Byculla to Bangkok

by Hussain Zaidi

  Shakeel and Sautya had by now begun consolidating their position in the gang. Sautya had inducted more than fifty men and ensured that every cog was well oiled. With this newly formed gang, he let loose a reign of terror in the western suburbs, from Bandra to Dahisar, extorting money from builders, real estate agents and liquor dens and filling Dawood’s coffers with millions. According to a dossier prepared by former police commissioner Mahesh Narain Singh, ‘[M]ost of the killings in the western suburbs related to real estate and property dealing had been executed by no one else but Sautya.’

  His growing power pushed up Sautya’s testosterone levels. He was getting tired of Unita and her demands and now he began to look beyond her. During one of his trips to Uttar Pradesh, he met Razia, the sister of a gangster called Hanif Kutta, who hailed from Kanpur. Hanif was Dawood’s childhood friend, so removing him from the path would not be as easy as it had been in the case of Shirsekar. Any wrong move could infuriate Dawood.

  Sautya’s overtures towards Razia were not appreciated by Hanif. Sautya then approached Hanif and expressed a wish to marry Razia, but Hanif declared that he could not marry his sister to a Hindu and demanded that Sautya convert to Islam first. Sautya, by that time, was head over heels in love with Razia and agreed to the conversion. He married Razia. It was said that the neo-Muslim Sautya often eulogized Islam in his talks, specifically mentioning the aspect of polygamy. This left his friends mystified. Was this the same Sautya who had once been a proud Maharashtrian and regarded Shivaji as his hero? Could the same man become such a turncoat only to marry a Muslim woman? His friends laughed at his changeable ideals.

  The Mumbai police, meanwhile, had launched a nationwide hunt for the assailants involved in the J.J. Hospital shootout. Working on various tip-offs and processing cryptic paydirt, they managed to get some information on Sautya’s hideouts. But most of their efforts proved futile, and they reached a dead end after visits to Greater Kailash in New Delhi and a farmhouse in Kanpur. Some say the cops did not make any breakthrough until they met Sautya’s former wife, Unita. They claim a jealous and jilted Unita was instrumental in providing accurate intelligence to the crime branch sleuths. The information provided by her opened the floodgates for the Mumbai police. Their investigations led them to the house of B.B. Singh in Gonda, where they arrested Sautya’s top confidantes, including Prasad Khade and Bachhi Singh.

  Subsequently, they arrested Subhash Singh Thakur from another hideout and from him they learned some astonishing facts about Sautya’s finances. Sautya had apparently made substantial investments through his sister Sunita Parab, who was eventually arrested under TADA. The arrests and the busting of his finances and hideouts crippled Sautya, who realized that he couldn’t float around in Mumbai or India any more. He escaped to Dubai.

  Sautya’s relocation to Dubai proved to be the final nail in the coffin for Rajan.

  Together, Sautya and Shakeel managed to isolate and sideline Rajan. In fact, they went a step further and began plotting Rajan’s death. They wanted to kill Rajan and throw him off a ship.

  Luckily, Rajan got wind of their plans and realized that there was no point in seeking Dawood’s intervention any more. Perhaps they were even conspiring to kill him with Dawood’s blessing! Rajan decided that if he had to fight later, he should survive today.

  He immediately got his resources together and acquired an Indian passport in no time at all. It is said that an internationally famous Sindhi businessman who helped get documents and a safe address for the battle-scarred don. Rajan escaped from Dubai to Nepal and then to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Now, he had only one motivation – to finish Dawood and destroy his empire.

  In hindsight, ignoring Rajan and his growing frustration was one of Dawood’s biggest mistakes. Dawood had many enemies, but as they say, a man’s most dangerous enemy is the one who was once his closest friend.

  NINETEEN

  Ashwin’s Assault

  By 1993, Ashwin Naik had formally joined his brother’s gang and was part of planning, strategy and management. Naik’s exposure to foreign countries, his engineering degree and sharp mind soon made him a force to reckon with.

