Dongri to Dubai - Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  The police stormed flat number 5, and found the flat in shambles, pockmarked with bullets. The TV screen was shattered, and nearby lay Anil Khubchandani, dead in a pool of bullet casings and blood. A framed picture of Sai Baba lay shattered, even the guru’s image pierced by a bullet through his forehead. It had been a four-and-half-hour-long encounter and over 2,500 rounds had been fired. It had not been an encounter; it had been a war, a war where every shot was fired to kill. It was a warning, an open threat, and a death knell for the underworld stating in no uncertain terms that the blood of no policeman would flow at the hands of a gangster.

  Subsequently Gharal, who had been rushed to the Hinduja Hospital in Khan’s car, survived his injuries. Qavi also healed and continued to serve his entire term. A formal complaint was lodged at the D.N. Nagar Police Station by Sub-inspector Sunil Deshmukh. The complaint accused the deceased of unlawful assembly, attempting to commit murder of police officers and men by means of dangerous weapons, and deterring public servants from discharging their legal duties. The unknown man at the flat was later identified as Vijay Chakor, a 28-year-old constable from the Yerawada prison in Pune. It was never established what he was doing with the gangsters. However, it was alleged that he was a messenger for some gangster lodged in the Yerawada prison at the time. The matter was never conclusively investigated.

  All the officers were recommended for gallantry awards. However, the awards never came. On that fateful day, a team from a news channel called Newstrack had recorded the entire incident. Questions about the veracity of the encounter and the genuineness of the threat from the gangsters were raised and the entire team was embroiled in a controversy, which later culminated into a petition filed by a social activist Vinod Mehta at the Bombay High Court. The court promptly dismissed this petition.

  The most important consequence of this encounter was, however, the survival of S. Ramamurthy. Even though according to rumours, he was poised to be replaced by S. Parthasarthy, with this victory however, Ramamurthy’s position was once again cemented. He would not be shunted out now, and all threats had been silenced. The position came in return for the shootout at Lokhandwala, the death of the seven gangsters and the blood of a few good men.

  6

  JJ Shootout

  Chhota Rajan’s clout was increasing within the D Company. He had slowly become the brain and brawn behind Dawood Ibrahim. And he had reached a stage where Dawood had begun to trust him with his life. There was not a single operation for which Dawood had to look beyond Rajan (also known as Nana) for its execution.

  Rajan had given the corporate structure of the gang its finishing touches and had not only defined its various levels and complicated layers, but also monitored its evolution personally. This was something that neither Dawood nor any of his cronies had managed, with the exponential growth of the gang in terms of manpower and money.

  Rajan had brought his own trusted men into the Dawood gang and made it look invincible. D Company now boasted of around 5,000 members. Sadhu Shetty, Mohan Kotian, Guru Satam, Rohit Verma, Bharat Nepali, O.P. Singh, Mama, and scores of others had pledged their allegiance to the Dawood gang courtesy Rajan. By now, at the beginning of the nineties, the Dawood gang could easily be called the most powerful gang in the world. None of the international mafia, except the Russian gangs like Dolgoprudnenskaya and the Solntsevskaya, could boast of the power that Rajan had brought to the D Company. In fact, Rajan had modelled his gang after the Solntsevskaya, named after the Moscow suburb of Solntsevo from which it hails. The mafia in Italy, Mexico, Israel, and Chechnya looked like pygmies when compared to the D Syndicate.

  Rajan had also forged new alliances. The Mohajir’s mafia of the Karachi underworld and the Turkish Cypress underworld had also struck up a rapport with the D gang. With Dawood at the helm, the Muslim mafia across the world readily placed their allegiance with his gang, and now with Rajan calling the shots, the Maharashtrian boys began gravitating towards Dawood without any communal wariness.

  Rajan’s latest campaign involved a list of hoteliers, builders, contractors, money changers, and agents he had drawn up, and from whom he had begun extorting money. In fact, from government agencies like CIDCO alone, Rajan made an impressive 3 crore rupees in a year. It was a unique racket. CIDCO gave contracts on a tender system to contractors for road, drainage, sewage, filling, and other projects. They also sold open residential and commercial plots by tender. Rajan bulldozed the CIDCO officials in such a manner that only his contractors would get work orders from the agency. Other contractors were not even allowed to submit their tenders. Thus, Rajan managed to get a 3–5 per cent cut on these contracts.

