Dongri to Dubai - Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  Plumes of cigar smoke hung heavy in the air. Even the quietly efficient air conditioner could not clear the smoky environs of the room. After pacing endlessly and impatiently for a long time, Dawood reached a conclusion.

  The decision was not a practical or a judicious one, rather it was a convenient one. He had decided he could not pay attention to supremacy disputes and so would call a meeting of all his men and instruct them to behave maturely. He also planned to make it clear he did not want them to occupy themselves with this self-perpetuating game of one-upmanship.

  The meeting was called in the conference room at the White House in Dubai and the don ensured that all those men who mattered to his gang were present.

  ‘I’m tired of seeing you guys using your power and strength to fight among yourselves and weaken the gang. Don’t do this. Concentrate this power and strength on attacking your rivals and weakening them, not yourselves,’ Dawood said, quiet, calm, deadly in his authority.

  There was pin-drop silence in the room. People waited for him to continue, they thought he would use anecdotes and stories to clarify what he wanted to say, but nothing came.

  ‘I’m warning all of you to finish any and all discord and dissension you have between yourselves and focus on business. Aapas mein jhagra dhande ki maut hota hai [fighting between ourselves means death for business]. To me, business is bigger than even my brother, and I want all of you also to understand this,’ Dawood added, and fell silent again, waiting for his words to sink in.

  Someone in the room tried to object, and started saying that it was Nana (Rajan) who was responsible for a lot of the bad blood among the senior members of the gang. Without saying it directly, he tried to tell the don to ensure that Rajan remained judicial and fair in his dealings.

  But no, Dawood remained non-committal, and said, ‘Nana mere bure waqt ka dost hai. Main uski burai nahin sunna chahta hoon. [Nana has been my friend in bad times. I don’t want to listen to anything negative about him.]’ From now on, I will ensure that everyone has equal power and flexibility in the gang, and everyone will report to me. All of you are equal, there are no favourites.’

  The meeting was brief and Dawood thought that he had averted a major crisis by being decisive and forceful. Now it was the duty of his lieutenants to solve their problems and eliminate their grouses. But Dawood had acted with shortsightedness and did not pay attention to long-term repercussions.

  Rajan was mighty pleased at Dawood’s intervention; however, Sautya and Shakeel were not one bit satisfied. All this was doing was maintaining the status quo.

  The period after the communal riots in Mumbai and before the serial blasts had seen a flurry of meetings. This series of long meetings continued even after the blasts. Shakeel had taken on the duty of meeting organisers, planners, financiers, strategisers, of the gang. People around Dawood knew how important Rajan was in the scheme of things; he was second- in-command. Yet Shakeel had deliberately kept Rajan out of the meetings. When people casually asked about the absence of Rajan, they were told that he was a ‘kafir’ (a disbeliever), non-Muslim, hence he did not belong at meetings, which were by and large attended by Muslim expatriate dons.

  This exclusion from meetings and the ‘kafir’ rationale had hurt Rajan and the slight began to rankle. He desperately wanted to draw Dawood’s attention towards this gross injustice. Dawood, on the other hand, continued to focus on efforts to consolidate his position as a don and global power player, rather than paying attention to the minor tiffs among his managers.

  But the ill feeling soon turned into public arguments and brawls, with Rajan and Shakeel and their partisans virtually coming to blows. Over the few years of their association with each other, the enmity had grown intense and by 1993-94, both the groups were baying for each others’ blood. Rajan had stopped handling the gang’s business and was confined to his house most of the time. He was also contemplating returning to India but he did not have his passport.

  As per Dubai laws, the visa sponsor, known as a kafeel in the local language, has to keep non-Emirati passports in his custody. In case his subject is found loafing in the streets or accused of a crime, the kafeel is held responsible. If the passport is in his custody, then he gets away lightly and his subject is summarily deported out of the country.

