At first, the case had seemed straightforward, as it appeared that Tiger Memon had masterminded and organized the bombing. With the arrest of the group from Vadodara, Maria could see that another clearly defined group, led by Anis Ibrahim, had been sent for training. Now other individuals who had travelled to Dubai, but then not gone to Pakistan for training seemed to be falling into a third group, which had no leader that the men knew. Abdul Kader (arrested on 21 April), Mohammed Shahid and Nizamuddin Qureishi (both arrested on 31 March), Manzoor Qureishi and Sultan-e-Room (both arrested on 8 April) and Babulal Shaikh (arrested on 10 May) had all gone for training but denied any link to Tiger Memon or Anis Ibrahim.
Maria scoured through his records, trying to work out who else could have belonged to this group. Soon he found some other names: Ehtesham, Mohammed Iqbal, Murad Khan and Shakeel Ahmed. This made a team of ten men.
The case seemed to be growing beyond Maria’s ability to comprehend it. Why were there so many different groups floating around? There was something especially sinister about this third group, which had no acknowledged leader who had organized, financed and led the whole operation.
The only link seemed to be Ejaz Pathan, who was known to be a trusted companion of Dawood Ibrahim. Ehtesham and Shahid had also named Ejaz in their statements. Ejaz had been absconding since the blasts. He had links with the Pathan syndicate in Bombay, and there were several extortion cases registered against him.
Maria wondered how Ejaz had put together the team and made the travel arrangements for the group. There had to be a common link within the city itself. Had they booked their tickets together?
His men were sent to check out the tickets, and they reported that eleven tickets had been booked together in the second week of February. The tickets had been booked at the Hans Air office at Nariman Point, and they had been paid for by Abu Travels at Colaba. Abu Travels was solely owned by Abu Asim Azmi, a millionaire who was reputed to own half of Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba, one of Bombay’s prime areas. Of the eleven tickets, one— in the name of Ayub Khan—had been cancelled.
It seemed the team had reached a dead end, as Abu Asim Azmi could not be questioned as he was in Saudi Arabia for Umrah, the minor pilgrimage.
Abu Asim Azmi hailed from Azamgarh, UP, and had come to Bombay when he was a teenager. He was known as a man who had built himself an empire through hard work and determination.
However, the intelligence wing of Bombay police, Special Branch II, and the crime branch suspected that Azmi’s climb to the top had been facilitated by murders and shady deals. This did not trouble Azmi.
When Azmi heard that the police suspected that he had financed the travels of men to Dubai for training in arms, he cut short his trip and returned to the city in July. The first thing he did on his return was to meet JCP Singh and CP Samra. He stated that Maulana Ziauddin Bukhari, who had been killed on 21 April by people of the Arun Gawli gang, had planned the trip, and he had not been involved.
During the course of several sessions of interrogation at the crime branch, Azmi explained that Bukhari used to have an account in Abu Travels, which he used to book tickets. Azmi had owed Bukhari Rs 1.1 lakh, and the money for the Dubai tickets had been deducted out of his total debt. He argued that no person of average intelligence would have incriminated himself by paying for tickets for a criminal conspiracy by issuing bank drafts as he had. It was not difficult to buy tickets so that purchase could not be traced to him. The very openness and public nature of his dealings indicated that he was not aware of the conspiracy.
Two officers of Samra’s special team, S.S. Puri and Gyanchand Verma, were set to probe his financial transactions. There were exhaustive searches at Azmi’s residence, offices, hotels and other properties. Many newspapers stated that the police had identified one of the major financiers of Dawood Ibrahim’s gang. Allegedly, the police had also released confidential information to the press, which linked Azmi with Dawood Ibrahim.