  Then hoteliers and bar owners were made to shell out 50,000 rupees per month. And whenever a builder started a new project, Rajan’s men would contact him and ask him to call Rajan on his cell. After a brief consultation, the amount was fixed and swiftly delivered to the sister of Chhota Rajan aide Mohan Kotian in Chembur.

  According to police records, the money collected in this manner amounted to 80 lakh rupees per month, while the same dossier states that Rajan himself owned 122 benami (illegal) hotels and pubs in Mumbai. A part of the money earned and collected by the gang was invested back into gang members. Some amount was spent on supplying food and daily essentials in jails and on court fees of jailed gang members, for example.

  Rajan had also clearly allocated work responsibilities among all his men. Moreover, while he delegated carefully, he personally kept in touch with even the lowest rung shooter in the gang. Dawood was proud of Rajan and his skills as his manager. He realised that with Rajan around to look after the business, he could let up a bit and enjoy life, free to bed Indian starlets. Some slept with him out of compulsion, while most of them did it willingly, as it gave them a feeling of power over their producers and distributors. Plus, they always preferred to be exclusively available to Dawood than to several financiers and moneybags, every time they signed a project.

  Dawood had begun to throw lavish parties for film units visiting Dubai. Almost all the top stars of the era attended his parties and shared drinks with him and made it a point to mention their revelry in their circles back in Mumbai.

  Dawood’s life was luxurious, opulent, and carefree. While Rajan was toiling for him and expanding the gang so it got bigger and bigger, Dawood could rest and he rewarded him for this. Soon, a few gang members grew jealous of Rajan’s growing clout. Sharad Shetty, Chhota Shakeel, Sunil Sawant, and others did not like Rajan and the amount of trust Dawood placed on him, so implicitly. They also did not enjoy Rajan’s independence and the power he held when it came to crucial decision making. They could not order a hit in Mumbai or oversee a business dealing anywhere in India unless Rajan sanctioned it. It was all proving to be quite irksome.

  Festering frustration and simmering discontentment brought the gangsters together against their common enemy. Ganged up against Rajan, they decided to go to Dawood, but cleverly. Dawood was loath to listen to any gossip about Rajan as he was aware of the widespread jealousy he invoked among his boys. Dawood had to be convinced in a different manner.

  The men all cornered Dawood at one of his drinking sessions. As Dawood had immense respect for Sharad Shetty and never rebuked or chided him, he took the initiative. ‘Bhai, do you know Rajan is becoming a power centre within himself? He has such a grip over the gang that tomorrow he can orchestrate a coup and take over the gang.’

  ‘Kya anna, when did you start believing such hearsay?’ Dawood replied lightly.

  ‘Bhai, tell me, do you know how many men he has? How many of his people are running hotels, how many there are in the construction business, who his jail punters are and how much money he spends on himself?’ Sharad Shetty continued.

  ‘Why should I, when he is the gang manager?’ asked Dawood smugly.

  ‘Bhai, his people have now started saying we are Nana’s men. They are wiping out even your name slow
ly,’ Sautya interjected.

  ‘Every man has an ambition and wants to reach the top. Rajan wants to become the “Godfather’ of India”,’ said Sharad, trying to hurt Dawood’s massive ego. Sharad Shetty knew about Dawood’s historic struggles with Baashu Dada, Haji Mastan, the Pathans, and the Gawli gang.

  Dawood was quiet for a long time. He did not want to believe what Shetty and Sautya were saying. Rajan had worked hard for the gang but at the same time, it could not be denied that he held the keys to the gang. He was the power centre—he ran a syndicate within the syndicate. There was a chance he would get power hungry some day and run amok. But Dawood’s other men were not as enterprising and shrewd, none of them could pull off the handling of operations in India like Rajan did. There was simply no one who could replace his managerial skills.

