, Ehtesham and Babulal managed to organize the visas after a couple of hours and a few telephone calls. An unknown escort bundled them into two taxis and took them to an eight-storey building close to the sea. Sultan did not know the name of the building, but he did know that their spacious three-room flat was on the seventh floor. An Indian woman in her fifties was there to cook for them, and she had a male assistant of about thirty-five. But Sultan never found out what their names were.
They stayed at this flat for eleven days during which they met nobody, and no one came to visit them. Their only excursions were to the nearby masjid for namaz. Occasionally Ehtesham, Shakeel, Aziz and Murad would go out to meet their acquaintances. They all waited eagerly for the day when they would leave for Pakistan for their training.
On 25 February, they were told that as their visas were going to expire in two days, they should leave Dubai within that period. They were all intensely disappointed because they all had dreamt of becoming mujahideen and laying down their lives for Islam, especially Sultan with his intensely religious streak.
After the night prayers (isha) on 27 February, their escort took them back to the airport, where they boarded a Cathay Pacific flight back to Bombay. The king of Rome was back in his old kingdom.
■
The biggest change in Rakesh Maria’s life since the blasts was that he no longer had fixed working hours, and that in order to pursue his research, he had to read late into the night to keep up with the progress of the case and think about the import of the information gathered.
Black Friday Page 19