Azmi claimed that he had submitted his original account books to the police, which they had misplaced. He also stated that he had given several receipts and other documents to substantiate his innocence. After about two months of questioning and raids, Azmi was finally arrested on 20 September and charged under TADA. He had previously been arrested twice in connection with some murders, but the third time was devastating as it formally associated Azmi with Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon and made him out to be a traitor. The police believed they had captured the mysterious leader of the third team. Also, as JCP Singh told the weekly Sunday magazine, this arrest proved that the ‘law does not distinguish between rich and poor’.
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Badshah Khan’s story
I think Rakesh Maria is right. It is now August, five months since the blasts and over two weeks now since I met him last, but the more I think about it the more convinced I am by his arguments.
I have read the history of Islam. They say that whenever Allah aided the Muslim army, the believers vanquished their foes and overpowered the infidels. Whenever Allah did not help the Muslims for some reason, the Muslims lost. Maria said that Allah did not help us in our mission to destroy Bombay, and so our mission could not have been right. If Allah had helped us, we would have totally destroyed the BSE and the Air-India building so that nothing of them remained, and killed Bal Thackeray and other Shiv Sena leaders at their Sena Bhavan headquarters. The very fact that we could not succeed despite all our best efforts means that Allah did not help us, that He did not want us to do this.
I see now that Tiger Memon used us in his personal vendetta against Hindus. Tiger bhai was the only one among us who suffered tremendous losses in the riots. Chikna had a bullet wound, but it was minor. But Tiger’s Mahim office was burned down; he lost a lot of money. Maybe he thought nothing else could motivate others to join him in his war against the Hindus except the name of Islam. We were all just used ...
Tiger made sure that he escaped, and that everyone in his family had left Bombay by 12 March. He was concerned about his personal safety, but not about ours, though he did leave some money. But he did not make any preparations for us. His family is safe today, while we are suffering. And as a result of what we did so many innocent Muslims have been tortured, women and girls treated horribly. Tiger must have known this would happen, but he did not care about his people, did he?
I have been in prison for weeks now, and I know how bad it gets. Even the food is bad—watery dal, inedible rice and stinking water. And the things I see around me, the torture ... I have heard that they have detained up to twenty people from a family to extract one confession. If Tiger is such a good Muslim, how could he let this happen? He cares only for his family, not for his community.
We were naïve, and he was shrewd; he used us and saved himself. I feel I have to do something so that he can’t get away with it. I know all about Tiger Memon and his real designs now. I should be the one to expose him. I will talk to someone—Rakesh Maria, Sharad Pawar, anyone—but I will tell them the truth. Somebody has to speak up.
I heard that last week, on 16 August, M.N. Singh had personally visited the Arthur Road jail, which is where all of us are. He called for many of the men who were with us—Dawood Phanse, Imtiyaz Ghavate, Aziz Ahmed, Raju Kodi, Baba Chauan and Parvez Qureishi. He told them that someone would have to turn approver, be a police witness. He said that they had better stick to their confessions or else he would take it as a gesture of personal enmity and use the entire police machinery to destroy them and all their families. And the way Singh says these things with his expressionless face ... Well, you cannot expect ghazals from cops.
I don’t know why none of them spoke up. After hearing this, I decided to speak up. Some of my fellow accused already call me an informer. So be it.
I called out to a passing constable and told him that I wanted to meet Maria sahab. The orderly looked at me and said that if sahab needed me, he would call me. I looked at him pleadingly and told him that I had something very vital to say
to Maria sahab. He looked at me strangely and left.
I was not sure whether the constable would convey the message, but apparently he did, for a few days later one of the officers on Maria’s team came to fetch me.
I was asked to wait outside Maria’s office, and summoned in after about half an hour. Maria was my link to the outside world.
‘Sahab, I want to become a police witness. Will I be forgiven and pardoned?’ I asked.
Maria looked at me quizzically. ‘You have to make an official request for that.’
‘I’m ready to do anything,’ I said. ‘What do I have to do?’
He told me to write a letter to M.N. Singh. He seemed to be appreciative of my offer. I returned to the lock-up and asked for paper to write the letter. Unlike other times, when my requests were unheeded, this time I was provided with pen and paper instantly.
