by Vaseem Khan
‘Chopra? Is that you? It’s Garewal here. Shekhar Garewal.’
‘Garewal?’ Chopra’s tone was one of surprise. ‘How are you, Garewal? It’s been a long time.’
‘Yes, it has.’ Garewal went silent. Chopra had a sudden sense that Garewal was struggling to speak, that there was a hint of desperation behind his call. ‘Look, I don’t have long. They’re not allowing me to see or call anyone. One of the… others here lent me his phone. Any second now he’ll take it back… I need your help, Chopra. I need you to come down here and help me.’
‘Look, Garewal, what is this about?’
‘I’m in a big jam, old friend. I need you to come right away before they bury me in here.’
‘Where are you exactly?’
‘I’m in Arthur Road Jail.’
Some prisons, in enlightened countries, are designed to rehabilitate those who have gone astray. Others are engineered to provide a suitable environment to safely house those who might be a danger to others and to themselves.
In the annals of penology, Chopra reflected, there had probably never been a prison like the Arthur Road Jail.
Mumbai Central Prison – as it is officially designated – occupies two acres of prime real estate near the Seven Roads district in the southern part of the city. Almost a century old, it is Mumbai’s oldest and largest prison. The prison had originally been built to house eight hundred inmates – it now served as home to almost three thousand. The horrendous overcrowding, which he had witnessed on his not infrequent visits, was beyond comprehension to those who had not personally experienced it. Barracks designed for fifty were routinely crowded with two hundred, so that inmates were forced to sleep on top of one another or in awkward positions like somnolent yogis. Sanitation was non-existent, hygiene a dirty word. Lice were rampant. Bedbugs crawled openly over the filthy blankets that served as beds. In the canteen, rats and cockroaches conducted parade ground manoeuvres with impunity.
Chopra knew that prisoners in the jail had the highest rate of HIV in the country and were routinely abused both by their fellow inmates and the hardened guards. Murder was commonplace, the suicide rate off the scale.
Mumbai Central was also one of the few major prisons in the world to be surrounded by commercial and residential properties. A few feet from the jail’s roll call of desperate criminals were ordinary Mumbaikers, rich and poor, proceeding with their daily lives in blissful ignorance of the ocean of hate and anger dammed in nearby behind just a few flimsy walls of stone and barbed wire.
Chopra parked his converted Tata Venture in one of the network of alleys that surrounded the jail. The grey van, with its darkened glass panels and reinforced frame, had been refitted to his specifications. He had wanted a means of moving Ganesha around the city and by engaging his mechanic friend Kapil Gupta to remove the van’s rear seats and strengthen the chassis, he now had a vehicle capable of doing just that.
After he had made the decision to permanently adopt him, Chopra had realised that Ganesha grew listless spending all day in his compound. Elephants are emotional and highly intelligent creatures. Ganesha required more than his material needs to be considered in the matter of his upbringing. Chopra instinctively felt that the sights, sounds and smells of the city would provide his ward with the stimulation that all growing children craved.
And so he had got used to loading the elephant calf into the van each morning and taking him out on his various errands. Eventually, he began to take Ganesha along on the cases he was working on.
It soon became apparent that his inquisitive young companion possessed an innate affinity for the role of private investigator. Ganesha was a master of the art of surveillance, spending hours in the van with him while they waited for some errant husband to emerge from his secret love nest, or for a crooked businessman to furtively exit the offices of a hawala trader where he had just illegally converted black money into white.
Sometimes, in the lazy heat of the day, Chopra would find himself drifting off, only to be prodded awake by Ganesha’s trunk just in time to see their quarry hustling along the street. The little elephant was tirelessly vigilant, he had discovered, and as long as he was regularly fed could stand in one position all day awaiting developments. By the end of their watch the floor of the van was usually ankle-deep in Cadbury’s Dairy Milk wrappers and discarded cartons of mango juice.
Chopra patted Ganesha on the head. ‘I won’t be long, boy,’ he said, then left the van, taking care to leave an open window.
