by Aabid Surti
“Don’t the jail officials realize that the prisoner has been changed?”
“How would they know?” Sufi asked. “They haven’t seen the convict. The jail officials receive the names of the convicts and the substitute assumes that name.”
According to Sufi, no official in the government administration bothers to verify the names. If the prisoner has already been replaced in the lock-up and the police van arrives in the evening to pick up the convicts, the police inspector, who counts the head only, will never notice.
If, on a certain day, five persons are sentenced to prison, the inspector counts five heads and is satisfied. A similar head count is carried out in prison. It is not surprising that the underworld takes advantage of such loopholes in the system.
Sufi revealed another fact during today’s discussion that not all substitute prisoners are victims of human predicaments. Some of them set up shops in the prison. They can easily arrange for the supply of hashish, liquor of any brand or even ‘boys’. Besides the 300 rupees they get as substitutes, each of them earns two to three thousand rupees a month extra.
For Iqbal, petty tasks like arranging for a substitute are like kid stuff. But, he needs to be extra careful when it comes to smuggling of millions of rupees worth of contraband goods. He can undertake the venture only after making sure that its blueprint is foolproof.
He came up with a unique idea after a week’s serious planning that would give sleepless, agonizing nights to Khan. It was to carry out smuggling using transit post parcels. Just as orchestration happens in the embryonic stage of a new venture, many a cog needs to be fixed before experiments in smuggling.
Another month passed by. During this month, he had recalled three of his old colleagues. Dagdu, Michael and Sadru.
Wristwatches were to be smuggled. The Indian market was to be flooded with fancy watches from abroad. He spent three days in Dubai and finalized the deal with a sheikh. In exchange for wrist watches, silver was to be sent from India. (The price of silver was rising in the international market.)
The monsoon of watches set in Bombay the following month. Thousands of watches of world famous brands like Citizen, Seiko and Favre Leuba started appearing in the open market.
Khan’s head reeled. He was stunned by the staggering tide of foreign watches. And yet he was helpless. When a dam bursts, how can a single man stop the flooding?
It was certain, one could not dare to carry out smuggling on such a vast scale without the collaboration of top officials. Moreover, Khan would not gain much by arresting taporis who were selling watches in the retail market. These were just the small fry, merely the leaves of the banyan tree. If he plucked a leaf, another would grow in its place. As it was, how many leaves could he pluck?
The need of the day was to uproot the tree so that neither the trunk, nor the branches nor the leaves remained. But where were its roots?
These were the last months of the decade of the 60s. Despite a big dent in profits, Mastan had managed to continue smuggling gold. Yusuf Patel had become his partner. Mastan used to smuggle in gold and in return, Patel used to supply silver to send to Dubai.
The Narang brothers were neck-deep in the smuggling of idols. There was a great uproar in India after a rare statue of Natraj, that had vanished mysteriously, appeared in the private collection of an American billionaire Norton Simon.
The Lalas ruled over Dongri. Dawood was gradually rearing his head. The Lalas were from Peshawar, while Dawood was a Konkani. The Konkani gang was eager to confront the Lalas.
Not only had Bakhia engaged an entire island near Daman to carry out smuggling. he had opened his office under the banner of Meena Trading Agency in Dubai with branches in Hong Kong and Kowloon. One of his brothers-in-law was a Congress-I MLA, while the other managed his Dubai office.
Khan was bound to feel suffocated at a time when traffickers had sprouted like mushrooms. He failed to trace the gang responsible for flooding the Indian market with watches. He failed to comprehend even the route by which the watches came – by air, sea or from across the border? While he was trying to sort out the chaos in his head, a tapori hesitatingly entered the office of the customs collector Sonawale and sat down facing him.
“Yeah…!” Sonawale closed the file on his table and yawned. “What information have you brought?”
“About watches, Sir...”
“Go ahead.”
“About smuggled watches…”
“I understand that. What else?”
The tapori got a bit disappointed. He would have given a shocker had he been asked a specific question. For a while, he could not think what to say further. He had never before faced such a senior officer.
“The entire city knows that there has been a sudden spurt in contraband watches,” said Sonawale noticing the young man shrink. “If you have any concrete information...”
“Of course, I have!” He quickly continued, “an entire gang from Dongri is involved, Sir.”
For some unknown reason, the customs collector Sonawale was not in the proper frame of mind that day. He was yawning intermittently like a bored zoo lion. Perhaps he had skipped his morning tea. At least that is what was evident from his behaviour.
Looking dumbly at the tapori, he asked again, “Is that all?”
“The transit post parcel department is being used for smuggling.”
“How?”
“I don’t know that but my information is correct.”
“We can’t take action on the basis of such vague information.”
Frustration was writ large on the tapori’s face. There were two reasons why he had come here. One was the commission he would get on the seized contraband goods.