I later heard that when my letter reached M.N. Singh, he forwarded it to ACP Shivajirao Babar, who was designated the chief investigating officer in the case. I also heard that Imtiyaz and some others had also offered to turn informers but their requests had been turned down.
As the days went by and I did not hear anything, my resolve to expose Tiger strengthened. I made an official offer to turn police witness to Babar. I know the police choose only those people as police witnesses whose involvement is minimal and who they think possess the most information.
The news that I was planning to turn informer had spread among the other accused and I was called traitor, who took money from the police. I got accusing glares and veiled threats from others in the lock-up. I knew that from now on life would be difficult for me here. When I joined Tiger, I had undergone extreme hardship for something I believed in. And this time I believed that what I was doing was the right thing.
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After the blasts, Dawood Ibrahim realized that he would perhaps never have the opportunity to return to his city of birth. The political connections he had built up over the years in the hope that someday they would help him in returning to India were now rendered useless. Soon after 12 March, he had received a call from a woman police inspector in Bombay who had showered him with the choicest expletives, while he had listened in stunned silence. It was clear that he was considered the chief culprit for the deaths of so many people.
In September 1993, Dawood called MP Ram Jethmalani, an eminent lawyer, who was in London at the time. Dawood reportedly told him that he wanted to surrender, and when Jethmalani asked him why, Dawood replied that he was innocent and that his name was being wrongly dragged into the serial blasts case. Jethmalani told him that he should surrender and face trial. Dawood allegedly said that he was willing to surrender but that he had two conditions: the Bombay police should withdraw or close all pending cases against him, except the bomb blasts; and that he should be granted bail and given physical protection. He did not mind being under house arrest for as many years as the trial continued. Jethmalani assured him that he would speak to the concerned authorities and ensure that this offer was conveyed to the government.
Jethmalani called up his son, lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani, in Bombay and asked him to inform JCP Singh. Singh told Mahesh that this had to be conveyed to the chief minister. A meeting was supposedly held at the chief minister’s residence at Varsha, where Samra and Singh were present. It was agreed that the decision had to be taken by the central government as Dawood was wanted not merely by the Bombay police, but by the Indian government.
It has never been established whether Narasimha Rao was informed about Dawood’s offer to surrender, though Sharad Pawar maintained in the state assembly that his government would not accept any conditional surrender from Dawood or any of the others accused in the bomb blasts case. ‘Nobody will be given any special treatment,’ Pawar said at a press conference in Mantralaya. The matter ended there.
Later, Dawood also reportedly tried to negotiate his surrender through some CBI officers. But the negotiators could not assure immunity and protection to Dawood.
Some argue that if the Indian government had accepted Dawood’s offer, at least he would have been in custody.
12
The Trial Begins
According to the law, a chargesheet had to be filed within 180 days of the commission of the offence. However, the Bombay police had to seek an extension because the case was too vast to be wrapped up within the stipulated period.
On 15 September, the Bombay police had filed an application at court for declaring forty-four people proclaimed offenders. They had arrested 145 people under the various sections of TADA for their involvement or complicity in the case. Exactly a month later, the specially designated TADA court, presided over by J.N. Patel on the fifth floor of the City Civil and Sessions Court in south Bombay, declared forty-three people as proclaimed offenders. Mobin from Raigad could not be proclaimed an offender as his antecedents were not very clear, though he was named in the chargesheet.
The Bombay police managed to finish all the documentation and make a detailed chargesheet, which was finally submitted on 4 November at the TADA court. The main chargesheet was 9,104 pages long. The preamble was an additional 127 pages, and the list of witnesses another 151 pages.
A total of 189 people were named in the chargesheet, out of whom 145 had been arrested and forty-four were absconding (which included thirteen members of Tiger Memon’s family). Twenty-two of those arrested had been given bail, 123 were still in the custody of the police at the time the chargesheet was filed. The total number of witnesses named was 3,741.