He walked to the front entrance of the jail, with its familiar yellow and blue painted steel gate. To the side of the jail a blacksmith hammered away at a horseshoe bent over his anvil while a tongawalla fed a banana to his mare. Next door to the smithy a goat was tethered to a lamppost below a butcher’s signboard. A rancid smell emanated from the open shopfront. A desperate chicken emerged from the shop, hotly pursued by a burly man in ragged shorts and a blood-stained T-shirt. As Chopra looked on, he swept the zigzagging bird up in his arms, passed a meaty forearm over his sweat-soaked brow, then retreated back into his cave.
A pair of constables armed with automatic rifles straightened as Chopra approached.
He removed his wallet from his pocket and flashed the identity card that had been issued to him following his successful cracking of the human trafficking ring earlier in the year. It was the only reward he had been willing to accept from a Chief Minister eager to distance himself from the stink of discovering that a number of his close friends were embroiled in the scandal.
As a retired police officer Chopra could no longer carry a police badge. But the new identity card proclaimed him ‘Special Advisor to the Mumbai Police’ and was duly stamped and signed – albeit grudgingly – by the Commissioner of Police, Mumbai. The card was invaluable as it opened many doors that would otherwise have remained closed.
On the bottom of the card was the motto of the Mumbai Police – ‘To protect the good and to destroy the evil’.
The guards squinted suspiciously at it, and then made a call into the jail from a phone inside their hut.
Moments later the gates swung open and Chopra entered.
He showed his card to another set of guards and was let through a pair of arched doors into the main complex where he was met by an impatient clerk who enquired haughtily as to his business. Chopra knew that the best way to deal with such a man was to be brisk to the point of rudeness. He adopted a high-handed attitude.
‘My business is confidential, sir. Did you not read my identity card? I am a “special advisor”. I have been sent here to speak to Garewal. That is all you need to know.’
The clerk hesitated. ‘Sir, Inspector Garewal is under special warrant. I have instructions from Warden Sahib that he is to speak to no one without Warden’s express permission.’
‘Is the warden higher than the Chief Minister?’ roared Chopra. ‘Should I go back and tell him that I have been prevented from carrying out my duties by some white-shirted flunky? By some jumped-up adminwallah?’
The clerk grinned queasily. ‘Warden Sahib has gone out to a meeting. He will be back shortly. If Sir would care to wai—’
‘Wait?’ bellowed Chopra. ‘Do you think important matters of state can wait? Have you any idea what is going on, you oaf? The Prime Minister himself is breathing down the CM’s neck. The CM needs answers now, not when some dolt with four pens in his front pocket decides he should have them.’
The clerk paled. ‘Come this way, sir.’
They moved through the whitewashed administrative building and out into the prison’s main compound. Chopra squinted as the hard sun beat down against his face and onto the parched, dusty ground.
The jail was just as he remembered from his last visit.
Directly to his left was the holding cage for undertrials waiting to be transferred to the courts – a number of prisoners looked out between the bars, their expressions listless and grim. At the rear of the compound were the four large barracks that housed the bu
lk of the prison’s inmates; white, box-like buildings that reflected the sun and shimmered with lost hope and decaying dreams. In the far right corner lay the hospital, woefully under-staffed and under-resourced. A form of relative sanctuary was afforded to a lucky few by the twin buildings set before the hospital, the canteen and laundry, where prisoners fought for work. A few yards from the canteen, Chopra’s eyes alighted on the notorious Barrack No. 3, fiefdom of jailed members of the Chauhan gang.
His brow darkened.
He had dealt with Chauhan gang thugs in the past and considered them to be nothing less than vicious animals. Even Mumbai Central Prison was too good for them.
He completed his survey of the compound by looking to where the Anda Cell was located on his right, a brand-new nine-cell solitary confinement unit designed for the prison’s VIP guests – the maximum-security prisoners.