He was about to get up, when Sonawale took out a cigar from a small box on his table, put it between his lips and lit it. Showing little more interest, he asked, “Are you sure the watches come by post parcel?”
“Yes.”
“From where?” The tapori kept quiet. He then took a pull at the cigar and suggested, “From Hong Kong, Japan, Dubai…?”
He did not know.
“By which ship do they come?”
He was unaware.
“The consignment belongs to the mafia. Obviously it must not be addressed to a real name.”
“True.”
“Then on whose name does it come?”
The tapori started scratching his head.
“What is your name?”
“Ali,” he said.
He was a dropout from Habib High School and determined to snitch on Iqbal.
“Listen Ali, the transit department receives hundreds of parcels. We can certainly take action if you have some definite information about the parcels carrying smuggled goods.”
“But….”
“To investigate on the basis of such flimsy information, we need manpower. I neither have enough men nor time,” he said and assured him before closing the chapter, “yet I’ll think over the matter.”
Ali got up, crest fallen. Bastards…all of them get paid for doing nothing. He mumbled to himself. No one wants to work.
Returning home by bus, he spotted the CBI headquarters. (Bhesadia used to sit here up until his retirement.) Ali’s face glowed with hope again. He jumped off from the running bus and entered the building.
Here, inspector Kanetkar gave him a patient hearing. The information he had received was too specific to be relegated to fiction. He immediately contacted the DRI over the phone. (Khan and Rustomji were the crack officers of the DRI.) DRI is the topmost investigating agency of the customs department.
Inspector Kanetkar spoke briefly to DRI chief Wadhwan, put down the receiver and wrote something on a piece of paper. He put the paper in an envelope and giving it to Ali said, “Here is the DRI’s address. Show it to any peon there, he will guide you to the right officer.”
Ali boarded the bus for Colaba. The bus went forward. He slid back into the past. This was the same Ali who had studied with Iqbal in the same school. H
e was the one who had initiated Iqbal into the illicit business. Through him, Iqbal had met a hulk called Moghul and taken up the charge of supplying bottles of ethyl alcohol to liquor dens.
Thereafter, Ali had joined Mastan’s gang and bid goodbye to school, but was not able to make much progress, unlike Iqbal. He had remained only a tapori among the bootleggers. Frustrated, he decided to earn some extra money, and became an informer.
The work of an informer is dangerous. (Bali was one and the readers know how tragic his end was.) Hence, for his own safety, Ali started keeping a tab on minor players and informed the police as and when he got some valuable information.
Iqbal was not a small-time operator anymore. He had become a kingpin. He had his own gang, a retinue of government officials on his payroll and his own system of working. He had built an entire network on his own strength. He had also taken care that he remained an invisible man of the underworld. (DK was one such man because his name was hardly mentioned in newspapers.) Yet, Ali had made Iqbal his target. The second reason for it was professional jealousy.
When Ali reached the DRI headquarters at Colaba and entered the cabin of its chief Wadhwa, the latter was anxiously waiting for him. For the first time in his life, he was welcomed with a big smile. His mouth started watering, every drop glittering with the promise of a reward. However, his eyes, painted with malice, were speaking an altogether different dialect. The chief would definitely take action and Iqbal would be behind bars for at least five years.
“What’s your name?” the chief asked, leaning back in his chair.
Ali gave his full name.
“What do you do?”
“I’m unemployed,” he lied, adding, “I thought by giving you information on the mafia I’ll get a reward and I’ll be serving my country too.”
The chief smiled behind his bushy moustache.
Once the peon brought in two cups of tea, his confidence increased and whatever little doubt he still harboured had disappeared. Thinking afresh, he thought that Iqbal would disappear into the dungeon for at least ten years.
Sipping tea from a feather light china cup, he repeated with gusto all the information he had given to the customs collector and the CBI officer. On top of that, he also disclosed the name - Iqbal.
The chief put down the cup, made notes on a rough pad and looked at him. “Good.” He said cheerfully, then asked to crosscheck, “Now tell me, who is this Iqbal?”
“Patli.”
“Patli?”
“Since he is slim, he is known in Dongri by that name.”
He lifted the cup of tea, thought for a while and asked, “Ali, how many boys work for him in this racket?”
“Many, Sir. An entire gang.”
“How big is it? Two, five, twenty-five, fifty…how many members?”
He drank his tea, replaced the cup on the saucer and racked his brains. “Iqbal heads the gang. There are three toughies directly under him and under those three there are twenty-three, but I don’t know how many taporis work under these twenty-three crooks.” He paused and added. “I’m sure you have gotten the full picture!”
“You must be knowing the names of at least a couple of them.”
A name slipped from his lips, “Ganpat Chalke.”
“And, my dear, who is this Chalke?”
