Byculla to Bangkok

by Hussain Zaidi

  ‘Though it is said that jail ki dosti phatak tak hai (friendships in prison last until the gate), I made friends with inmates and the guards that have stood the test of time. This, despite the fact that I was a highlight prisoner (that is the term they used for high-risk prisoners). Whenever a poor man came and told me that he could not afford a surety of Rs 2,000 as a precondition for being set free, I gave him the money.

  ‘At Tihar, you could buy your own television (though it became prison property later); I sponsored around fifty television sets for those who wanted one but could not afford it. They also allowed transistors, watches, your gold chain, and you had access to visitors twice a week. In winters, we woke up at 6 a.m. or else the timing was 5.30. We had to store water for the day in buckets at 9 a.m. for our daily use.

  ‘I was very stressed out when I landed in Tihar. I was framed in many cases and mere saath bahut bura ho gaya tha (life had treated me unfairly). Because of my name, mera frame ban gaya aur main picture ban gaya (my name brought notoriety to me and my picture began hanging on the walls of police stations as a wanted criminal). There was the fear of rival gangsters bumping me off and the fact that I was paralysed waist down did not make me too confident. The 9' x 12' cell was not overcrowded and I slowly found my bearings. Tihar is manned by Tamil Nadu State Police because the prisoners would not be able to speak to them, the Delhi jail police and the CISF. The guards change every three hours, though I think it is entirely possible to commit suicide if one wants to. We had several cases during my time and the guards had a tough time when the headcount showed a missing number. Sometimes the inmate would be plonked atop a tree or the water tank. There was a lot of dramabazi. We were locked up from 12 to 3 in the afternoon and between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. at night.

  ‘I went to Tihar in June ’99 and when the Kargil war happened, we contributed a lot of money. I personally gave Rs 2 lakh. I also ran the canteen, not the regular food canteen but the one for the snacks. I had to dole out Rs 6,000 a day to run the canteen. We served bread pakodas and chai. Those who left for the court benefited a lot because they got breakfast. Out of the 3,000 prisoners in Jail No. 3, at least 400 went to court every day and they used their coupons to buy the bread pakodas. Actually, it was a no-profit thing some days, but then you could have access to the butter, vegetables and other food stuff, which is why I ran the canteen.

  ‘Lack of sleep is a big problem in prison and often people said, Nitrovit (a sleeping tablet) lekar so gaya (he took a tablet and slept). There were instances of inmates being beaten up in jail; like our fingers, each guard had a different temperament.

  ‘What I liked about the jail was that the system actually worked, though of course, everything is for sale like in all prisons. If you have money, you can avail of comforts. One Gandhi (a Rs 500 note) only got you seven pouches of tobacco. Kiran Bedi was so tired of seeing the tobacco stains and smoking that she tried her best to put a stop to it. Then she started meeting the relatives, asking them, wouldn’t they like it if their near and dear ones stopped smoking or chewing tobacco inside the prison. So please don’t bring it, she told them. She then adopted a carrot-and-stick policy with the prisoners, telling them that if they could forgo tobacco and smoking, she would ensure more facilities and better food. The inmates fell into the trap and thus tobacco and cigarettes disappeared. Though, of course, the guards took to blackmarketing of tobacco.’

  Released from prison and home at last in Chinchpokli’s 144 Tenements, Ashwin Naik has finally found peace. He was set up a company called Maruti Infrastructure, named after his father, which deals with real estate – the new bubble that the mafia and the politicians are latching on to. His daughter is slated to go to the US for further studies. This has unsettled him, he says, as he is close to his daughter and will miss her terribly.

  Once in a while, there are reports that Ashwin has got on the wrong side of the law and the police pick him up on allegations of extortion. His past still haunts him and he is not happy that he is branded a criminal because it was not a calling of his choice. But no more shootouts, no more rival gangs. Ashwin is finally at rest.

