Byculla to Bangkok

by Hussain Zaidi

  There was another explanation for why Nari was tailed and pursued by officers from the anti-narcotics cell of the crime branch. Ayesha still had a hold over her cop boyfriend, who was obsessed with her. He had managed to put her current boyfriend behind bars and was afraid that Nari Khan, who had sworn revenge, would seek him out, so he orchestrated the whole operation. Salaskar had done a stint at the anti-narcotics cell, and now Naik was offered to him as a prize as long as he agreed to kill both men.

  There were other stories that emerged, about how Salaskar was given the green light by none other than a senior minister in the Shiv Sena–BJP government. There was a report that days before the encounter, Amar had managed to sneak into the Mantralaya and had gone straight up to the sixth floor and barged into the office of his friend. The minister had begun sweating at the sight of him, not because he was afraid of Amar Naik, but because he was afraid of the media discovering the don in his cabin.

  Naik had apparently come to blackmail him and make an unreasonable demand in person. His unhindered access to the minister’s cabin indicated their close proximity, which was most damning. The senior politician from Mumbai was left with no option but to call him home the next day. He also invited Salaskar, a known Sena loyalist. Salaskar picked up Naik from the minister’s house and then killed him in an encounter at Byculla.

  Prem Shukla, the Hindi journalist, followed a highly controversial line of investigation while pursuing the trail of the sensational Naik encounter. His paper carried the following story on its front page.

  Soon after Amar Naik had killed mill owner Sunit Khatau, panic had gripped the business community. A group of businessmen, including relatives of Khatau, had formed an informal action group and a corpus had been created which allowed for a reward of Rs 10 crore to whoever was willing to kill Naik. Initially, they approached Chandrakant Khopde, the boss of Babya Khopdya of the Golden Gang, who had been Naik’s first rival. Despite the promise of big money, Babya admitted his inability to accept the offer; he did not have the wherewithal to track down a slippery target like Naik, leave alone kill him.

  But he made a valuable suggestion. He said that Naik could be tracked and killed by a resourceful encounter specialist. The Hindi tabloid reported that the supari was then offered to several encounter specialists in the city, and that Salaskar had accepted the challenge.

  The many versions of this story blur. However, the most credible is the one that has the police tracing Naik through Nari. Nari had lowered his guard and unwittingly led the police team to Naik’s hideout, resulting in the encounter. This was the story detailed in the Indian Express, and it was later picked up by other papers too.

  The shopkeepers and business establishments in Delisle Road, Chinchpokli, Mahalaxmi and Parel areas observed a bandh for a few days after Naik’s death. But his gang members shied away from being seen near his house or at his final rites. Naik’s funeral was attended by barely fifteen to twenty people from the Chinchpokli-Byculla area. However, one notable person attended the funeral and stayed till the end: Shiv Sena MP Mohan Rawle. Rawle was also vociferously critical of the police version of the encounter.

  But Nari Khan’s death was far more pathetic. His body lay unclaimed for over 10 days in the morgue of J.J. Hospital. No one came forward to give it proper burial according to Islamic customs. Finally the police approached Pakhtoon Jirgae Hind, the official organization of the Pathan migrants settled in India. Pakhtoon had been formed by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known to Indians as the Frontier Gandhi. However, Pakhtoon office-bearers sternly turned down the police request to accept Nari’s body for final rites on the grounds that he was a criminal and a drug peddler. There was no way that the organization would accord him respect by performing his final rites.

  Nari Khan, once a millionaire with assets worth Rs 400 crore, died a pauper’s death.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Carte Blanche

  It is not every day that a police inspector is summoned by a top minister in the ruling government. Assistant Police Inspector Vijay Salaskar was nervous, anxious, uncertain.

  API Salaskar, who normally had his .38 service revolver in his bag and three mobile phones in his pockets, was carrying nothing with him today. He had been to the bungalow just once before. After a brief wait, he was called in. Salaskar walked into the huge room that seemed to reek of power.

