We agreed, and then asked her about other issues, including her comeback on reality television shows, her alleged relationship with Rahul Mahajan and her recent decision to launch a religious music album. Though uncomfortable, she answered all our questions cautiously. When she had sipped the last of her coffee, she got up to leave. We shook hands, and she promised to get back to us in two days. The call never came. Neither were any of our calls to her ever answered. After waiting for years and pursuing her tirelessly, I decided to give up. She has done it again—avoided clearing the air on the Abu Salem story and her position in his life.
Her career has slowly progressed in the meantime. She won a cameo as a vamp in the serial produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Saraswati Chandra, on Star Plus. She played a young stepmother to the main lead in the serial, but her story arc did not last long and she did not enjoy much screen time. Unable to get a foothold in Hindi movies, she tried her luck in films in other languages. She got a role in the Tamil film Devadasi, and in a Punjabi film Sirphire as the main female lead opposite Priyanshu Chatterjee. The movie was released in August 2012 and even won her an award for best debut. Suddenly, her fortunes started looking up and she got a role as woman cop in the Punjabi movie Rambo Ranjha.
The much-talked-about serial Saraswati Chandra was by now running successfully for two years, and the makers brought her track back in 2014. She is now the main antagonist.
She began giving extensive interviews to film magazines saying that her love for Abu Salem was pure and that she had been a victim of circumstances and didn’t know who he was when she fell in love with him. She denied ever marrying him and consistently said she wanted to move on in life.
The Salem–Monica saga is one of the most intriguing mafia stories for the police, CBI, Bollywood, as well as journalists. It will always leave behind a plethora of unanswered questions. Salem apparently divorced Sameera or perhaps it was she who gave him an ex parte divorce. Monica now claims to have never married him and that it was only a brief association. But Salem has a nikahnama as evidence.
There is still a financial relationship between Salem and Monica. The CBI suspected that Salem legitimized his hawala earnings through investments in the US, the UK, and the Middle East. They claim that Salem’s net worth is over $1 billion, approximately Rs 4000 crore, and that his legitimate wealth alone is pegged at Rs 1000 crore; Salem has kept Rs 200 crore for himself and his two ex-wives (if we consider Monica too as divorced, which Salem does not accept) jointly possess Rs 800 crore in cash and properties.
The remaining Rs 3000 crore is his unaccounted wealth or black money. The CBI came to this figure after calculating his transactions over a year’s period—2000–01. While they still maintain that it is a conservative estimate and not an exact figure, they had taken into account various estimates and found that his account showed a balance of Rs 176,675 crore.
There is a strong suspicion that Salem’s benaami but legal businesses in the Middle East are still managed by his close confidants in Dubai. The story of this master criminal and arch survivor is not yet over.
A Note on Sources
This book, like most of my other books, has its roots in my career as a reporter. For nineteen years, during my stints as a crime reporter in various publications like the Indian Express, Mid-Day, Mumbai Mirror, Asian Age and as a stringer for Time magazine and Rediff, the mafia was everywhere. Over that period, I had strung together career graphs of members of the mafia, with first-hand telephonic interviews with the bad boys themselves, their not-so obliging relatives, extremely wary gang sympathizers and overzealous underworld informers, as well as personal interactions with investigating officers, prosecution and defence attorneys. When it came to the mafia, I made it a point to attend all the press conferences and police briefings.
Abu Salem Abdul Qayyum Ansari of Sarai Mir of Azamgarh was part of my network of mafia contacts. Even after he snuck out of Mumbai and found refuge in Dubai, where all the Mumbai mafia had homed in on, he would agree for telephonic interviews. When he fell out with Chhota Shakeel and had to leave Dubai, he was still accessible for interviews.
I had already written about Salem’s victims such as Pradeep Jain, Gulshan Kumar and Ajit Deewani, as well as his failed attacks on film-makers Subhash Ghai, Rajiv Rai, Rakesh Roshan, Aamir Khan, J.P. Dutta and others.
I have stacks of newspaper clippings, court documents, charge sheets, approver’s statements, confessional statements, statements given to judicial magistrates under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and recorded interviews of witnesses. When Salem went off the radar of Indian agencies, it was difficult to keep track of him. My good friends at the CBI who had so generously helped me during my research on Black Friday stood by me again.