  ‘We don’t know how loyal he is,’ the men continued, unchecked. ‘What has he done so far to avenge Ibrahim Bhai’s killing?’ This was a sore point, and it proved to be the gangsters’ victory. It had been several weeks since Dawood’s brother-in-law Ibrahim Parkar had been killed and so far there had been no retaliation from Dawood’s side. Ibrahim had been killed on 26 July and it was already the second week of September; the Gawli gang had not been punished. Why Rajan not seen to this?

  Dawood immediately asked Shakeel to get Rajan on the phone. When Shakeel got through, he handed over the cordless. Without any prelude, Dawood immediately shot out his question—only it was couched as a matter-of-fact statement. ‘You still have not gotten the people responsible for Ibrahim’s death.’

  Rajan, who was in the middle of a sexual orgy and not ready for serious talk, was initially baffled by Dawood’s brusque manner; he had never heard his boss speak so directly. He said, ‘Haan bhai, my boys are still chasing them. Gawli’s men who were responsible for the attack have been admitted to JJ Hospital and are under tight security. We were waiting for them to be discharged from the hospital. I will get an update and call you back.’ Rajan felt a bit queasy as he disconnected the phone, wondering at Dawood’s tone and tenor.

  ‘Rajan’s boys are after them. Two of them are admitted in the JJ Hospital, the security is quite tight for them,’ Dawood was talking more to himself than to the people in the room.

  ‘Bhai, give me one chance and I will prove it to you that Rajan is just not interested, he is giving lame excuses. I will get those boys killed in JJ Hospital itself and you will see how I can screw the tight security,’ said Sautya, jumping at the opportunity to upstage Rajan.

  Now, Dawood wanted to placate his widow sister Hasina. An audacious attack on JJ Hospital despite its challenging security set-up would serve the purpose. Also, it would be the litmus test for Sautya and his abilities as a leader of gangsters.

  After one long searching look, he nodded at Sautya.

  Sautya leaned forward, touched Dawood’s feet and said, ‘Bhai, aapka ashirwad chahiye [Bhai, I need your blessings].’

  This was a big challenge for Sautya and Shakeel. It was their do-or-die moment. If they failed here, they would have to stop nursing their ambitions to be Dawood’s right-hand men. But if they managed to pull this off, they could kiss Rajan a royal and permanent good bye.

  Sautya had decided to lead from the front and participate actively in the operation. Apart from other top people like Brijesh Singh, two of the most dreaded sharpshooters in the Mumbai underworld were hired for the kill—Bacchi Pandey and Subhash Singh Thakur. All kinds of automatic weapons including 9 mm Star pistols, carbines, and .32 revolvers were given to the shooters. For the first time a Kalashnikov rifle AK–47 was used in a gang shootout. Preparation for the assault was made on a massive scale, leaving no margin for mistake and keeping Rajan in the dark.

  Jamshedji Jijibhoy Hospital, otherwise known as JJ Hospital, is one of the largest state government-run hospitals in the city. Sprawled over 20 acres of land, the hospital had over 45 wards and 1, 500 beds. Over half a million patients were treated in the hospital every year. The serene precincts of the hospital not only provided succour to the patients who they soothed and the medical college students they housed but also to intimacy-starved couples, who used the cover of thick green bushes for the odd clandestine rendezvous. As the hospital was spread over a large area and had a constant stream of visitors to its various wards, it was not possible to monitor everyone who made an entrance and exit.

  Sautya and Shakeel had readied their plan in a matter of days and were ready to strike. All the preparations were made in such haste that the most important element of a strike—the reconnaissance of quarry or ‘recce’ as it is also known—was skipped and was performed, at last, only hours before the planned assault.

  Around 1:30 am on 12 September 1992, a couple sneaked into the hospital premises to conduct the recce. As men would have attracted suspicion at this late hour, a couple was sent in, as they would be relatively innocuous-looking.

  The couple was briefed to move around the hospital and assess the strength of security arrangements, ward locations, and exit points. They took a solid hour and returned at 2:30 am to report that their targets were in ward number 18 of the general administrative building, guarded by only one officer and four constables.