Chopra followed the clerk to the Anda Cell, which was surrounded by a high, wire mesh. The interior of the unit was laid out like a giant cake with nine slices. A narrow corridor led to a circular anteroom at the very centre of the cake where a bored guard sat behind a steel desk reading a copy of the Marathi Times.
The clerk spoke to the guard who reluctantly rose and led them to Cell 7. The guard punched a code into the keypad installed in the steel-plated door. It swung open and Chopra entered the cell, the door shutting automatically behind him.
The cell was dimly lit and it took a few seconds for his sun-blasted eyes to adjust to the gloom.
The room was spacious and, in comparison to the rest of the prison’s facilities, opulent. The floor was marbled and a generous-sized single bed was bolted against one wall. There was even provision for a private bathroom. A number of posters of Bollywood film actresses adorned the wall above the bed. Chopra suspected that they had been left behind by the previous incumbent.
He had never been inside the Anda Cell. He knew that it was where the top criminals were lodged – the dons of the underworld or those suspected of terrorist bombings. An exposé earlier in the year had revealed that through bribery and intimidation such men lived a life of ease inside the Arthur Road Jail. This image had enticed at least one man to attack the guards stationed outside the prison in the hope that he would be arrested and thus be able to enjoy the ‘luxurious life of a convict instead of struggling like a beggar on the streets’. The prison’s superintendent – the warden – had been arrested on bribery charges the previous year. He had been released on bail and remained in post, awaiting a trial date that would take years to arrive.
Slumped on the bed with his head in his hands was Inspector Shekhar Garewal.
Chopra had not seen Garewal in years.
Many moons ago they had worked together on a joint taskforce hunting down the suppliers of a new designer drug that had entered the city, working its way from the fashionable southern zones to the impressionable suburbs. Ultimately the taskforce had been successful and a number of unsavoury individuals with links to organised crime had been apprehended. Major shipments of the drug had been seized, and both Chopra and Garewal had been felicitated by their seniors. But since then the two officers had lost touch. Chopra had remained at the Sahar station, content to serve in the locality where he had spent most of his adult life. Garewal had moved on to better things.
Chopra remembered him now as an intensely ambitious man, one willing to cut corners when the need arose. For this reason he had never quite thought of Garewal as a friend.
Finally Garewal lifted his head from his hands and rose to face his visitor.
My God, what has happened to him? thought Chopra.
Garewal was wearing the standard uniform of the Indian penal system – white with black chevrons. His eyes were sunken and bruises had swollen his face, which seemed far older than his years. His short, greying hair was dishevelled. Garewal had never kept a moustache but a drunkard’s day-old stubble now darkened his chin.
Garewal stared at Chopra and then stepped forward to clasp him in a desperate embrace, sobbing uncontrollably into his shoulder.
Eventually the astonished Chopra found his voice. ‘Get ahold of yourself, Garewal,’ he said, perhaps more gruffly than he had intended. ‘What exactly is going on?’
Garewal stepped back, passing a sleeve across his face.
‘They’ve got me, Chopra. They’ve well and truly got me this time.’
‘Start from the beginning,’ said Chopra. ‘Don’t leave anything out.’
Garewal nodded, his eyes hollow. ‘It was my own fault. If I hadn’t asked my uncle…’
Chopra waited. ‘If you hadn’t asked your uncle what?’
‘Six months ago when they made the announcement about the Crown Jewels I knew that whoever got the job would be set for life. The post of in-charge for the security of the jewels, I mean. I knew that if somehow I got it I could write my own ticket afterwards. So I asked my uncle – you know, the one who works for the Chief Minister? – to put in a good word for me. Of course, I promised to pay him one lakh rupees to show my gratitude. And another lakh for the CM, of course.
‘The next thing I knew I was given the assignment. I thought all my Diwalis had come at once. It wasn’t as if I had to do too much thinking myself, you understand. There were all sorts of security experts to advise me. And the CM himself assigned the Force One brigade to the job. All I had to do was sit back and coordinate the operation. It was a dream gig.’