  FORTY-TWO

  Amjad Khan’s Sholay

  Amjad Khan spoke just like his cinema icon, Amjad Khan. He strutted and strode just like the real Amjad Khan. Since he could not make it in Bollywood, he decided to become an Amjad Khan clone in real life. The menacing gaze, the half-crooked smile, the arching of his thick, bushy eyebrows, the sardonic glance, the mocking laughter, even the way he spoke – Amjad Khan was an uncertified copy of Amjad Khan in Sholay, even if he didn’t resemble him physically. There was only one problem. Unlike other clones – for instance, of Amitabh Bachchan, Shatrughan Sinha or Anil Kapoor – there was no way that Amjad Khan could get a break in Hindi movies. He had been arrested for drug peddling by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) and was being prosecuted for his involvement in the drug trade.

  However, he belonged to the school that firmly believes that if life dishes out tomatoes, you should make sauce. He became an informant for the NCB, even as he waited for his trial to finish. He was sure that he would be acquitted in the end. Khan’s intelligence network and tip-offs to the NCB sleuths had resulted in drug seizures across the country. The agency had never tasted such success, and it was this that made the NCB officers go soft on him.

  At the same time, Amjad Khan ended up antagonizing the drug cartels, which had minted millions until Khan began squealing on them. Several big consignments were seized by the NCB, which left the drug mafia fuming. The ever increasing losses were causing a big dent in their annual turnover. A corrective measure was required, for which they put their heads together.

  Finally, they decided to eliminate Amjad Khan. But who would bell the cat? Amjad Khan had one friend, the encounter specialist cop Pradeep Sharma. Khan publicized their friendship through his media interviews and open proclamations. Only a big neon sign outside his home and a placard on his car were missing. No shooter was willing to cross swords with Sharma, and this complicated things for the cabal that wanted Khan dead at any cost. The drug mafia kept upping the supari amount on Amjad Khan. Within a few months, what started as Rs 5 lakh went up to Rs 5 crore. But no one was willing to take up the job. Amjad Khan, meanwhile, was either clueless about the mounting bounty on his head or he had become delusional and complacent, for he continued inflicting losses on the drug cartel.

  In sheer desperation, the cartel approached Chhota Rajan and offered a supari of Rs 20 crore. It was an amount unheard of for killing just one individual. In Mumbai, hit jobs were carried out for as meagre an amount as Rs 5,000. (Even the Lashkar-e-Taiba had spent a fraction of that amount – Rs 20 lakh – to execute 26/11.)

  Rajan accepted the supari. After all, he had already thrown the gauntlet at Sharma once. So he did not fear his wrath. But who would identify Amjad Khan? Rajan had perfected the art of using the services of famed Mumbai cops for the execution of his work. In Amjad Khan’s case, he asked an encounter specialist who had served with the Anti-Narcotics Cell of the crime branch to help him identify his target. The encounter specialist charged him Rs 5 crore and gave him his best man; a sub-inspector took the shooter in his Gypsy and pointed out Amjad.

  On 16 October 2006, three men on a motorbike shot dead Amjad Khan and his friend Himanshu Choudhary, both of whom were on their way to the sessions court for the hearing of a big case of Mandrax seizure dating back to 2000. It was a shocking daylight murder that took place at one of the busiest traffic intersections of the city, opposite the sessions court and barely 200 m from the state police headquarters.

  Khan’s death left the NCB sleuths reeling. It also left a void for several crime reporters who had managed to beef up their stories with his encyclopaedic insights.

  Police inspector Pradeep Sharma could not believe that Rajan had openly challenged him in this manner. Sharma was yet to recover from the death of O.P. Singh; Amjad Khan’s death was unbearable. Khan was not just his informer but his friend, and Sharm
a mourned him.

  Sharma’s mole in the Rajan gang, O.P. Singh was widely alleged to have shared a lot of information with Khan, who passed on the intelligence to his contacts in the police. This had resulted in the arrest of several of Rajan’s men and also encounters planned by Sharma’s team. Rajan had trusted Singh far too much but when he realized that Singh was Sharma’s man, he decided to get rid of him in a cunning way. Singh was based in a safe house in Greater Kailash-II in New Delhi, which was known only to Rajan and Sharma. Rajan called two encounter specialists of the New Delhi police, ACP Rajbir Singh and Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, who worked for a special cell of the Delhi Police crime branch. Rajan tipped them off about the presence of his top aide in Delhi. Both of them immediately swooped down on Singh and arrested him. As Singh was not wanted in Delhi, he was sent to Mumbai. Soon he was transferred to Nashik jail , a sitting target for D.K. Rao and his men.

