Dongri to Dubai - Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia

by Hussain Zaidi

  Rajan felt safer in Southeast Asian countries. With multiple Indian passports in his kitty, he kept shuttling between the various cities of Malaysia, Cambodia, and even Indonesia. Finally, Rajan realised that Thailand had the potential to become a safe haven. It was undoubtedly a more ‘India-friendly’ country than the others. Under the assumed identity of Vijay Daman, with an Indian passport issued from Chennai, Rajan rented a spacious flat in Charan Court in Bangkok’s plush neighbourhood of Sukhumvit Soi, 26th street.

  The idea was not to get a beautiful house but to ensure a location that was secure. It was a single-storeyed structure and had a massive wrought iron gate in front, with round-the-clock security arrangements. Rajan’s current location was known only to a handful of his trusted aides, which included his right-hand man, Rohit Verma, who was living under the assumed name of Michael D’Souza.

  Rajan had slowly begun to feel safe in the anonymity of Bangkok. He had begun to move around in Thailand and was exploring business opportunities that could legitimise his stay in the country. But on the advice of his controller in the Bureau, Rajan had not taken a Thai number. He was still using a Malaysian SIM card, but had managed to set up other logistics and a support system in Thailand. The hawala channel was organised, his local contacts from agencies were introduced, and he had received his instructions of do’s and don’ts. He had also identified the popular Indian joints that he needed to avoid. Ironically, Indian ganglords never imagined that their paths would cross with the infamous mafia from other countries of the world. Rajan happened to know of some of the top bosses of the Triads in Bangkok, one of the world’s most dreaded mafia, but he neither thought of collaborating with them, nor did he want to risk anything that would irk them. Things were fine the way they were.

  But Rajan’s feeling of peace and security was short lived. One fine day he got a tip-off from his controller that he should not be leaving the protection of his house. He was also told to restrict his movements within the country. Rajan was stunned when he realised that Shakeel’s men were there on the lookout for him.

  Apart from his wife Sujata and a couple of highly trusted lieutenants, Rajan had not disclosed to anyone that he had moved to Bangkok. In fact, he had not even changed his cellphone number. But his agency man was serious and had told him clearly that 8 to 10 men were trying to track him down and that their campaign had been on for the last couple of months. The threat to his life was really serious, Rajan was told.

  Rajan and Verma had become alert and wary of people moving around Sukhumvit Soi. But it is human tendency to take any threat seriously when it is fresh. As days pass and no untoward movement is seen, people tend to become complacent. Rajan waited things out for days and then weeks, but when nothing happened and not even a suspicious movement was reported around his house, he presumed that the intelligence input was a hoax and the agency had raised a false alarm.

  There was no reason for Rajan to feel complacent, as he himself had been part of such long term missions. In a high stake game of assassination, sometimes one has to wait for the quarry not for months, but for years. Former French President Charles De Gaulle and late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, both had survived over thirty assassination attempts. Fidel Castro survived assassination attempts from his own relatives. And in several cases the assassins patiently waited for a year to strike, but still could not achieve what they set out to do.

  In the case of Rajan, Shakeel had been working on the job for six months. His men had been scouring all the probable hideouts of Rajan. From Australia to Malaysia and from Hong Kong to Bangkok, they had hunted for him everywhere. But everywhere they drew a blank except for a small but significant kernel of information: that Rajan and Verma were together.

  It was never known how Shakeel’s men managed to trace Rajan’s whereabouts down to the precise details of his Bangkok address. The hit team which was tracking him for months got lucky and found themselves with Rohit Verma’s address. Shakeel, in one of his interviews, later revealed that he thought as Verma wanted to become a don himself and topple Rajan, he had tipped-off Shakeel’s men. After getting the address, six sharpshooters from Mumbai led by Munna Jhingada were assigned the task of killing Rajan.