  Among the mafiosi, a ganglord’s skills are tested by the moves he makes and the alliances that he forges. Ashwin Naik’s first move was to seek out Kumar Pillai of Vikhroli. Kumar Pillai was the son of Krishna Pillai, a powerful ganglord in the Vikhroli-Kanjurmarg area. Krishnan, like most Keralites, wanted his son to excel in academics. He sent Kumaran to the US, where he earned a master’s degree in technology. Apart from being highly qualified, Pillai shared other similarities with Ashwin. They had both joined the underworld when they realized that they could not survive on their own, without protection.

  Ashwin now wanted to focus on the finances of the gang. He wanted to augment the profits, not with the help of a chartered accountant but through people who knew about money and its operations in the real world; the enterprising Gujaratis came to mind. Help came in the form of none other than the Gujarati in his own family, his father-in-law, who was also a well-known hawala dealer. Harilal Jethwa ran his hawala operations in Dubai and other Gulf countries. With the help of Jethwa, Ashwin managed to maximize his profits. He trimmed non-essentials, and for once the gang seemed financially stable.

  Gawli, who was sniffing out information on the debutant, was nervous. The alliance with Kumar Pillai and now Jethwa was making Naik’s gang stronger. He had to cut off the monetary link to weaken it. He told his trusted aide Tanaji (Tanya Koli), ‘Jethwa cha potlakar.’ (Literally, make a gunny bag of Jethwa.) What he meant: kill Jethwa.

  On 22 May 1993, Tanya Koli, along with other shooters, took out Jethwa. The murder came as a shock to the Naik family. Neeta Naik was bereft and the murder was seen as a major setback for the Naik gang.

  To Neeta, it felt like the price she had to pay for exhorting her husband to join his brother’s gang. She wept in Ashwin’s arms. ‘I thought you would be safe within the folds of the gang. And now my father is gone. What if they come for you too?’

  Ashwin was enraged. He had always presumed that family members not related to the gang were spared, and this was a very personal attack. He wanted to hit back at the man who had deprived his wife of her father.

  When he told Amar about his plan to eliminate Tanya Koli, his brother tried to discourage him. Amar had known a lot of hardship in his life and knew that the path he had chosen could lead to a violent death. But he didn’t want his younger brother to tread the same path. Initially, when Ashwin had got involved in gang activities, Amar Naik had indulged him, hoping that he would keep away from the blood and gore. But now, Ashwin was demanding to get his hands dirty.

  Amar finally gave in after he heard Ashwin’s elaborate plans to bump off the offending hitman, and elicited a promise from him that he would not be physically present at the execution.

  Like MCOCA these days, the draconian TADA was liberally used by the state government against all those who were involved in organized killings in the underworld. Soon after Jethwa’s murder, Tanya Koli was arrested and charged under TADA. He was lodged in Amravati jail as the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai housed a large majority of Dawood’s gang, while the Thane jail was filled with members of Gawli’s other rivals.

  At every court hearing, Tanya Koli was brought to Mumbai by a police escort on a train, on the given date, and taken back to Amravati the same day. Ashwin knew that killing Tanya Koli would be a formidable task as he wasn’t a stationary target. He was constantly mobile, from the moment he was brought out of Amravati jail till he was dropped back to the jail. The only place where he was vulnerable was the court. After the Amirzada and Bada Rajan killings, security had been tightened for gangsters and the casualties could be high if they attempted the killing amidst so many police constables. Also, there was the possibility of getting killed, maimed or caught after the operation, with so many policemen around.

  After prolonged deliberations, Ashwin decided that the only way they could execute the ki
lling and escape was by targeting Koli while he was on the train. So they went over the route, the stations on the way, and zeroed in on Kalyan, where the train would stop for ten minutes on its twelve-hour journey from Mumbai to Amravati.

  On 17 September 1993, Tanya Koli was brought to the Mumbai Sessions Court with an escort that comprised three policemen: Sub-inspector Dilip Nirapure, Constable Mankar and Head Constable Bhatkar. In keeping with the tradition of adjournments and further delays, Koli was remanded to judicial custody and the case was adjourned to 1 October. Ashwin did not have the patience to wait another fortnight to get Tanya Koli. It had already been four months since the murder of Jethwa. He decided that Koli had to be killed that day, as planned.

  As the Vidarbha Express chugged into Kalyan station, it was already dark. Ashwin had chosen Kalyan because he knew that the terminus was huge, with many platforms; both suburban and outstation trains halted there, and a large number of people moved in and out constantly. The killers could disappear more easily here, especially under the cover of darkness.