  Through the killings of O.P. Singh and Amjad Khan, Rajan had clearly exposed the way he could use the police machinery to further his ends. Two well-known Delhi cops and one famous Mumbai encounter specialist kowtowed to him; in the killing of Singh in jail, it was established that eleven jail officials had shown their subservience to Rajan.

  What Rajan had not reckoned with was the fact that Khan could prove more damaging for him in death than in life. Sharma decided to make Rajan pay for killing his friend. He decided to launch his own war against Khan’s killers, and was determined to inflict serious losses on the gang and the ganglord.

  Between 2006 and 2009, encounter specialists of the Mumbai police specifically chased down Rajan’s men and more than thirty were killed. The fear psychosis that they unleashed was such that no new shooters were willing to join the gang, while those who already worked for Rajan refused assignments as they were tired of being harassed by the police.

  Some of the gangsters even left Mumbai and shifted base to south India; others changed their phone numbers and their residences. ‘We did not want to die in an encounter. Sharma can kill anyone,’ disclosed an old crony of Rajan.

  This sudden spurt in encounters and the exodus from the gang crippled Rajan; manpower and money power are the two main pillars of any gang. In the underworld, it was well known that the Dawood gang had more money and the Rajan gang had more men. But one cop, almost single-handedly, had managed to cut down Rajan’s manpower.

  Even before Rajan could recoup, the Mumbai police began hauling in the builders in the western suburbs who were loyal to Rajan and had earmarked a cut for him in their deals. They were told to cut off ties with Rajan – or they would be booked under MCOCA. This was a major blow to him.

  The police also put scores of phones on surveillance and made a list of all those who were cutting deals in Rajan’s name, using his clout. These men were hauled to police stations and asked to lay bare their business associations with the don.

  In the two years after 2006, Rajan’s business suffered losses of more than Rs 250 crore by a conservative estimate.

  By the year 2010, Rajan had hardly any powerful lieutenants left in the gang, except D.K. Rao.

  FORTY-THREE

  Daddy Demolished

  The court was teeming with Gawli’s supporters, a battery of lawyers, the media, and hangers-on. Mumbai’s city civil and sessions court in Kala Ghoda, south Mumbai, gets its fair share of crowd-pulling cases but on this day, even lawyers from other courts were milling about for a glimpse of Gawli and to know the outcome of a case that could change the course of life in Mumbai.

  For four decades, Mumbai’s resident don had been flitting between various jails in Maharashtra and Dagdi Chawl, his fortress in south Mumbai, as the Mumbai police ensured his incarceration in some case or the other. Not that Gawli was any less of a gangster during his captivity; he lorded over the jail and ran his operations even better in some ways.

  In forty years of flirting with crime, he had accumulated forty-odd cases (one for each year!), most of which he had been acquitted of. However, today, 28 August 2012, his fate was to be decided once and for all.

  Special public prosecutor Raja Thakre pointed at Gawli and roared, ‘Kamlakar Jamsandekar was shot at point-blank range when he was watching TV, with his child doing his homework by his side and his niece in the kitchen. As an MLA, Gawli acted without any care for life.’

  The prosecution sought the death penalty for Gawli and two others, Vijaykumar Giri and Pratap Godse. Despite the massive crowd, there was a hushed silence in the courtroom. Gawli had been accused of killing Jamsandekar, a Shiv Sena corporator, in 2007.

  That day, the special MCOCA court judge convicted Gawli and eleven others for murder. However, the court adjourned the hearing on the exact punishment to be awarded to Gawli and his gang.

  Gawli sought leniency, saying he was sixty years old and had to look after his wife, children and an aged mother. The prosecution maintained that these could not be mitigating circumstances. On 31 August, the special court sentenced Arun Gawli and the eleven others to life for the 2007 killing.

  The sentence sealed the fate of Gawli. Already in his sixties, he was going to be incarcerated for life as a convict. With this move, Gawli was not just contained, he was almost finished.