  The minister was sitting on a sofa.

  ‘Ya, Vijay, ya,’ he said in Marathi, welcoming him into the room.

  Salaskar saluted, then folded his hands in a cordial gesture. ‘Namaskar, sir.’

  The minister waved him into a chair next to him.

  Salaskar saw that he was the only one in the room. This was unlike his meetings with other senior ministers, who were always surrounded by a host of people.

  The minister began with small talk. The conversation veered from the police department to postings and law-and-order problems in the city. The minister then surprised him by applauding Salaskar’s consistently good work since his days in the narcotics cell of the crime branch after which he had moved to the Nagpada police station. Salaskar smiled a thank you.

  ‘I want you to continue the good work,’ the minister said.

  Salaskar looked at him. This did not seem like the usual encouragement. The minister was not smiling. He was looking directly into Salaskar’s eyes. The hardened cop, who had locked eyes with many a tough criminal in his life, was unable to decipher the shifting expressions of the droopy-eyed minister. This unsettled him and he filled the silence with a quick ‘Ho sir.’

  ‘I want you to go after the Gawli gang with full force,’ the minister announced.

  ‘Ho sir,’ came the reply.

  ‘The way you got Amar Naik?’

  It was a question or a command, or both. But Salaskar understood.

  ‘Yes sir, I will try my best,’ he said.

  ‘We will give you full support in whatever way you need.’

  ‘Ho sir.’

  ‘I will ask Pradeep Sharma to go after Chhota Rajan and the Dawood gang.’

  Salaskar nodded.

  The minister indicated that the meeting was over.

  Salaskar rose, saluted again and slowly walked out of the door. He wasn’t sure if he should celebrate, laugh or share this strange meeting with his colleagues. For the moment, though, he felt happy that a minister had shown such trust in him that instead of talking to his seniors or his bosses, he had called him directly and personally given him instructions.

  Salaskar was one of the most successful officers of the Mumbai police. He had an enviable track record of major hits against the Mumbai underworld: he had killed more than thirty gangsters so far and had also been involved in major drug seizures during his tenure in the antinarcotics cell of the crime branch.

  The minister’s carte blanche was incredibly significant, and Salaskar decided to capitalize on it.

  Salaskar knew that Gawli and the Naiks had forced the minister’s hand. They had crossed the Lakshman Rekha, the proverbial last line of permissible limits. The ruling Shiv Sena was convinced that Gawli in particular deserved to be punished for his belligerence towards the powers that be.

  Matoshree had barely finished mourning for Jayant Jadhav when Gawli threw another googly its way by launching his political party that posed a direct challenge to the Shiv Sena. The ruling party was willing to overlook Gawli’s political ambitions, but what got its goat was Gawli’s strong-arm tactics during the Mumbai municipal corporation elections.

  Gawli had fielded ABS candidates in the Dadar, Parel and Byculla areas. He began threatening and intimidating Sena candidates in these constituencies. When this did not work, Gawli’s men resorted to violence and began thrashing Sena workers. There was deep fear in all the constituencies. Gawli’s men began bullying voters even in the constituency of Chief Minister Manohar Joshi. When the election results for Dadar were declared, ABS candidate Meenakshi Tandel, wife of Gawli’s notorious sharpshooter Vijay Tandel, had come secon
d to Shiv Sena candidate Vishakha Raut; the Congress candidate, who had been a strong contender, lagged behind, as a distant third.

  The police acted swiftly and detained Arun Gawli under the National Security Act (NSA). But it seemed that Gawli still had his sympathizers among the top Sena leaders. Mohan Rawle perceived the arrest as an act of gross injustice. He protested against the detention of Arun Gawli by the Mumbai police and sat on a hunger strike at the Agripada police station. After eight days, Rawle broke his fast when Gawli’s mother gave him a glass of juice.

