My Name is Abu Salem

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  Jyoti was furious and asked what he wanted. ‘Now tell your brothers-in-law to pay up or I will kill all of them, one by one,’ Salem said. Jyoti slammed the phone down full of rage and fear. When her brother-in-law, Sunil, inquired about the caller, she just said ‘Abu Salem’ and began crying uncontrollably.

  Pradeep Jain’s killing had frightened his brothers. Sunil was initially hell-bent on approaching the police, but gave up the idea after he was reminded of the consequences. They agreed that they would resume payments, but there was a snag. They had a cash-flow problem and would be unable to make cash payments. Salem didn’t think much of it at the time and instead told them to give him some flats in the building they were constructing. After all, property nearly always appreciated in value, especially in a city like Mumbai and could easily be sold off for cash at a later date. It was at this time that he hit upon the marvellous idea of accepting flats as payment, if cash was unavailable.

  In 2006, the Indian government managed to secure Salem’s extradition from Portugal on eight cases, two of which were handled by the Mumbai Police. The Pradeep Jain murder case was one of the strongest cases against him. In the 2008 trial in Mumbai, it was Jyoti’s detailed testimony that was to prove to be one of the most important one against Salem.

  Nine

  Salem’s Killing Machines

  CONTRACT KILLINGS, OR SUPARI HITS, WERE considered a rather respectable profession in the Mumbai mafia through the 1980s and all the way till the late 1990s. The professionals would demand a hefty sum to kill a designated target in Mumbai; it was a truly lucrative business. There were two kinds of supari jobs. The first was a straight assignment, in which a business rival or relative wanted someone killed and was willing to foot the bill.

  The second was punishment killing, usually done at the behest of a mob boss. Traditionally, this treatment was meted out to business tycoons, assorted moneybags or friends of enemies, anybody who refused to meet the conditions laid down by a gangster. The consequence of their defiance was that they would pay with their lives. In either case, the idea behind the killing was simply to put on a display of brute power.

  One of the most talked about supari killings in the 1980s was that of Amirzada, Dawood Ibrahim’s arch-enemy and the boss of the Pathan syndicate. Amirzada had earned Dawood’s enmity because of his involvement in Dawood’s brother Sabir Kaskar’s death. Since Amirzada had already been arrested and was going through trials and court hearings, Dawood decided to have him killed dramatically in the court premises. Dawood picked Pardesi for the job and offered him a pay-off of Rs 50,000. The sum was so exorbitant in those days that it was the subject of animated discussion in police and underworld circles for years.

  It was much later that Dawood began using the police to eliminate his rivals in fake encounters. This method of settling scores was arguably a lot more economical and effective for the don. Until then, two pairs of shooters had become quite famous in Dawood’s gang—B2 and S2. Baba Gabriel and Bachchi Pandey were called Two Bee or B Square or B2.

  These ferocious shooters had executed many assignments for Dawood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their targets were not just people in Mumbai, but also scattered across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. Former Mumbai Police Commissioner Amarjeet Singh Samra did not rest until he chased them out of the Mumbai–Thane region, spelling the end of B2’s era in the Mumbai underworld.

  Dawood’s gang then saw the emergence of two deadlier assassins named S2—Sunil Sawant, alias Sautya, and Subhash Singh Thakur. They were considered killing machines, and sometimes referred to as ‘the undertakers’. Since the Mumbai mafia had begun using sophisticated weaponry in the 1990s, including Kalashnikov rifles, Sautya and Thakur both began using the AK-47 to eliminate their victims.

  The sharpshooter received a lot of respect and clout. The boss gave direct assignments to these killer squads and often rewarded them handsomely. In those days, every high-profile killing was planned by two pairs of shooters. The A team and B team comprised a main shooter and a supporting shooter. The idea was to have two teams of shooters so that there could be backup in case the primary team failed and so that someone could watch the main shooter’s back.

  As they gained in experience and won the confidence of the boss, the B team would be elevated to A team status. Everyone wanted to be promoted to the rank of sharpshooter in the gang. Some were natural hitmen, fearless while shooting and skilled at making a neat escape, while others were born disasters.