  Jhingada, a Mumbai-based sharpshooter who reached Karachi via Kathmandu, met Shakeel, who briefed him about the plan, availability of the weapon, escape possibilities, and gave him access to endless supply of cash. Jhingada had never been given so much importance in his life. Money and proximity to his master made him feel heady. He agreed to kill Rajan even if it meant giving up his life.

  Jhingada was given Pakistani citizenship through Shakeel’s contacts. Travelling on a Pakistani passport, Jhingada became Mohammad Salim when he disembarked from a Pakistan International Airlines flight in Bangkok. On 31 August 2000, Jhingada made the first breakthrough when he discovered that Verma along with his wife Sangeeta and his 2-year-old daughter were staying in Charan Court on Sukhumvit Soi. Jhingada was instructed to rent a flat opposite Charan Court. Fortunately, with the help of a local businessman known as Cirrac (according to a police dossier), he rented a place in Amree Court. The location was such that Jhingada could keep a close watch on Rajan and Verma in Charan Court.

  Now, the plan to strike was in its final stages. Shakeel sent more men from Karachi, who also moved into Amree Court along with Jhingada on 11 September. All the preparations were in place and the men were waiting for the final call from Karachi.

  The call came on the morning of 14 September and the final briefing was given to Jhingada with the instructions that the attack had to be carried out on the same evening without fail. Jhingada in his earlier reconnaissance had discovered that the massive gate in the premises of Charan Court remained closed from inside and that it was guarded round-the-clock by two burly men.

  It was easy to get rid of the men but any sign of violence at the gate would alert Rajan inside, giving him enough of a headstart to escape. There had to be a non-violent way of entering the building premise.

  Finally, a way was found. Four Thai men dressed in black suits approached the gate. They were carrying a huge birthday cake. They told the guards at the gate that it was the birthday of Michael D’Souza’s little daughter and his Indian friends wanted to surprise the family with the cake. The guard looked at them suspiciously but the cake and the men seemed harmless. Even as they were considering the pros and cons, when a 200-dollar bill was slipped into their palm, the decision was made easier. The gate was opened and the four men slowly drove their car inside the premises. As the guards moved to close the gates, four more Indians showed up out of nowhere and pounced on them. The guards were overpowered and trussed up. These four men who had roughed up the guards were now stationed at the gate.

  Jhingada and his Thai aides stealthily entered the building and knocked at the door of Rajan and Verma’s first floor flat. The door was opened by Verma, who was startled to see four men at the door. Even before Verma could get a gun or alert Rajan, a volley of bullets mowed him down. They stormed the house and began scouring for Rajan. Verma’s wife was also injured in the firing, while his maid servant and daughter were locked inside a room. Rajan, who was in another room, heard the gunshots and was not prepared for this sudden attack at all.

  Considering the choice between fight or flight, he chose the latter. He immediately locked the door and began looking for a way to reach the ground floor. The gunmen, after having searched the whole flat, including the washroom, finally realised that he was in the bedroom. They tried to push open the door but it did not give way. Without wasting any time, they started firing indiscriminately at the wooden door.

  One bullet managed to pierce through the door and hit Rajan in his abdomen, as he searched for a rope with which to climb down the building. Rajan, in a state of panic, jumped out of the window and landed on the thick bushes below. A profusely bleeding and petrified Rajan crawled down and managed to hide himself a
midst the thick foliage in the compound. Finally, when the assailants managed to break open the door, they found that the room was empty and splotches of blood were everywhere including the window. They thought Rajan had managed to escape. No one imagined, even for a moment, that he could be lying beneath the bushes barely a few feet away. The whole attack was over in less than five minutes.

  But the non-stop gunshots were enough to alert the entire neighbourhood and the police. The cops rushed to the spot and apart from blood, gore and a dead Verma, they recovered sophisticated weapons from the spot left behind by the shooters.

  Meanwhile, Rajan, through his contacts, had managed to contact the Thai police, who rushed him to the Intensive Care Unit of Smitivej Hospital. Eyewitnesses recount that Rajan was terrified after the attack and desperate for protection. He was also delirious and kept screaming ‘they will bomb the hospital’ through the night.

