Authors: S. Hussain Zaidi
So on 4 October 1984, as Samad left his apartment, he took a long puff on his cigarette, and realised his cigarette had already reached its end. He threw it off the balcony. He looked at people walking past in high spirits. Gazing into Shilpa’s eyes before he departed, for some strange reason, his longing seemed to draw him to her in an almost repulsive way that was not sexual, but suggested his desire to stay. He wrenched his strong arms off Shilpa’s finely manicured fingers, and left. As he pushed the button for elevator, a vague sense of foreboding engulfed him.
The elevator touched the ground and jerked him back out of his thoughts, a couple of minutes later. As he walked out of the elevator, he felt the presence of death. Samad Khan stood transfixed: Dawood and his brother Ali Antulay, Chhota Rajan, and Abdul Hamid stood before him, stonily silent. They all had guns cocked in their hands, and none of them seemed to be in the mood to talk.
Samad opened his mouth to say something but their guns began to spew bullets indiscriminately. As the firing died out and the dust settled, it was revealed that Samad’s bodyguard and the housewife who happened to be in the lift with them had sustained multiple injuries. Samad’s own body had nineteen bullets in it. He died on the spot.
Dawood spat on Samad’s face, the bile rising in his mouth. What Samad had not realised was that his assault on Noora had infuriated Dawood. How could Samad attack his own brother when just the day before Dawood had been kind enough to put his grudges behind him and shaken the hands of one of his arch enemies?
Dawood surmised that the truce was actually Samad’s unscrupulous cunning and that he would turn around and betray his trust. Dawood could not see beyond vengeance and payback for Samad’s actions, and was paranoid that this pledge of friendship was just another excuse to disarm him.Dawood had always nurtured the desire to personally kill a Pathan but he could not lay hands on them thus far. Sabir’s murder kept playing in his head. The day he visited Noora in the hospital, Dawood was consumed by a mindless rage. He had made his decision to kill Samad Khan and put an end to a very violent chapter in the Pathan gang; one where true repentance is comparatively rare.
Dawood’s killing of Samad Khan was the last straw for the Bombay police. There were already a number of charges against him, and with the Samad killing, the police came after him in full force. In 1986, Dawood left Bombay for the last time.
34
Dawood’s Better Half
W
hile Dawood kept himself occupied with gang-building, he had totally shut the door on love after Sujata’s humiliation. He spent much of his time reducing his rivals to pulp and forming a close coterie of trusted members.
One day as he sat in his favourite seat at the Gulshan-e-Iran restaurant near Manish Market, his mind drifted back to that crushing moment when Sujata chose her family over him. The thought ‘how dare the bitch’ reverberated in his mind. Unaware of the heartbreak, his acquaintance Mumtaz Khan—referred to by friends as ‘Kaana’ in a derogatory way because he was blind in one eye—walked over to Dawood’s table.
Mumtaz owned a perfume shop in Manish Market and he went to speak to Dawood about some dirty work he wanted done. Manish Market’s shop number 12 needed to be ripped apart and emptied out; in other words, Mumtaz, for his own reasons, wanted to get even with the owner of the shop. ‘I know you can do it, Dawood,’ he said.
Bubbling over with fury at the moment, Dawood was in the perfect state of mind for a task like this and promptly agreed. Upon arriving at Manish Market, his rage converted into a sort of fuel for violence and he began to tear the shop apart. Seeing him in such an angry mood, people lost the courage to confront him; they let him go about his job. Having thrown every little thing out of the store, Dawood pulled down the shutter with one arm.
Mumtaz was extremely pleased that his task had been undertaken and completed with such clinical precision, and following the shakedown of shop number 12 in Manish Market, Dawood became a regular visitor at Mumtaz’s home. Over time, Mumtaz found himself very satisfied with Dawood’s efficiency and hard work. So, he invited him over to his residence for a feast. As is the unwritten law in most countries across the world, business is never discussed at the dining table. Accordingly, Dawood and Mumtaz were having a lighter discussion over dinner, when it happened.