  Anil Parab, alias Wangya, one of Dawood’s ace shooters, was among those who aspired to become a hitman, but his first assignment had bombed badly. He had been entrusted the task of silencing a witness, Hansraj Shah, in Vikhroli court and had totally failed. He could not make his mark as a hitman until he teamed up with Sautya. However, this partnership did not do well either and it was only when he partnered Subhash Singh Thakur that Sautya struck top form.

  Once he moved to Dubai, Salem knew that he needed ace sharpshooters who could work for him as enforcers just as the men Dawood had once employed. It was convenient to have a dozen boys do his bidding, but the responsibility of conducting a recce, identifying a target, keeping a watch on the quarry and then finally moving in for the kill was a different ball game altogether. Ten street ruffians did not have the ability to do what a single trained assassin could. And a gang’s reputation was built on the ferocity of its sharpshooters.

  The first deadly shooter to join Salem’s gang was Salim Shaikh, alias Salim Haddi. Salim is a common Muslim name and the underworld had its fair share of Salims. So to distinguish them they were given an additional title. So, for example, if one Salim had driven a tempo before joining the gang, he was named Salim Tempo. Another Salim who specialized in the fake passport business was called Salim Passport. Salim Bismillah Khan who lived in Kurla, also an accused in the serial blasts case, came to be known as Salim Kurla. One Salim who had used a sword in booth capturing in South Mumbai for a Congress candidate earned the title of Salim Talwar. There were half a dozen more Salims who were employed in the underworld and had similarly strange titles.

  Salim Shaikh, or Salim Haddi, had been a jobless and desperate young man. He was living in abject poverty and his family was on the verge of starvation. A school dropout, Salim was a reed-thin youth with a prominent Adam’s apple which became more pronounced whenever he was nervous or stressed. He faced humiliation everywhere until he was given a job as a hitman by Salem.

  He was named Salim Haddi because haddi is Hindi for bone. The epithet couldn’t have been more apt. Salim seemed to have no flesh on his body, only bones. This youth became one of the most dreaded sharpshooters in the underworld and thus became more notorious than all his namesakes.

  However, since Salem modelled himself on Dawood, he was keen to find a killing partner for Haddi. But no one really fit the bill. This went on for a while until finally, the Mumbai Police provided Salem with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Constable Rajesh Igwe, of Local Arms (LA) Division-II at Naigaon, had been suspended from service for dereliction of duty. Igwe was an alcoholic and despite being given commando training, always reported late for duty.

  Very few policemen were trained in handling sophisticated weapons, and Igwe was among those few commando cops who were comfortable with guns of any calibre. His unprofessional behaviour and lack of discipline though had earned him the wrath of his superiors. Normally, temporary suspension from duty worked as a deterrent for most cops as it not only meant loss of face among colleagues but also a loss of nearly 25 per cent of salary. But Igwe was intransigent. Nothing could tame or reform him, and it was just a suspension.

  As police constables from LA-II wing were normally posted on escort duty, to ferry criminals from jail to courts and back, they were in frequent contact with criminals from several gangs. It was during the course of one of those escort duties for a member of Salem’s gang that Igwe heard that the gang’s leader was looking for a sharpshooter.

  Soon after his suspension,
Igwe began to get desperate for money and decided to get in touch with Salem in Dubai and offer his services. Salem was waiting for this opportunity and immediately inducted Igwe into his gang, thereby becoming the first mafia don to have a serving policeman work for him as a sharpshooter. The trend would be followed by Amar Naik much later who began hiring suspended or dismissed policemen as gang members.

  Thus, the Haddi–Igwe duo unleashed terror in the city. Igwe’s background as a policeman proved to be immensely helpful in conducting recce missions and avoiding the police dragnet. And they killed several high-profile people leaving the city’s police baffled at their temerity. The duo’s successful run boosted Salem’s stock in the underworld by several notches. His bosses were pleased with his work and his peers had begun feeling jealous about his rising notoriety and growing menace in the city. Later on, Salem would recruit a bigger army of shooters, but Igwe remained the jewel in his crown and his recruitment into the mafia was a real coup—a police officer suddenly jumps ship and begins working for the underworld; you couldn’t make up a more incredible story if you wanted to.