Garewal turned red-rimmed eyes to Chopra. ‘And now that the whole thing has blown up in my face, they’re blaming me. They’re saying I masterminded the whole show. That I stole the crown and with it the Koh-i-Noor!’
Chopra took a deep breath. ‘Did you?’
Garewal’s face was pained. ‘How can you ask me that? On the life of my children, I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Then why do they think you did?’
‘I don’t know. They say I knew all the security procedures and how to get around them. They say I asked for the job. That I’ve been planning this from the very beginning.’ Garewal looked ready to sob. ‘It’s a set-up, Chopra. They need a scapegoat and I am the goat. They’re going to black warrant me for this!’
‘Nonsense. You’re accused of theft, not murder. They can’t black warrant you.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? This is an international scandal. They need to show that they’re doing something. They’ll say I’m the mastermind and then they’ll arrange it so I’m silenced in here. A knife in the back. Or maybe a convenient suicide. They’ll never let me out of here, never. I am a dead man walking. Unless someone finds the real culprit.’
‘What makes you think they won’t?’
‘Because they’ve already nailed their colours to the mast. Oh, they’ll look all right, but as each day passes the pressure will mount. Sooner or later they’ll quietly drop it and announce to the world that all their enquiries have confirmed I am the one. And then I’m done for.’
‘But if you didn’t do it, they won’t get the crown back by pinning it on you.’
‘But at least they’ll have a culprit. And that’s why I won’t make it out of here alive. Once they publicly confirm me as the thief, I’ll have to be silenced. Even if they find the real thief later, they’ll say I was his accomplice. You know I’m telling the truth.’
Chopra allowed Garewal’s words to sink in, then said, ‘Why did you call me?’
‘Who else could I call? No one on the force will help me. They won’t even allow me a lawyer – they say my constitutional rights have been suspended because this is a case of national security. You are the only one who can help me now, Chopra. You are a private investigator. I’ve gambled my life on you. Do you know I had to promise that guard outside a thousand rupees just to use his mobile phone to call you? If you don’t help me, I am a dead man.’
Chopra thought Garewal would begin weeping again.
‘They beat me all last night,’ Garewal whispered, his eyes dropping to the floor. ‘I think tonight they will use th
e electrodes.’
Chopra thought about what he would do in Garewal’s position. He knew only too well the brutality with which his fellow officers often interrogated prisoners. And when the stakes were this high, who knew how far they would go.
He thought of Garewal’s children. A boy and a girl. The boy would be ten by now and the girl nine. How would they fare if their father never came home again? How would they live under the shadow of a father accused of a crime that would never be forgotten?
‘How did you know I would take the case?’ he asked finally.
Hope flared in Garewal’s eyes. He stepped forward and stood under the room’s single light fixture. The light threw shadows across his haggard features. ‘Do you remember that time we chased Arun Ganga up onto the roof of the old warehouse in SEEPZ?’
Chopra recalled the chase. In the dead of night Garewal had got a tip-off. He had roused Chopra and together they had gone into the industrial quarter known as SEEPZ, the Santacruz Electronic Export Processing Zone. The team had split up and, before Chopra knew it, he and Garewal were chasing the wanted serial murderer Ganga into a derelict warehouse.
‘Do you remember, on the roof, you had Ganga in your sights? You could have shot him then and no one would have known. He was not the kind of man anyone would have shed tears over and I would never have told anyone. So why didn’t you shoot him?’
Chopra was silent.
‘You always do the right thing, old friend,’ said Garewal. ‘Well, now I need you to do the right thing by me. I need you to save my life.’
Chopra turned as the door to the cell swung open and two men barged into the room.
‘Chopra! What the hell are you doing here?’
The words exploded from the short, portly man with bulging cheeks, pomfret eyes and a pencil moustache that looked as if it had been drawn on by a child. He was dressed in the khaki of an Indian police officer, though Chopra had never considered him worthy of the uniform.