  Dawood and his clan had relocated to Dubai ostensibly under the sponsorship of certain powerful Arab sheikhs. These sheikhs had kept all passports in their custody, which suited Dawood fine, as it helped keep his men on a leash. He was, of course, above all this, and never relinquished his passport to anyone. In fact, he even obtained a Dubai passport and a UAE citizenship under the names of Sheikh Dawood Hassan and Dawood Khan.

  Rajan felt totally helpless. He did not know how to leave Dubai. He was sure that staying in Dubai any longer would get him killed.

  Meanwhile, Dawood had announced a major bash on a cruiseliner. The who’s who were invited and obviously Rajan was expected to attend as well, but he had some vague premonition about attending the party. He did not know why he felt the way he did, what it was that was holding him back from attending a party he was required to go for. Who skipped Bhai’s dos? That too without a valid reason!

  Reluctantly, Rajan began to prepare for the party, taking his time over it. Somehow he combed his hair, picked up his car keys, and decided to leave. But just as he was about to close the door behind him, the shrill sound of his telephone drew him inside again. Rajan took the phone and his face turned white. The call was from one of his close associates, who was already at the party. ‘Nana, woh tumko tapkane ka planning kiye la hai [Nana, they are planning to kill you],’ whispered his friend nervously.

  Just the thought of getting killed and dumped in this manner sent a shiver down Rajan’s spine. Strangely, he had never felt anything while masterminding several killings. But the irony that someone else was meticulously planning to kill him in such a gruesome and heartless manner was too much for Rajan to swallow.

  He replaced the phone, went to his garage and drove his car out, slowly and quietly. Rajan could not make up his mind: should he conjure up a subterfuge and avoid going to the party or should he go and take Dawood Bhai aside, informing him of Shakeel’s treachery? More importantly, would Dawood Bhai listen to him? What if he dismissed it as Rajan’s paranoia and insecurity? Worse, was he part of the gameplan to get rid of him in this manner?

  Questions, questions, and more questions! Rajan’s mind was a minefield. He was driving slowly but his mind was racing. The cruiseliner party was hardly a half an hour’s drive from his residence but Rajan kept driving in circles; despite driving for over an hour and a half, he was nowhere near a conclusion.

  The evening had turned into night and the night was getting only darker. Finally Rajan realised he had been driving for over three hours: he had to take a decision soon. He stepped hard on the brakes and brought the car to a screeching halt. His mental turmoil stopped with the impact; breathing heavily, Rajan knew he had made up his mind.

  He turned the car towards the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi. The Indian embassy in UAE had so far specialised in dealing with cases of fraudulent employers, stranded Indians, and stray passport cases. Rajan had taken it upon himself to make history there.

  The RAW officer looked at Rajan, seated across him in a soundproof room, intently. Matching his gaze, the seasoned RAW officer was trying to read the gangster’s mind. They say that in intelligence operations half the success is achieved by getting the right guy and judging him accurately. Judging a mole or an operative is always the most difficult part of intelligence gathering.

  The RAW man, after having gathering relevant answers from Rajan and satisfying his curiosity, asked him to wait while he excused himself to an ante chamber to make a call to his bosses in New Delhi.

  Rajan had spent more than a couple of hours in the Indian embassy now. After facing initial hassles with the
security man at the gate, the rest of the night had gone quite smoothly. Rajan had sought to see the officer on duty and mentioned the name of the intelligence officer he wanted to meet.

  Across the world, all embassies and consulates have at least a few intelligence operatives. Depending on their ranks and profiles, they are given suitable designations that offer appropriate cover in the embassy, ranging from desk officer to a cultural attaché or even assistant or deputy consular. But they do not report to the consul general; they report to their respective intelligence heads in their country.

  When the security officer informed the RAW man about Rajan’s impatience to meet him and willingness to wait for him through the night at the embassy premises, the officer was quick to acquiesce, rushing to the embassy to meet the gangster.

  Rajan then narrated the whole story to his newfound RAW contact, who had met him earlier in a five-star hotel in Dubai during one of the high profile parties thrown by the Shaikh family. Rajan wasted no time and told him that he wanted his help in escaping from Dubai. In return he was willing to provide them all information about Dawood and his business interests across the world—legitimate or otherwise.