  Four assailants had been following Koli and the escort party on the train. The accused was handcuffed to the window of the luggage compartment just behind the engine. The assailants had noted the seating positions at the starting point at Victoria Terminus railway station. To ensure that no changes had taken place, they looked into the compartment when the train halted at Thane. They also wanted to be sure that nobody else had boarded the luggage compartment. They found Koli still handcuffed to the bars. Constable Bhatkar was in the opposite seat. Sub-inspector Nirapure and Constable Mankar were sitting next to Koli. The train reached Kalyan station at 9 p.m. and the assailants swooped on their prey. They fired at Koli indiscriminately. The man tried to dodge the volley of bullets, but he was rendered helpless by the handcuffs. He soon collapsed, his lifeless body limp, blood gushing from his organs. Bhatkar and Mankar also sustained injuries. Nirapure had the presence of mind to run towards the door of the compartment to catch the killers, but they had disappeared before he got off the train. Nirapure fired at the retreating men, and the ensuing commotion brought the railway police to the scene. They took the victims to Ulhasnagar Central Hospital at once, even as the chase continued on the ground.

  Nirapure hadn’t acted in vain. Both the city police and the railway police quickly teamed up to chase the fleeing shooters. Sub-inspector Mohite, attached to the Kolsewadi police station in Kalyan, was present at the station. He started chasing one of the men, later identified as Nilesh Ajgaonkar. Unlike the policemen in Hindi cinema, who arrive at the scene after the hero has wrapped up the fight, Mohite chased Ajgaonkar from platform to platform, and along the tracks, and eventually caught him. On platform 5, Sub-inspector Kamothe of the Kalyan Railway Police joined the chase. He pursued and arrested Deepak Naik. The assailants had made no contingency plan and even if they had one, they had forgotten what it was. They were nervous and unsure of where to run, and the tracks were dangerous. They could get run over by a train.

  One of them dashed blindly towards the interiors of Kalyan and accidentally headed for Kolsewadi police station, which was more than a kilometre from the station. Constables Kadam, Oval and Bijapure set off in hot pursuit and ended up catching another shooter, who was hiding in Kolsewadi tunnel number two.

  The constables saw an injured assailant being carried by two of his accomplices. As soon as the marksmen realized they were being chased, they abandoned their injured comrade and ran for their lives, leaving him behind to be picked up.

  In the meantime, the Kolsewadi police staff got the shock of their lives when they saw an injured man limp into the police station after dodging the police. Apparently, he had mistaken the police station for a government hospital, in an unprecedented goof-up!

  The man was bleeding profusely and seemed completely disoriented. The constables took him under their wing and discovered he was Manish alias Gotya, one of the sharpshooters involved in the killing.

  Back at the hospital, Koli was declared dead on arrival. The constables were admitted for treatment, and Head Constable Bhatkar later succumbed to his injuries.

  Koli’s killing shocked the mafiosi. Never before had a gangster under police protection been shot dead on a train. Ashwin had finally earned his stripes, despite the fallout for his men. Arun Gawli could not believe that a rank newcomer like Ashwin Naik had taken out one of his strongest hitmen. Ashwin now became Gawli’s enemy number one taking precedence over his elder brother Amar.

  Gawli was afraid of Ashwin’s education and intelligence. Ashwin did not think with his heart, he applied his mind. The Mumbai police also took note of the newcomer, and Ashwin was promptly arrested by the crime branch.

  Now that Ashwin Naik was contained for a while behind bars, Gawli decided to continue his attacks on Naik’s financers. Sada Pawle was entrusted with the agenda of weakening and finishing off Naik’s gang. Following his boss’s diktats, Pawle summoned Babubhai Shah, the owner of Sheetal Stores on Grant Road, to Dagdi Chawl, but he refused to come. Pawle had called Shah to tell him to shift his allegiance and payments – from Naik to Gawli.

  Sheetal Stores was a popular haunt for the créme-de-la-créme and the store was making a lot of money. Shah thought that because he knew Amar Naik, he need not be scared of the small-timer Sada Pawle. But Shah’s refusal angered Pawle and Gawli, and in true mafiosi style, they planned to make Shah pay for his arrogance.