  What they had missed was that only Shailesh Haldankar was in this ward; Bipin Shere had been shifted to Ward 6 on the first floor the previous morning.

  At 3:40 am the assault party struck with full force. Subhash Singh Thakur, Sunil Sawant, Shrikant Rai, Bacchi Pandey, Shyam Garikapatti, and Vijay Pradhan went into action.

  The constables were dozing and inspector K.G. Thakur had just begun to think of lying down on a couch himself, when the assailants barged into the ward and began to fire indiscriminately.

  Even as Haldankar’s lifeless body slumped on the bed, riddled with bullets, the shooters began looking for Shere. Sub-inspector Krishnavtar Thakur, who had jumped off his couch and taken cover behind it, managed to remove his service revolver from its holster and fired back at them.

  The dozing constables seized the moment as well. Police head constables P.G. Javsen and K.B. Bhanawat grabbed their .303 rifles and began shooting. This firing from two sides had stunned the shooters; they did not expect any resistance from the police. Normally, the underworld never targets the police because this could antagonise the police force, who could then seek out and get rid of the whole gang for vengeance.

  A volley of bullets caught the rattled Shrikant Rai and Vijay Pradhan unawares and injured both of them. Sautya indicated they should all leave but before this, he decided to fire in such a manner that the police party would be scared to fire more bullets.

  Turning the barrel of his AK-47 on the constables, he let forth a flurry of bullets which proved to be too much for them. Both Javsen and Bhanawat were hit and fatally injured. Another ricocheting bullet pierced the leg of constable Nagre.

  While Subhash Singh and Inspector Thakur were exchanging fire, Sautya called out to Subhash and Shyam and gestured for them to leave. They obeyed, but not before firing a last volley of bullets from their carbine and automatic pistol. Thakur managed to duck and save himself, but the shower of bullets hit a patient, a nurse, and the relative of a patient in the ward.

  The hit squad immediately retreated from the scene. In the final analysis, a handful of policemen who were seriously outnumbered and outmanoeuvred put up a courageous fight against the desperadoes. According to the police panchnama, over 500 rounds were fired. An AK- 47 took its toll in the outcome of this violent skirmish which lasted barely five minutes yet claimed the lives of many policemen, while inflicting only minor injuries on the shooters.

  The audacity of the attack shocked not just those on the hospital premises but the entire locality. Mumbaikars never forget the constant sound of shooting guns, something they had only seen and heard in the movies till now.

  The incident also highlighted Dawood’s political connections. The m
ayor of Bhiwandi-Nizampur Municipal Council Jaywant Suryarao was roped in for the operations; his official red beaconed car was used by Sautya as a getaway vehicle. Also, MLA Pappu Kalani of Ulhasnagar and Union Minister Kalpnath Rai’s nephew Virendra Rai had provided logistical support to the hit squad. The most startling revelation came later when it was discovered that two of the dreaded shooters had travelled on the special plane of a union minister from Maharashtra.

  However, despite the colossal amount of legwork and investigation the police and the prosecution undertook, the trial process was arduous. The case went to trial after eight years.

  Ironically, Sub-inspector Thakur, the original complainant and key witness, whose heroics on the day made the police force proud of his achievements, could not back up the story of what had really happened during the trial and turned hostile.

  Special public prosecutor Rohini Salian, who had implicated forty-one people as accused, could only bring nine of them to trial.

  7

  Communal Strokes

  It was a pleasant September evening. A party was in full swing on the open lawns of Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Anees’ bungalow. The event: a celebration of the success of the JJ Hospital shootout.

  The audacious shootout had sent the city into a tizzy. The story made it to the front page of all the national newspapers, not only in Mumbai but country wide. That Mumbai’s mafia had a free run of the city’s public institutions, extending even to health care facilities, was unnerving. People were concerned that Bombay, the commercial backbone of the country, would turn into yet another anarchic Indian state like Bihar. The logic was that if criminals could run amok in a state government-run hospital like JJ Hospital, it would not take them long to strike in the corridors of power. From bus stops to trains, in cafeterias and in parties, everybody everywhere was discussing the shootout.