“He is an official of the postal department.”
“Where does he sit?”
“At the GPO {General Post Office}.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course, Sir.” Ali’s voice rose a bit. “I’d seen him having tea with Iqbal at a roadside stall.”
The information was enough for the chief. He had got a link to start the investigation. From this link, he could get on to other links and trap Iqbal. Once the queen and the knights were removed, the entire game of chess would be up. The remaining pawns would surrender automatically.
After Ali’s departure, chief Wadhwa looked at his pad. He once again went through his notes. To put the matter succinctly – a ‘computer’ called Iqbal patli was using the transit department of the GPO to his advantage with the help of a postal official called Ganpat Chalke.
The first question was – How?
It was clear that watches were being brought surreptitiously through the transit post parcels. It meant that the parcels were coming from abroad by ship to Bombay and yet they were not for Bombay. That’s why they were called transit parcels.
Let us now look at the transit division of the postal department.
If a party from Dubai wants to send a parcel to Africa, since there is no direct ship from there, all the parcels for Africa are loaded on the Bombay-bound ships. Since the ships terminate here, all the parcels for Africa are offloaded at Bombay and kept under lock and key in the transit division of the GPO.
When, in a week or so, an Africa-bound ship anchors at the Bombay port, all those transit parcels are loaded onto it.
The question that was bothering the chief was how there could be bungling in the sealed transit parcels when even the customs did not have the right to open them, since they were not for Bombay.
Suppose some of these parcels contained contraband goods and they were stolen from the transit department, then there would be a shortfall in the list of parcels that had been offloaded from the Dubai ship. This would also be noticed at the time of loading the parcels onto the Africa-bound ship. Yet no one had reported any missing parcels to the DRI chief until today.
Just to be sure, he made a telephone call to the customs collector. “Mr. Sonawale! Has it ever come to your notice that any of the transit parcels has been stolen?”
“No.”
“Does that mean that the information I’ve received is incorrect?”
Sonawale instantly realised that the young man who had visited him must have also gone to the DRI office.
“Even if the information is correct, we don’t have any clues to start an investigation.”
“We do have one,” he said correcting him and mentioned the name of the postal official Ganpat Chalke, who was bought over by the gang. “Now, I’ve a request to make.”
“Sure...”
“Don’t you dare meddle with this case.”
Sonawale put down the receiver. After a moment or two of stupefaction, he felt screwed and drops of sweat appeared on his forehead. He had failed in extracting information from Ali, whereas the DRI chief had been successful in getting an important link. Moreover, he had been insulted to his face. How would he salvage the situation unless he meddled in the case?
The DRI chief pressed the bell button. The peon standing outside popped in. “Send Mr. Khan to my cabin.” Khan was having tea with Rustomji at the time. The peon gave him the chief’s message. He was startled. He gulped down the remaining tea and got up.
“Khan!” The chief said, asking him to draw a chair. “You know a young man called Iqbal, right?”
“Sure,” he replied. “But if you are planning to catch him, just forget it.”
“Why?”
“He is a cunning fox. You won’t even realize when he sneaks into a field and vanishes.” He muttered to himself – If I could lay my hands on that son of a bitch…
“I’m giving you a clue.” The chief gave a cursory glance at his note pad. “Perhaps, this time his vanishing trick won’t work.”
After listening to the full story, Khan’s heart began to sing with joy. For him to begin an investigation, one clue was more than enough. Through Ganpat Chalke he could easily reach Iqbal. He was determined to catch them both red-handed.
Chapter 36
My fifth painting exhibition, titled Rhythm and Colours, was neither a success nor a failure. From the financial point of view, I could recover the expenses from the sale of a few paintings. But…
What the hell for?
A painter labours for months. What about the time he invests in his work?
Toiling day and night, he prepares for a painting exhibition. What about his effort?
; Barring this show, I had so far lost about twenty-five thousand rupees. Moreover, I had put in three years of labour.
Had I invested the same time, effort and capital on some other enterprise, financially I would have been in a sound position. I would have had status in society too. (Society treats destitute artists like untouchables.)
The moot question is – what did I expect from life? Opulence or ecstasy? Riches or bliss?
Those days, there was a bhaiyya from North India who sat on the pavement with a basket under our building to sell peanuts and rice flakes. By the time I had five painting exhibitions, he had bought a shop. He had also booked a flat in the newly constructed building nearby, while I remained where I was with a joint family in a single room, having had to sleep on the terrace under the open sky.
It was very clear that bundles of bank notes didn’t offer me much contentment. However, where to get the money to survive as an artist?
Generally, there is either an industrialist or a political party behind the success of a painter. There was no one backing me. It was not in my nature to forge ahead cajoling a sugar daddy, for I knew that soliciting a promoter meant making compromises with one’s principles.