  The once confident, cocksure don was now a scared, shattered man, hallucinating about the end of his days.

  18

  The Art of Survival

  The news of the attack on Chhota Rajan trickled down to Mumbai on the afternoon of 15 September 2000. The television channels and news websites had reported the killing of an Indian gangster who was probably Chhota Rajan in Bangkok. It was widely speculated that Rajan had been killed by the Triads because they did not like an Indian gangster on their turf. The Indian media and the police, back then, could not have imagined that it was actually the Karachi-based Chhota Shakeel who had organised this killing from afar. Until Sheela Bhatt (from Rediff.com) and I (from eindia.com) spoke to Shakeel on the same day and carried his detailed interviews, details of the incident remained hazy. Shakeel, in an interview with Sheela, had boasted of his planning and his men’s courage. This is also when Shakeel revealed that it was Rohit Verma, who wanted to take over the mantle of the gang, who had tipped him off about Rajan’s whereabouts.

  By evening the news of this death had spread across the corridors of power in New Delhi and Mumbai. The top brass of central intelligence were chiefly concerned about the shift of balance and the establishment of Dawood’s hegemony, which would be the outcome of Rajan’s elimination. The police, however, heaved a sigh of relief.

  But when official channels got involved and the Ministry of External Affairs got in touch with the Thai government, they found out that Vijay Daman alias Chhota Rajan was quite alive and out of danger.

  Whatever followed is beyond comprehension for most Indians who were following the news of the assault on Rajan in Bangkok, barring a few of the senior police officers of the Mumbai police who desperately made efforts to reach Rajan for interrogation and subsequently to get him extradited to India.

  In fact, even the sharpest newshounds and analysts faced a wall of deafening silence when it came to the Rajan saga in Thailand. The events following the attack on Rajan unfolded in the most bizarre manner. It seemed more confounding and till date, there is no real clarity regarding what went down. Soon after the attack on Rajan, Shakeel had clearly bragged in his telephonic interviews to reporters in Mumbai that his men had docked a speedboat on the Bangkok coast to make a swift getaway after the killing.

  But barely two days after the incident the ringleader Munna Jhingada, and his accomplice, Sher Khan, were arrested at Robinson Departmental Store in the Bang Rak area. Another shooter, Mohammad Yusuf, was arrested at Sukhumvit Soi and the local Thai shooter Chavalit was arrested at a flat in Intarnara Soi area. All four were purportedly those who had attacked Rajan.

  While the arrests of these shooters were inexplicable, a confidential dossier of the Mumbai police explained they were part of a strategic move of Chhota Shakeel’s, who let his men surrender and show them as cooperative so that he could score brownie points with the Royal Thai police.

  A team of police officers led by Assistant Commissioner of Police Shankar Kamble was sent to Bangkok to interrogate and extradite Rajan. The team reached Bangkok and met Police Colonel Kriekpong, who was in charge there. They apprised him that Vijay Daman was none other than the Indian gangster Chhota Rajan living under an assumed identity.

  A private jet parked at the Bangkok airport was hired by Rajan’s men to whisk him away. But with Kriekpong’s intervention, the plan was foiled and Rajan was detained for the offence of illegal entry into Thailand. However, Kriekpong, who until that day was cooperation personified, did an about turn soon after.

  The dossier adds that Kriekpong told the Mumbai police team that as they never sought the assistance of the Mumbai police, there was no way that they could become part of the investigation. Also, as neither Interpol nor the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had conveyed to them the impending visit of the Mumbai police, there could not be any official communication between them, Kriekpong told the Mumbai police team.

  The Mumbai police was making desperate efforts to ensure that they got hold of Rajan, while the Royal Thai police expected communication through diplomatic channels, which was not forthcoming. Even as a series of requests and reminders were made to the First Secretary for an official draft to the Thai government, no such letter was issued by the Indian government. The Mumbai police soon understood that Colonel Kriekpong would not cooperate with them. He had not allowed them to have any meetings with Rajan or his assailants, who were also under detention.