  Ten

  Salem Imports Rent-a-Killer

  PRADEEP JAIN’S KILLING HAD ANNOUNCED THE arrival of Salem on the underworld scene. Whenever Salem called anyone, he’d mention casually that Jain had been punished for his impudence and that the same fate could befall them too if they didn’t fall in line. The builders in question would instantly pay up.

  Very soon, the builder community started paying up without any negotiations or even a perfunctory struggle. Salem started filling the coffers of Anis Ibrahim which had begun to dry up. Both Dawood and Anis were extremely pleased with Salem’s progress. Within the span of a year, Salem had not only managed to get himself deeply entrenched in the underworld but also vastly increased the income of the D-Company.

  Salem soon got an office near Naif Road in Deira, Dubai, after the twelfth-floor office in Pearl Tower. Anis already had King’s Video in Dubai. Salem went ahead and opened a car showroom in Karamah and called it King of Cars. Salem got five bungalows in the swanky neighbourhood of Jumeirah Beach. He began using one as a residence, the other as an office, and the remaining three were rented out.

  Soon, he became a law unto himself. He was given total freedom to operate as he wanted. He could pick and choose any victim; he could summon any businessman to Dubai to extract money or torment him. Salem’s success, though, had actually been a major fluke. There was no method to his madness or finely developed strategy behind his success.

  It was partly out of frustration and partly out of an unending need to impress Anis that Salem began calling random rich people in Mumbai and threatening them. Buoyed by the fact that his first few threats had ended successfully, Salem began having weapons sent to Mumbai from Nepal. These weapons would be for the motley crew of shooters he was slowly assembling.

  The modus operandi for the hits was to get a message across to Salim Haddi who had become Salem’s top man for the job. Salim Haddi would immediately rush to a phone booth in Chembur and call Salem for the details of the hit or scare. While Salem was busy conveying his boss’s ‘requirements’ to builders, film producers, industrialists, etc., Salim Haddi would be mobilizing shooters for the job. If the targets—as these builders, film producers and industrialists were referred to—refused to comply, shooters were sent over to their office. Often, the targets buckled and agreed to pay up via hawala transactions. If the targets failed to comply, they would be killed. It was rather simple.

  Finally, Salem began to be accorded the sort of respect he felt he deserved from his boss, Anis. The latter was so pleased with all the money that Salem was earning for him and the terror he was spreading in his name that the fledgling gangster who had begun taking big strides in the underworld slowly became Anis Ibrahim’s blue-eyed boy. Not everything changed, however. Anis continued to order Salem to mix a drink or fetch a cup of tea, even in front of other guests. But Salem swallowed his pride and remained loyal to his master.

  The next major hit that Salem scored after Pradeep Jain was the killing of Chembur builder Om Prakash Kukreja. Kukreja was shot dead on 18 September 1995 in his office in the north-eastern suburb of Mumbai. Subsequently, a relative of Kukreja’s travelled to Dubai and paid Rs 1 crore to Salem for providing amnesty to others in the Kukreja clan. The killing of Kukreja really shook the Mumbai builder community.

  Now, Ranjit Singh Sharma, who was then the joint commissioner of police (crime), and Rakesh Maria, who was the deputy commissioner of police, decided to take on the growing menace of the Salem gang. The gang’s shooters were shortlisted and killed in police encounters. Haddi and Igwe, both ace shooters, were killed within weeks of Kukreja’s murder. The idea was to not only curb the growing terror of Salem’s gang but also send a message to others not to join him. For a while, many shooters felt jittery and nervous.

  Salem knew that it would be difficult to groom another pair of shooters like Haddi and Igwe. Additionally, shooters were quite expensive and their maintenance took a massive toll on the gang’s finances and resources. If these shooters were to be arrested, Salem would have to spend money on their legal defence and pay for the upkeep of their families. For Salem, once the shooter was picked up by the police, he was reduced to the status of a non-performing asset and any kind of further expenses on him would be seen as zero return on investment.