  On 6 March 1994, Shah was brutally killed by Pawle and his men. Subsequently, his son Viren Shah quietly coughed up Rs 25 lakh for Gawli. The Mumbai police booked and arrested Gawli for the murder. But the deed was done and the message had been conveyed: Arun Gawli was no slouch and he could take on the might of all the Naiks put together.

  Shah’s killing rattled the Naik gang. Ashwin and Amar began drawing up plans to decimate the Gawli gang. Amar wanted to hit back at Gawli just the way he had hit at them, by striking at their financial nerve. But Ashwin was in police custody and it was left to Amar to take the battle into Gawli’s camp.

  Amar Naik knew that the biggest chunk of Gawli’s funding came from the mill owners around the Dagdi Chawl area. Naik planned a major assault on Gawli’s patrons. The mill owners who were colluding with Gawli and his nephew Sachin Ahir to fill the coffers of the gang would be his next targets, he decided.

  TWENTY

  Mills and Minions

  The Khatau Makanji Spinning and Weaving Mill at Byculla was established in 1869, barely twelve years after the historic 1857 uprising in India, and fifteen years after the first cotton mill was established in the city. Built over a sprawling thirteen-acre complex, the mill has the dubious distinction of having changed Mumbai’s skyline, shaped the destiny of two mafia gangs and somehow been responsible for the gruesome murder of more than a dozen men, among other things. It also boosted the careers of several ministers who were allies of the Congress in the state.

  The story begins in the 1990s when the mill, with a workforce of more than 5,700, began registering an annual loss of more than Rs 54 crore, year after year. The chairman and managing director Sunit Khatau decided to contain his losses by selling the land on which the mill stood and moving his operations to the suburbs, to a less expensive plot in Borivli.

  An astute businessman, Sunit Khatau, at fifty-five, was smarter than many of his peers and business rivals. Those were the days when mill owners were slowly coming around to the idea that they could construct multi-storey high-rises and chuck the workers in the bin after working out a compromise with the unions. Khatau had already bought a forty-acre plot in Borivli. The mill tycoon had a Plan B, which was even better from a business point of view. He could shift the mills to Mahad village, which was 170 km from Mumbai, where land was available at throwaway prices. With this move, he thought he could revive the business.

  The liberalization policies introduced by the central government in 1992 had inspired Khatau to take such a bold step, along with the fact that he had Arun Gawli’s support. According to the
government procedure for such relocation, he needed to approach the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) for approval. BIFR is an agency of the Government of India and part of the finance ministry. Its objective is to determine the health of industrial companies, to assist in reviving those that may be viable and shutting down those that are not.

  Khatau started making the rounds of Mantralaya and the board offices and, in the documents he submitted, he undervalued the price of the 50,000 sq. mt. plot of land, putting it at just Rs 80 crore. When the government conducted its own survey to establish the true price of the land, based on the properties around the mill complex, they realized that it was worth at least Rs 300 crore.

  After much consultation and wrangling, BIFR and the state government approved the plan, but with the rider that the recognized union should unanimously agree with it as well. The Khatau mill land sale was the first to get such a go-ahead from BIFR. Sharad Pawar was the chief minister of Maharashtra, and the government at the time was keen on allowing mills to sell or develop surplus land to raise capital for modernization. There were allegations that the government wanted to test the waters with Khatau mills, that eventually it wanted all mills to shift out of the area. Khatau got the green light for his project despite several hurdles that might have been daunting for any other businessman.

  Encouraged by his success, Sunit Khatau approached the mill union, RMMS, whose leader was Haribhau Naik. An industry-level union representing the interests of the cotton textile mills in the city, RMMS was controlled by the Congress in those days. The Bombay Industrial Relations Act, 1946, had ensured that only one body could represent the mill workers’ interests. At the time of the Khatau episode, RMMS had a membership of 150,000 workers, a board of 917 representatives and a managing committee of sixty-four people. Haribhau Naik was opposed to the Khatau plan in the absence of a proper rehabilitation package for the workers. It was a question of the livelihood of thousands of people. Haribhau refused to be party to such a decision, which threatened to jeopardize the lives of so many families.