  The state government had been trying desperately to nail the gangster-turned-politician in some big case for the last two decades. But Gawli’s battery of lawyers, his intimidatory tactics with witnesses and shrewd manipulations had ensured that he managed to walk free every time a case went to trial.

  Over the years, the Mumbai police had made every effort in the book and beyond to ensure that Gawli stayed behind bars. Sometimes, they even sprang a surprise on Gawli’s legal team and outsmarted them. When, for instance, on 24 July 1997, Gawli and his men had been given bail in the case of assault on a reporter, Anandita Ramaswamy, the police had been dismayed. They had not expected him to get bail so easily. But the media did not see any signs of disappointment or defeat on the faces of the police officers.

  Public prosecutor P.R. Namjoshi had argued that Gawli’s release could prevent witnesses from coming forward to identify the accused. ‘His release could lead to more violence,’ Namjoshi said.

  And then the police had played their trump card. Even before an order could be passed, the prosecution told the court that another FIR had been registered against Gawli – relating to his involvement in evicting a woman from Dagdi Chawl in 1990. A seven-year-old case was raked up just to ensure that Gawli did not get a reprieve.

  Gawli was supposed to be taken to the Arthur Road jail for judicial custody. But Gawli’s men, who were following the police convoy, were shocked when they saw the police van in which Gawli was travelling suddenly break away from the convoy and head towards the crime branch headquarters. Gawli was remanded in police custody in the Gajare case.

  Chandraprabha Gajare had complained in an FIR filed at the Agripada police station that she had been asked to vacate Room No. 12 at Dagdi Chawl. When she had refused to do so, she had been beaten up and thrown out by Arun Gawli and his goons. Gajare used to cook for Gawli’s men, and she said that her problems started when she refused to surrender her house to Gawli, who was offering to pay Rs 50,000 for it. The house was worth well over Rs 3 lakh then. She also alleged that Gawli wanted to marry her daughter Sangita.

  ‘I turned down his proposal. Gawli used to be always on the run. Besides, these gangsters used to abduct businessmen and beat them up… I did not want my daughter to marry a gangster,’ she said.

  Gajare said the complaint filed by journalist Ramaswamy had inspired her to stand up against Gawli.

  The Gajare case ensured that Gawli spent three more years of his life in prison. But he managed to secure bail on 20 June 2000. According to the prosecution, he had managed to get the prime witness in the case, Manoj Birje, murdered through co-accused Sunil Ghate and Nagesh Mohite. Yet Gawli was given bail.

  The police had tried to mount a case of extortion against him in 1990 too, but Gawli managed to extricate himself from
this too. On 10 January 2007, he was discharged from the sixteen-year-old extortion case by the Bombay High Court. Gawli had a full-fledged legal team working for him and his men were ever ready to take on the powerful police and state machinery.

  His unprecedented conviction in the Jamsandekar killing dealt a body blow to the gang. The life sentence meant curtains for the crime syndicate; their clout could not be all-pervasive any more, as it used to be prior to his conviction. A pall of gloom descended over Dagdi Chawl.

  Once an impenetrable, well-guarded, three-storey building in Byculla West, Dagdi Chawl is now relatively deserted. The huge iron gates had always stayed shut – opening only to welcome those who deified the don as a demigod. Some claim that Gawli made them feel so safe that they could sleep with the doors of their homes open – or approach him even at 3 a.m. in the night if they needed help. Even today, there are guards who keep a watchful eye on people entering and leaving; these include ABS workers and certain neighbours.

  Once you enter, there is a small gate to the left which leads to Gawli’s house, and to the right is a billboard advertising a gym. An avid gym enthusiast, Gawli had got this gym built and named it after his father – Gulabrao Ahir. He had spent more than Rs 40 lakh to make it a modern gym with sophisticated machines and the latest equipment. But few people have enrolled, perhaps understandably.

  Gawli has also left land free inside the four walls for Durga Devi’s pandal, for the annual pooja and celebrations. The residence, which used to be in bad shape, was transformed by him into a secure building with lifts and a security set-up. When Gawli was at home, no one could get to it without passing through several obstacles and hurdles – not even the cops.