  From his days as a smuggler, Salem had preferred businesses that required low investment and zero maintenance. He now came up with an unconventional idea that not only revolutionized the contract killing business in the city but also threw a major challenge to the Mumbai Police.

  Salem got in touch with his cousins and relatives back home in Sarai Mir and asked them to look for boys who were unemployed, keen on travelling to Mumbai, hungry to earn a decent wage without working too hard and had the guts to do anything that was asked of them. Salem was very keenly aware of the poverty and desperation in the villages where even a daily earning of Rs 100 was regarded as substantial income. Also, these village boys were full of bravado and were willing to get violent at the slightest provocation. Most of them had also wielded country-made revolvers or handguns in skirmishes.

  Salem decided to import these desperadoes to Mumbai. Their job would entail shooting a victim from point-blank range and escaping immediately thereafter. He was then supposed to return the gun to the person who had given it to him and board the Gorakhpur Express the next day. Salem promised a return railway ticket and a cash reward of Rs 5000 for such jobs. Even if these youths were arrested, Salem neither had to foot their legal bills nor did he have to financially support the family. ‘I can get boys to kill anyone in Mumbai for a remuneration of just Rs 5000. If they fail, I don’t lose anything. If they succeed, I get the job done for loose change,’ Salem apparently told his people in Dubai.

  For Salem, Rs 5000 may have been petty cash but for the villager it was enough money to kill someone. Suddenly, Salem had a surfeit of boys willing to pull the trigger at his command. The police were baffled by these new entrants into the killing business. These youths had no previous record, no roots in Mumbai, came from nowhere and vanished into thin air after the killing. Never mind the shooters, the police could not even locate the middlemen or any other links to the killing. For several months, the Mumbai Police groped in the dark until they managed to nab one of the shooters who had come to kill a top film director, and thus the beans were spilled.

  There was another variation added to the mix. In the past, seasoned errand boys or experienced courier guys were assigned the task of delivering the weapons to the shooters. However, now Salem decided to use poor Muslim women as couriers for the gang. These women were either widows of his men (who had been killed by the police) or relatives of his people. Out of fear of Salem, they went ahead and did the job and also got paid. The only difference was that Salem was paying them a fraction of what he had paid experienced delivery men.

  It was a fantastic idea that paid divi
dends, and Salem managed to implement it as long as his village had no shortage of willing youths. An unlettered man, Salem had introduced to the underworld the concept of ‘disposable’ assassins. It was the perfect example of ‘single-use’ killers. This earned him further brownie points with his bosses.

  Eleven

  Taming Bollywood

  BACK IN THE 1990S, BOLLYWOOD WAS nothing like the sanitized, studio-controlled, corporate-financed industry it is today. Tinsel town had its moguls and its mandarins who, along with Mumbai’s realty players, controlled incredible sums of black money. So it was only natural that when Salem decided to go beyond the construction business, it would be to the veritable gold mine of Bollywood.

  The first target would be Subhash Ghai, one of the reigning maharajas of superstardom. Ghai’s cash registers had been ringing and coffers overflowing ever since his 1993 box office superhit Khalnayak, starring Salem’s now-on, now-off friend Sanjay Dutt. The director’s stocks had soared so much that he could even sign Shah Rukh Khan for a film.

  This, Salem believed, was the perfect time to send Bollywood a message. And the target would be Ghai. Salem deputed five youths from Azamgarh to deliver this ‘hit’. But the deputy commissioner of police, Zone VII, Satyapal Singh, received intelligence about the hit squad. He immediately assigned the task of foiling the attack to his special squad, led by Assistant Inspector Pradeep Sharma. The police team laid a trap and arrested the quintet of would-be killers.

  Salem, on his part, continues to maintain that he had never intended to kill the director. All he wanted was to send out a message to him. And that missive was: ‘Pay up now or be prepared to face dire consequences.’ Later, Ghai said in an interview that Salem had called him and spoken to him quite politely. Salem wanted the foreign rights for his movie Pardes and when Ghai told him that it had already been signed away, Salem asked for a print of the movie so that he could make pirated copies and sell them. Salem also reportedly told Ghai that he was a big fan of his work.