About 157 officers from Bombay, Thane and Raigad police and the CID crime unit at Pune had been involved in the investigation. The investigators had travelled to thirteen states and two union territories in the country, and visited seventy-one cities.
At the time of the filing of the chargesheet, Samra requested that Ujwal Nikam from Jalgaon be the chief public prosecutor. Nikam was known for his honesty and his integrity.
A day after the chargesheet was filed, on 5 November, Samra was promoted to DGP, and put in charge of the anti-corruption bureau in Maharashtra. It was a prestigious posting, and ostensibly a reward for his good work, but many realized that Samra was being politely shunted out from the scene. He had been police commissioner for barely eight months. The publicity that Samra had enjoyed throughout the investigation, especially with his daily briefings, had antagonized many. Satish Sahani, an officer with an impressive career record, was made the police commissioner of Bombay.
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Though it had been announced in May 1993 that the CBI would take charge of the investigation, the actual handover happened on 9 November, five days after the chargesheet was filed, when the state government notified the CBI that the case had been handed over to them for further investigation. The CBI can look into police cases in states only if the court or the home department of that state government passes an order to that effect.
A Special Task Force (STF) of the CBI was constituted, headed by Subhash Chandra Jha, and a makeshift office was arranged in a bungalow near Nariman Point. Coordinating the work in Delhi was the union home secretary, K. Padmanabhaiah. Until then CBI did not have an STF anywhere in the country as all operations were looked after from Delhi. There were, however, specific wing offices elsewhere in Bombay—such as the anti-corruption wing in Tanna House, Colaba, and the economic offences wing in the White House, Malabar Hills.
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The first hearing in the case opened at 2.45 p.m. on a bleak afternoon, 24 January 1994, in a crowded room, thirty-five feet by fifteen feet, at the Arthur Road jail. It had been chosen out of security considerations as most of the accused were housed in that jail and it was very difficult to move all of them to the City Civil and Sessions Court. The security arrangements at the jail were intensive: the entire central region of the city had been cordoned off, and was crawling with khaki-clad policemen and police wireless vans. To enter the court, everyone had to go undergo a thorough security check. There were policemen everywhere in th
e compound and in the courtroom itself. The court was presided over by J.N. Patel. The room was packed with the 145 accused, and some eighty lawyers, policemen and court officials, apart from those who had come to attend the trial. The accused were crowded five to a bench and there was not even enough table space to keep the chargesheet.
There were several media persons present, Patel having finally allowed the press to cover the court proceedings. Initially, the Bombay High Court and the City Civil and Sessions Court had ruled that the press would not be allowed due to security reasons, and had also suggested that the trial be held in camera. Later this decision was reversed.
The opening of the long-awaited trial was taken up by wrangling about the cramped conditions in the courtroom. Senior counsel S.B. Jaisinghani, who represented Sanjay Dutt and Somnath Thapa, stated that the arrangements were inadequate. The chief public prosecutor, Nikam, defended the government’s allocation of space and infrastructure keeping in mind the overwhelming security considerations and need for urgency in progressing with the case. He granted, however, that a public address system should be installed. Patel suggested that the immediate solution would be to ask only those accused who were interested in being present to stay back while the others could go back. The police escorted away about a hundred of the accused who wanted to leave the court premises.
The prosecution then summarized the case, and stated the charges against each of the accused. Nikam submitted a list of over a thousand witnesses, who he said would file affidavits on what they knew about the case. Some of the accused stated that they did not have lawyers; at which Patel offered to provide a state lawyer to all of them. The hearing was adjourned to 2 February.
The issue of the scarcity of space continued in the next two hearings. In the fourth hearing on 23 February, defence lawyers expressed concern over the suggestion made on behalf of the government at the 18 February hearing that the venue of the trial be shifted to Thane or Pune, where there were better facilities. They were indignant that the accused were being encouraged to abstain from attending court merely because the room was not big enough.
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