Dawood had never imagined he would meet someone quite as attractive as Sujata again. He never thought he would encounter someone who would fascinate him like she did. And yet, here he was unable to put a single morsel of food into his mouth, transfixed by the vision of beauty in front of him.
His hands and mouth betrayed him and refused to obey his brain. As soon as she walked out of the room, Dawood immediately inundated Mumtaz with questions. Was she, Dawood wondered, Mumtaz’s daughter? As it turned out, the girl, Mehjabeen, was Mumtaz’s sister-in-law and the daughter of Yusuf Kashmiri, a small-time businessman. Dawood was blown away by her beauty and soon began to date her. Mehjabeen, on her part, had heard tales of Dawood’s bravery from her brother-in-law, and fell for him.
Soon, Dawood would pick up Mehjabeen regularly from her home and take her for a spin on his motorcycle. They would regularly make trips to the beach, where they would share a plate of bhel puri
and a few tender moments in the sand among other couples. Sometimes, they would sit at Marine Drive and laugh as they were soaked with the ocean spray. They would then seek shelter in a nearby restaurant and sit there for hours over chai
and biscuits, talking to each other like excited teenagers.
There were days when Dawood would take longer to finish his ‘business’ before meeting Mehjabeen for their daily outing. On those days, she would gaze wistfully out of the window and imagine him riding down the road on his motorcycle, fading away just before she could touch him. Until finally, that same vision of Dawood coming down the road was no figment of her imagination but a reality.
Sujata’s memory was a thing of the past. Dawood was so besotted by Mehjabeen and the role she played in his life, that the hardened criminal had gotten over his big flame.
When Kashmiri saw what was happening, he was not happy. He promptly opposed the union, as any concerned father would. Dawood’s tarnished reputation was by now well-known among the Muslims of south Mumbai. However, ostensibly he buckled when he was told about Dawood’s father’s impeccable record as a policeman and a respectable man in the community. He agreed to give Dawood his daughter Mehjabeen’s hand in marriage.
35
Escape to Dubai
A
half-smoked cigar lay burning on an ashtray. A pen had just been laid down, fresh from scribbling. Impressions on the soft leather chair drawn up to the desk had just begun to fade, returning the seat to its original shape. A window was open, the curtains fluttered from the soft warm breeze that blew into the room. Everything in the room pointed to a presence, missing only the actual human form. As policemen looked around baffled, the cops turned to the huge trunk that dominated the room and broke open each and every corner of the room.
The heavy odour of tobacco and smoke still hung in the air. The air conditioning in the room was running full blast, and the fragrance of Paco Rabanne still prevailed. It was certain that Dawood had just walked out of the room.
Sometime in 1986, a crack team of Crime Branch sleuths had stormed Musafirkhana, the headquarters of the D Company just before midnight. The officers were stunned at the eerie quiet in the two-storied dilapidated building, which was usually the hub of activity even in the wee hours of dawn. People never slept in this building, especially those on the ground floor which housed the opulent office of Dawood Ibrahim.
Today there was hardly anyone to be seen. Armed guards were posted at the gate, while other officers went about raiding each and every room in the building. Some were disturbed from sleep, others had to hurriedly abandon their love making. Residents were made to clear the room, while the policemen searched inside with ruthless meticulousness.
The policemen were on the lookout for Dawood. They sought to ferret him out. But he was nowhere. Fifteen days after Mehjabeen and Dawood tied the knot, the Mumbai police began their crackdown on Dawood and other members of the fledgling underworld of the time. There was no way he could stay on in Mumbai, Dawood had realised. The police had managed only to seize Dawood’s cousin brothers and a number of his men, who were arrested from Musafirkhana, that same night. The crackdown was part of Police Commissioner D.S. Soman’s express orders. Soman had issued an urgent search and seize warrant for the arrest of Dawood Ibrahim. The police chief had carefully chosen his team of officers to ensure that Dawood would not be alerted about his imminent arrest. Since the time Soman had taken over the reins of the city police, he had carried out a sustained campaign against the mafia. Soman had given a free hand to the Crime Branch officers. Police Inspector Madhukar Zende had ensured that all the top criminals were either thrown behind bars or made to recant. Giants like Mastan and Karim Lala had been made to respect the law. Dawood was the only gangster who was still running free.