  Meanwhile, Gawli was well prepared for the government’s retaliation. Asha Gawli filed a writ petition with the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court challenging her husband’s detention under NSA. Arvind Bobde, ex-advocate general of Maharashtra, appeared on behalf of Gawli. The high court not only found the detention unjustified and set it aside, but it also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the police commissioner of Mumbai and the additional chief secretary of the state, both of whom were signatories to the detention order. Such strong strictures and the levying of fines on such senior administrators and the police chief were unprecedented. They left the government reeling in embarrassment.

  An emboldened Gawli returned to Dagdi Chawl with great pomp and began working on the promotion of ABS with renewed vigour and intensity. This time, he wanted to expand beyond Dadar to the Byculla belt and eventually to the entire state.

  On 18 July 1997, Gawli threw an open challenge to the state government when he organized a morcha and led a large number of people to Hutatma Chowk, condemning the government for police firing on Dalit demonstrators at Ghatkopar East. The media reported that more than two lakh people participated in the morcha, and that Gawli had turned the tide against his ‘sympathizer party’. He was being hailed as a renegade politician, a harbinger of change.

  Political analysts were shocked at the media’s glorification of a criminal and his moves against the government. According to a Special Branch report, Gawli spent more than Rs 1.5 crore to organize the morcha and make it a grand success.

  The media reports, changing public opinion and the lack of support from the judiciary stifled the government’s campaign against Gawli. There was a feeling that there were too many watchdogs and they had better play it by the ear.

  But exactly a month after the Hutatma Chowk rally, on 18 August 1997, while the government was still smarting from the public humiliation, Gawli had top builder Natwarlal Desai killed in the middle of the day in Mumbai’s elite business district of Nariman Point. It was the first high-profile killing in the area, and the movers and shakers of south Mumbai were very upset. Nariman Point was a place where most multinational companies and foreign brands had their offices, and the killing was regarded as a blot on the reputation of the state as well as the central government. The furore was heard in Parliament as well.

  As if the government had been waiting for just such a slip-up, the next day the police prepared the essential warrants and launched an offensive. On 20 August, the cops were knocking on the huge iron gates of Dagdi Chawl, led by Deputy Commissioner Param Bir Singh of Zone II. They turned the whole place upside down; every nook and cranny was searched.

  Their fastidiousness paid off. The killers of Natwarlal Desai were found hiding inside the house: in special cavities under the kitchen sink, which was blocked by an LPG gas cylinder; in a crevice in the prayer room; and in a hole under the bathroom. They also discovered a tunnel that led to a passage outside Dagdi Chawl. It was as if they had stumbled into a nest of snakes!

  DCP Singh’s team confronted Desai’s killers, including Vijay Muchwa, Vijay Shirodkar and Pankaj Pandey. All three were later gunned down by the police in an ‘encounter’.

  Importantly, the cops also found the kingpin during their search. When they dismantled one of the box beds, they found Gawli hiding inside it, a carbine lying next to him. Fortunately, Gawli did not make any attempt to touch the gun.

  The police received more intelligence and raided another safe house at Kabutar Khana on N.M. Joshi Marg, Byculla. They found two trunkloads of court papers and affidavits, some with names and others with blank spaces for names. Gawli had employed Suresh Bhaskar to look after court matters for the gang; they kept such documents ready to meet any eventuality.

  Gawli strongly contested every case against him. He had realized that the judiciary was a good weapon against the state and the police. He filed writ petitions in the high court when the government made any move against him. He and his wife also made applications to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and high-ranking officials in the government as well as judges of high courts.

  After the raid on Dagdi Chawl, the government unleashed special police squads to go at the Gawli gang hammer and tongs. It seemed the state had declared an unofficial war against the gang.

  On the same night, the crime branch killed gangster Jeetu Mane in an encounter at Trombay. But these gangsters of Gawli were small fry; their killings did not make much of a dent in the gang’s arsenal. The real decimation of the gang began with Vijay Salaskar. With three sharpshooters on his side, he took them down one after another.