  The Mumbai police made a last ditch effort, proposing for Rajan’s extradition from Bangkok. The documents were routed through CBI and Interpol in Delhi. But the papers never reached Bangkok.

  Even as the Indian bureaucrats were procrastinating over the sending of these documents, formal extradition requests and such other important communication, Rajan’s wound was healing fast.

  Over seventy days had passed after the incident and the Mumbai police, despite a couple of visits, had not been able to make any headway in the case. Nor were they any closer in getting Rajan back on Indian soil.

  And then, on 24 November, Rajan mysteriously disappeared from the Smitivej Hospital. His escape was next to impossible, situated as he was on the heavily guarded fourth floor room of the hospital. His escape was unanticipated especially as Rajan was not only physically unfit but also overweight and weakened by his wound.

  Several theories were offered around his escape. The Thai police claimed that Rajan took the help of professional mountaineers to escape and climb down the four floors of the hospital. Thailand’s scientific crime detection division found mountaineering rope and descender equipment along the wall of the hospital and found scratches and traces of cement on them, which confirm that they were used in Rajan’s getaway, reported Bangkok Post.

  According to the report, professionals helped Rajan slip down the 40-metre rope from the fourth floor of the hospital within minutes. The 13-mm rope had a breaking point of 200 kg. A man was also seen buying the rope and the equipment from a shop in a locality in Bangkok called Soi Rangnam, the paper reported.Deputy Commander of the Division Chuan Voravanich, had forwarded these findings to chief investigator of the Thonglor Police Station, Mantharn Abhaiwong.

  According to other news reports, Rajan’s Thai lawyer, Sirichai Piyaphichetkul had a simpler explanation: Rajan paid 25 million baht ($5,80,000) to Thai police major-general Kriekphong Phukprayoon—who later denied it—in exchange for his freedom. He simply walked out of Smitivej to a car waiting outside to drive him away to safety.

  Rajan’s escape and the police’s fanciful account of what happened at Samitivej on 24 November have caused considerable embarrassment in Thailand. Nine non-commissioned police officers were sacked for ‘grave negligence’.

  The same paper also claimed that the commander of Metropolitan Police Division 5, Krisda Pankongchuen, had ordered investigations into a report that a number of police officers had visited Rajan at the hospital to receive money.

  Thailand’s Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai has said that he believed the Indian mafia figure could
not have escaped without help. ‘Obviously it would not have been possible for Rajan to escape if his helpers never stood to gain anything,’ he said.

  The Maharashtra state government was just as stupefied at this unprecedented vanishing act, that too from a secure hospital. The Maharashtra home minister, who was also the Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, had vociferously alleged that the Centre allowed the gangster to escape. He reiterated the hurdles and obstacles that the Mumbai police faced at every juncture and how their efforts were sabotaged by lack of cooperation by the central government.

  These allegations made by such an authority with so much conviction. stung the Union government. Silence on their part would have been only detrimental.

  The then Minister of State for External Affairs Ajit Panja got into damage control mode and claimed that the Centre had done whatever the Thai government wanted it to do for Rajan’s extradition. ‘But, if they [the Maharashtra government] have said so it is absolutely wrong. Point to point action was taken and there was no delay on our part,’ Mr Panja was quoted as saying. The Union Minister of State for Home Vidyasagar Rao said it was not proper for anybody to comment on this case till the government received full details of the incident.

  The mystery of Rajan’s disappearance had only deepened after such statements from the government. A certain section of the media reported it as a ‘conspiracy of silence’.

  However, Rajan’s lawyer remained forthcoming with whatever details he could share with the media. Sirichai claimed that Rajan phoned him from ‘abroad’ to tell him about how he had bribed the Thai police officials. He said Rajan was in Cambodia and was intending to go to a third country, possibly in Europe. According to another version by Sirichai, Rajan was in a Southeast Asian country, planning to continue his journey to ‘somewhere’ in the Middle-East.