It was through them that I got access to copies of Salem’s multiple passports with various assumed identities and those of his first wife Sameera’s and Monica Bedi’s—believed to be his second wife. I have his nikahnama in Urdu and its notarized English translation from the Karachi courts and clergy, indicating the solemnization of the Muslim nikah, replete with details of meher (alimony), names of qazis, witnesses, etc. I would like to believe they were married.
The fact was substantiated by Monica’s love letters that were handwritten during her imprisonment at Lisbon jail. The letters are very explicit in nature and cannot be quoted. However, I would like to mention that the pair seemed to have great chemistry, and in the letters, Monica laments the fact that she could not be with her Babu (her nickname for Salem) on their second wedding anniversary.
I have various other court documents from the US Court of Gwyneth County, Atlanta, which reveal details of Salem’s marriage with Sameera, his will for his only son Aamir, and the details of his properties in the US and other countries.
I also acquired documents from Lisbon courts, its High Court and the Portuguese Supreme Court that clearly indict Salem of several crimes, including that of perjury.
These documents were combined with massive tomes of legal papers and documents from Indian courts, including that of the specially designated TADA court, Bombay High Court, Supreme Court and the lower courts of Bhopal and Lucknow where he is being prosecuted for fake passport cases and fraud.
Most of the details have accurately been drawn from two basic reference dossiers of the Mumbai Crime Branch. The first one was called ‘The Growth of Gangsterism’ which was compiled by top officers of the Mumbai Police for in-depth orientation of their officers who did not have a perspective on the Mumbai underworld. The other was a detailed dossier, given to me by Deputy Commissioner Pradeep Sawant, which contains names and crime graphs of each and every gangster, and their gang affiliations and such other details. These two dossiers and files were also referred to and abstracts from them had been used in my earlier books, Dongri to Dubai, Byculla to Bangkok and Mafia Queens of Mumbai. So some of the nuggets of Salem’s and Monica Bedi’s lives were also picked from these earlier books of mine.
Several of Salem’s friends spoke to me on the condition of anonymity. But I have recorded and transcribed those conversations as a backup, with the permission of my subjects. I have interviewed several film personalities, some of whom spoke to me in detail about Salem. These interviews have also been recorded. Several of Salem’s relatives have also spoken to me and provided a lot of background on the family. I have, however, used my discretion and relied on the information given by them only to substantiate previous research.
Mumbai Police officers like retired assistant commissioner Iqbal Shaikh related the story of Salem’s arrest by the Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) at D.N. Nagar and how Salem was treated like a common criminal at the police station. It was Shaikh’s foresight to fingerprint Salem and put him on the routine police records that would eventually save the day for the police in 2002. After the gangster was held in Lisbon in 2002, he denied being Salem and claimed vociferously that he was Arsalan Ali; however, his fingerprints told a different story. Among others, Pradeep Sharma
who decimated Salem’s gang in Mumbai, and Sachin Waze also helped me with a lot of information.
Ace Crime Branch officer and investigator Sachin Waze, who is a virtual gold mine when it comes to documents and authentic papers, was generous enough to share Salem’s own handwritten autobiography with me. Salem had got this autobiography transcribed in English through his cellmates as he wanted a movie script to be developed from it. However, the Crime Branch managed to lay their hands on it and Waze shared it with me.
Several legal luminaries have spoken to me and shared a lot of information and insights in order to ensure that the account of various events in Salem’s life remains authentic.
Last but not least, I dug into newspapers and reports filed by my highly esteemed colleagues in the profession. Chandramohan Puppala, my fellow crime journalist at the Indian Express and Mid-Day had scored several scoops on Salem. I have benefitted greatly from his stories. I have also relied on stories about Abu Salem by other Mumbai journalists.
To summarize, nothing that has been printed in this book can be called imaginary or fictitious. I have solid documentary evidence to substantiate the information, either through documents of the CBI, the Mumbai Police and the courts or through personal interviews duly recorded, or at the very least, through published news stories.
THE BEGINNING
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First published by Penguin Books India 2014
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Copyright © S. Hussain Zaidi 2014
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My Name is Abu Salem Page 17