  The RAW agent had an hour-long session with Rajan but required approval from his bosses in New Delhi. For a third of the top honchos at the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), this was going to be a long night. The intelligence chiefs in Delhi and senior bureaucrats exchanged ideas and the whispers on the phones continued into the wee hours. It was a major coup for the beleaguered Indian government, whose efforts to lay their hands on Dawood had hitherto been like drawing designs on water.

  Finally, the Indian government decided to provide tacit support to the renegade gangster. Papers were immediately drawn up and it was agreed that they would facilitate Rajan’s exit from Dubai.

  Rajan returned home, collected all his vital documents and account details, and within hours was on a plane out of Dubai. His first stop was at Kathmandu, where he met some more Indian officials and handlers. He was given a different identity and was flown to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.Rajan, with his wealth and the logistical support provided by the RAW agents, managed to blend into this new background afforded by the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia. Now he had only one leit motif left: to finish off Dawood and destroy his ill-gotten empire.

  Ignoring Rajan and his growing frustration turned out to be Dawood’s most expensive mistake. Dawood had never dreamt Rajan would dare to cross lines and disengage from him, throwing down the gauntlet. Although Dawood, Rajan, the RAW handlers, and the MHA bureaucrats had different motives and intentions, they all might be said to agree on one truth: man’s most dangerous enemy is the one he was once closest to.

  Dawood had several enemies in his chequered career but none turned out be as lethal and wily as Raja, a fact which Dawood was still unaware of while he was partying on the cruiseliner that night, off the Dubai coast.

  11

  New D Company-HQ:

  Karachi, New CEO: Shakeel

  Rajan’s disappearance from Dubai was not noticed until after a couple of days. And when it was, all hell broke loose. It was not the ensuing bloodshed that bothered the D Empire, but Rajan’s access to the syndicate’s soft underbelly. Rajan was privy to the goings on in Dawood’s gang; he knew the range of his global network, the extent of the gang’s operations, the location of bases across the world, their key personnel, Dawood’s political friends in New Delhi and Maharashtra, his financial conduits in India, his nexus with top rung police officers in Mumbai and other cities, his wealth and assets and his association with various mafia organisations and intelligence agencies, as well as the various fronts that Dawood had floated. Rajan was the only one who could expose the whole gang, and the only one who knew the chinks in Dawood’s armour.

  As if in tandem with Rajan’s escape, other related developments tied the D empire into knots. The Indian government began pressing for an extradition treaty with the UAE government. This spread panic and insecurity among the Indian expatriate fugitives who were holed up in this part of the Persian Gulf.

  Dawood and his ISI masters realised that the UAE government would not be able to resist India’s pressure for long. They had to relocate Dawood and his key associates before the Indian government could lay their hands on him. Therefore, towards the end of 1994, Dawood moved his base to Karachi, Pakistan. Karachi is known to be Mumbai’s sister city, as it has similar features and character, the same look and feel, and like Mumbai, is a port city; in some areas it even smells like Mumbai.

  Dawood moved into a villa at Clifton Beach. He also acquired properties in Khayabaane Shamsheer, which is like Mumbai’s Malabar Hill and Shah Rahe Faisal, which is the arterial road in the heart of the city. Shah Rahe Faisal is a little similar to Mahim’s Cadell Road in northwest Mumbai.

  Once ensconced in Karachi, Dawood also trained his sights on other Pakistani cities like Lahore. He acquired properties in Madina Market in Lahore, which is similar to Mumbai’s Manish Market, and in the Blue area in Islamabad, which is regarded as one of the prime locations in the Pakistani capital.

  The ISI was very accommodating, and Dawood decided Pakistan would be his home until he could return to India. They were his best ally, in these times. In the meantime, he was making efforts to get adjusted to this new city, which was not proving to be too difficult. Karachi, in a lot of ways, was like the Mumbai Dawood had to leave, and was more accepting and familiar than Dubai; also, though he moved there out of compulsion rather than whim, he knew he would be safer there from the Indian authorities. However, he was aware of a seething distrust and ill feeling from the local mafia, who were predominantly Jats and Mohajirs.