Until now, Dawood had cleverly kept his cogs in the police machinery well-oiled. His moles always fulfilled their loyalties towards the don and tipped him off, usually giving him ample time to go underground and apply for anticipatory bail in court and evade arrest.Dawood had become too big for the Bombay police. In a way he had become Frankenstein’s monster—a creation
of
the Bombay police. The cops in their short-sighted wisdom had decided to promote one outlaw to tackle other outlaws. They presumed that it would be easier to undermine one outlaw in the end rather than dealing with a bunch of them. As Dawood would be their minion, their own puppet, he could never go out of control, they assumed.
But Dawood outsmarted them. While the cops believed they were using Dawood to cut down top gangsters and dons to size, Dawood was actually using the cops to decimate his rivals. Nurtured by the police as their informer, Dawood had become the police’s nemesis, one that had grown its own head.
From Bombay to Daman, electronic goods to silver and gold, Dawood had it all covered. Gujarat, which was earlier the stronghold of Pathans, had also been snatched away by Dawood. The Pathans’ clout was considerably diminished in the neighbouring state. Dawood was Bombay’s big man, partly due to its own police force.
In 1982, Dawood was arrested under COFEPOSA of the Customs Act. For the first time in his life as a don, Dawood was arrested for smuggling. When he had been arrested in 1977, it had been for a robbery and he was treated as a petty thief. The police called him several times and detained him at the Crime Branch lockup. But after the killing of Sabir and his phenomenal growth, the cops had become a bit more particular in making arrests.
Dawood was acquitted of all charges in 1983. His gang had reached its pinnacle of power in Bombay by this time, and violence erupted in flashes before the city’s authority. He was able to wreak havoc easily, in this city so controlled by gangsters.Dawood was high on the most wanted list post Samad Khan’s murder. Even his bail in earlier cases was cancelled so that he could be arrested in Samad Khan’s murder case. But he was absconding.
Somehow, incredibly, Dawood had gotten a tip-off just in time, managing to escape minutes before the police party raided his headquarters. The police had been fooled, yet again. Soman was astonished when his men reported that Dawood had flown out of the coop. He could not believe that Dawood had such a well-entrenched network in the force. In a high level meeting the next day in the chamber of the police commissioner, further startling revelations were made.
‘How did he get wind of the information that we were about to arrest him?’ Soman asked.
‘Sir, he had got a phone call just 10 minutes before we reached the door at Musafirkhana and he escaped,’ said Sub-inspector Vinod Bhatt, checking the phone records. ‘Who alerted him?’ Soman was still incredulous, as the officers he had chosen were of impeccable character and integrity. Nobody knew at the time, but the Bombay police had made a grave mistake. When the small team was on Dawood’s heels, the police commissioner sought the consent and instructions for the mission from a senior politician in Mantralaya. This politician told the police commissioner that he wanted Dawood to be brought in alive at any cost. Only later did the inner circle of officers realise that a leak must have occurred in the flow of information, which gave Dawood the last-minute warning he needed to escape just before the police arrived. If the cops did not leak the information, the only source could have been the politician.
‘According to our information, he managed to reach the airport and catch a flight to Dubai,’ said an officer.
‘But we impounded his passport!’ Soman said, in disbelief.
‘Sir, his passport was in the custody of the Crime Branch and actually in the locker of officer Raja Tambat. We checked this morning and it is still sitting on its shelf,’ said Bhatt, with a wry smile.
Dawood had managed to flee from Bombay and relocate to Dubai. He took a domestic flight to Delhi, and then a connecting flight to Dubai. He had bypassed their impounding of his passport and used another one to escape, with the cops at his doorstep. The boy who was born in Dongri may have escaped to Dubai, but his fiefdom continued to remain the same —Bombay.
PART II
1
Making of an Empire