  Barely three days after the Desai killing at Nariman Point, Salaskar killed Ganesh Bhosale alias Vakil at Kurla East. Bhosale’s killing came as a shock to the Gawli gang – he had been a crucial part of their machinery. Even before they could recover from the shock, Salaskar struck again.

  On 26 September, he killed Gawli’s top shooters, Sada Pawle and Vijay Tandel, in another encounter at Ghatkopar East. Pawle was found with an AK-47 in his jeep when Salaskar confronted him on a busy, crowded road. This almost broke the back of the gang.

  Gawli was shaken by Pawle and Tandel’s killings. He now lived in mortal fear of being killed by Salaskar. He had even arranged for his lawyers to prepare briefs urging the courts to intervene. To make matters worse, the government was using the Salaskar card against him all the time. They erected a special police chowki right in front of Dagdi Chawl and posted Salaskar in that chowki. It is said that Gawli never stepped out of the iron gates of Dagdi Chawl when Salaskar was on the prowl.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Bullet Raj

  The crime conference of the Mumbai police was in full swing. All the DCPs of the different zones of Mumbai were present. Most of them hated these long-winded meetings; they were boring and rarely produced results.

  On that particular Wednesday in 1995, Ram Dev Tyagi, the police commissioner, brought the somnolent IPS officers out of their reveries when he declared that each zone should kill at least ten criminals in encounters. ‘Why should encounters only be the prerogative of the crime branch? Even zones should participate,’ he declared.

  An officer tried to interject. ‘It is not always possible to eliminate criminals in encounters.’ Tyagi gave him a dirty look and shot off his famous quotable quote, which was later repeated and mimicked by various DCPs. ‘Don’t teach your father to fuck,’ he said. This silenced the whole room.

  Ram Dev Tyagi was known as the boldest and perhaps the most controversial police commissioner of Mumbai. He came from an army background. He never minced words and was blunt to the point of being brutal. When a spate of robberies in south Mumbai’s jewellery shops rocked the city’s business community, Tyagi came up with an instant solution. He organized a public meeting near Zaveri Bazaar and addressed the business community in a manner that people would never forget.

  ‘I urge all of you to keep a hockey stick in your shops and when the robbers come, defend yourself with the stick. Beat them black and blue. If the robber dies, the police will support you, I promise,’ he said.

  The hockey stick remark, reproduced in the Indian Express, set off a debate and people mocked him. He was perceived as a commissioner who exhorted people to take the law into their own hands and kill people.

  His past preceded him. Ram Dev Tyagi had become a police commissioner after serving as a bureaucrat in Mantralaya, the seat of state administration. Prior to his stint at Mant
ralaya, Tyagi had served as joint commissioner, crime. During the communal riots of 1993, he had ordered his men to storm a masjid situated above the Suleman Bakery, resulting in the killing of nine unarmed Muslims.

  Perhaps it was his in-your-face approach that appealed to Bal Thackeray. Tyagi was a favourite of his but was disliked intensely by Home Minister Gopinath Munde.

  Tyagi had taken charge at a time when gang wars had escalated and Mumbai was fast turning from financial capital to crime capital.

  By now, the city was willing to pay to get rid of this mafia that had spread its tentacles to real estate, Bollywood, and almost everywhere it could smell money. In the nineties, few flaunted their wealth for fear of being spotted by the mafia, which lost no time in making that give-or-die call: ‘Pay or else.’ Tyagi believed that gangsters and robbers only understood the language of violence; you could not be diplomatic with them. Perhaps it was his army background that made him believe in the credo, ‘eye for an eye’.

  Tyagi wanted to instil the fear of death into the minds of criminals. He reintroduced an old weapon from the police arsenal – encounters. Already, after 1993, soon after the communal riots in Mumbai, encounters or extra-judicial killings by the police had become commonplace. But it was Tyagi who officially greenlighted the era of police encounters.

  Once the police commissioner gave his blessings, the zonal DCPs lost no time in forming their own special squads. The men in these special squads formed an elite group with their own offices and working at their own pace. They could trail and stake out a quarry for days or even months.