  Dawood’s Clifton Beach villa was in the vicinity of the shrine of Sufi saint Shah Abdullah Ghazi. The shrine has an uncanny resemblance to Mahim’s Makhdoom Shah dargah as the façade and the portico of the shrine looked exactly the same; Dawood felt at home. Especially as his father Ibrahim had been a devout Muslim and was a regular at the shrines of the Sufi saints; Dawood had inherited this trait from his father. Incidentally, most of the underworld dons had some kind of special affinity with Makhdoom Shah of Mahim. In fact, Makhdoom Shah Baba is also popular not just with the mafia but also with the Mumbai police; the Mahim Police Station led the annual convention or ‘urs’ of the saint and every year the senior police inspector is given the responsibility of leading the procession with the customary thaal on his head, which is why the shrine of Abdullah Ghazi made this feel like a homecoming.

  Among the mafia, the Baba Bahauddin dargah in south Mumbai abutting Bombay Hospital also has a loyal fan following. The Baba is fondly referred to as the finance minister by the Muslim mafia. The Memons, Muslims from Gujarat considered a trader community, revere the Baba and most of them attribute their riches to him. Most Muslims in Mumbai genuflect before the Bahauddin Shah Baba near the Metro cinema in Mumbai ‘to ask for money’. They still talk about the rags-to-riches story of Mustafa Dossa alias Majnun, a don from Mumbai whose father unfailingly sang praises of the Baba every Friday. Mustafa Majnun’s brother, Haroon, a budding Sufi himself, still visits the dargah every day. It is said that if you ask the Bahauddin Shah Baba for money, he will shower it on you. ‘Sab log yahan paise ke liye mannat mangte hain [every devotee comes here wishing for money] and the Baba never disappoints. Hence he is known as the finance minister,’ he says.

  Dawood disposed of most of his properties in Dubai and wound up all his business interests in the Emirates so that the Indian agencies could never trace them back to him. By the end of 1994, Chhota Rajan had firmly ensconced himself in Kuala Lumpur, while Dawood and his tribesmen had found a safe haven in Karachi. The map had been rearranged, but the gangsters remained at large. After Chhota Rajan’s exit from the scene, Chhota Shakeel had officially donned the mantle of Dawood’s aide de camp and begun to handle the business of the D gang. Even though the gang’s headquarters had been reloca
ted from Dubai, Shakeel and his men outwardly maintained that they were still stationed in Dubai. In order to complete the deception that they were still working out of the emirate, Shakeel even used a Dubai SIM card, all the while safe in Pakistan.

  New to this seat of power, Shakeel began to flex his muscles, asserting his might. Unlike Rajan, who believed in centralised command and checked even on the lowest rung operator in Mumbai, Shakeel followed the principles of decentralised management. Sharad Shetty was assigned the fiefdoms of horse racing, cricket betting, and dealing with hoteliers and builders in Mumbai. Sautya was responsible for weapon handling, mediation in disputes and looking after imprisoned men, Shakeel himself had begun to coordinate film funding and hawala. Apart from this, Shakeel also poked his nose into other business interests like real estate. In spite of this over-reaching, he managed to keep everyone happy and remained in the good books of Dawood and his old friends—something which Rajan, known to be a very blunt person, had failed to pull off and rubbed everyone wrongly.

  Shakeel had learnt one thing from Dawood’s friends in the Turkish mafia and their operations in Cyprus though he claimed it as his own brainchild. He had begun cultivating young Muslim boys barely in their teens to use guns and shoot to kill. These school dropouts were from predominantly Muslim localities like Dongri, Pydhonie, Bhendi Bazaar, and Antop Hill areas. These teenagers, disillusioned with society, shouldered the burden of supporting a family prematurely and were frustrated at the prejudices against their community in the job sector. They were quickly drawn towards the lure of easy money.