Dongri to Dubai (42 page)

Two weeks since the assassination, the cops had not been able to make any headway in the case, but they also avoided major goof ups: some respite. Next came the controversial encounter of one Javed Fawda, at Ballard Pier on 28 August, the day Mumbai got its new police chief. Assistant Police Inspector Vasant Dhobale headed this encounter, and soon Dhobale’s men cleverly leaked news of this encounter to some of their friends in print media. ‘Gulshan Kumar’s shooter killed in encounter’, ‘Crime branch hits back in style, guns down Gulshan Kumar’s killer’, read the headlines. The press, especially the Marathi press, went gaga over Dhobale’s perceived gallantry.

At other times, Deputy Commissioner of Police, K.L. Prasad and his chief, R.S. Sharma would have been in a celebratory mood. But a pall of gloom had descended on the Crime Branch headquarters. The officers brushed aside the queries of the reporters over whether Javed Fawda was the main shooter or the side shooter, with a generic response: ‘We are still investigating’.

In underworld parlance, the man who pulls the trigger on his victim is the main shooter, while the one who gives cover to the shooter or is merely a sidekick, is known as the side shooter or second shooter, and both are clearly identified as such. The very fact that the cops were so noncommittal about Javed Fawda’s role in the killing meant that there was something extremely fishy going on here.

As it turned out, Javed Fawda turned out to be the Crime Branch’s nemesis in more ways than they ever fathomed. Javed Fawda was actually Abu Sayama Abu Talib Shaikh, also known as Javed, and as he had a bucktooth, had earned the nickname ‘Fawda’. Unfortunately, he was not the shooter Javed Fawda, just a mere peanut vendor who happened to be known by the same name.

Javed’s sister Rubina who lived in a slum in Bandra, now called up a storm. She claimed that her brother used to sell peanuts outside the Masjid near Bandra railway station west and had been missing since 26 August. Four men had taken him away on the night of 26 August, following which she had lodged a missing person complaint with the Bandra Police Station.

On 29 August, she was summoned to identify the badly mutilated body of her brother. The autopsy revealed that not only Javed had been riddled with bullets fired at close range, but he was also run over by a vehicle, as his ribs were crushed under the impact of a car’s wheels. Discoveries like this had put the police back in a difficult spot.

Sharma and Prasad tried desperately to explain to the media and human rights watchers that they had actually killed a criminal and not an innocent peanut vendor, but the worse was yet to come.

Every phone call that Sharma answered and every visitor he met exposed the Crime Branch chief to major embarrassment. The Crime Branch had no defense when questioned by the media about the total failure of intelligence. This Fawda encounter had become a massive fiasco for them.
Sharma decided to launch an offensive. Three days after the encounter, while the media was still sharpening their swords, Sharma decided to unmask the dirty underbelly of the film industry, which had allowed for these eruptions of violence.

Sharma had so far managed to piece together various conspiracies of revenge and execution: the scattered pieces of the puzzle that made up a complicated investigation. Abu Salem had organised a musical extravaganza for famous Bollywood composers Nadeem-Shravan in Dubai which was to be attended by top film stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Jackie Shroff, and Aditya Pancholi. Salem had hosted the party and was seen hobnobbing with prominent business rivals of Gulshan Kumar, which led to the suspicion that the conspiracy to kill Gulshan Kumar was hatched at this party.

That such big names in the industry had any association with Salem had rattled Mumbai’s top cops. Should they initiate action against them and book them for their nexus with the underworld or make them witnesses and strengthen their case? Also, unlike the police top brass in developed countries, the Indian police bosses have to always reckon with a major factor whether the suspect is related to some top politician, film star, or a business baron.

Touching any film star without a watertight case could result in a severe backlash, which might result in these stars using their contacts in Delhi and putting pressure on the Mantralaya mandarins. In a set-up where the chief minister and home minister do not see eye-to-eye, the proverbial Damocles’ sword always hung over the top cop’s head.

The most recent example had been made of Deputy Commissioner of Police, Rakesh Maria. Maria had had a phenomenally successful stint at the Crime Branch when he had cracked the Mumbai serial blasts of 1993. But when his men visited the house of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s estranged son Jaidev on a tip-off that he had some animals of endangered species in his private zoo at Kalina, Maria was unceremoniously shunted out of his office within days of the episode.

Suave and politically smart as he was, Sharma decided to think one step ahead of potential opponents. He would first seek the consent of his political masters in Mantralaya and New Delhi. The idea was that the stars would be questioned, even grilled, but that even if they came clean, they would not be able to pull strings and make life miserable for the harangued cops. What they were asking for was immunity of a kind.

Sharma began working on his campaign, meticulously laying it out. The aim was to slowly provide nuggets of information to whet the curiosity of the powers that be in Delhi while keeping his political bosses in Mumbai appraised of his every move and initiative during the investigation.

Sharma knew very well that this was a huge risk but his stint in Delhi and interactions with wily national-level politicians had honed his skills in taking calculated risks. Sharma took the consent of his political masters in Mantralaya and called for a mega press conference. Each and every member of the press fraternity was called, even if he represented a shady street-side rag.

The orderlies were instructed to call, send pager messages, or even personally inform everyone who had occasion to call the main police control room to be present. The Commissioner of Police, Ronald Mendonca, would be holding a huge press conference after all.

Rarely has the police commissioner’s chamber become so crowded that even policemen find it difficult to move around the room. Normally press conferences are a cacophonous event and crime reporters are at their meanest while posing uncomfortable questions. But to everyone’s chagrin, Sharma was smiling. The man even appeared to have slept well the previous night. When Sharma was ready, he raised his hand to silence the media. Quiet fell over the room; only the whirring of conditioners going at full blast was audible.

Sharma began. ‘During the course of our investigation, we have come across some startling background information on the Gulshan Kumar murder case. The famous music director, Nadeem Saifi, gave the
supari
for Gulshan’s killing. The plot was hatched at the Empire Hotel, owned by druglord Vicky Goswami, in June this year. It happened in the presence of several Bollywood personalities.’

Even after Sharma stopped talking, there was a full 30-second silence in the room; some of the reporters were busy taking notes while the others looked at Sharma, mouths agape.

Nadeem Saifi of Nadeem-Shravan fame, the flamboyant music director, was involved in the barbaric killing of fellow Bollywood member Gulshan Kumar! Unbelievable. There was a squeal of disbelief. Everyone began to shout questions at the same time.

Sharma answered each and every question patiently and calmly. When asked why they had not arrested Nadeem, he said that the man was abroad as his wife had suffered a miscarriage. But they were in touch with him and he had promised to return the following week.

When asked what about the top film personalities who were present when the conspiracy to kill Gulshan Kumar was hatched, Sharma made it clear that all the stars were to be summoned soon. The press conference made headlines across the globe. It became a hot topic of discussion on all fronts; corridors of power and courtrooms began debating the whole issue. The killing and conspiracy exposed India’s film industry and its murky world and laid the operations of the mafia bare, to some extent.

Everyone wanted to get to the root of the conspiracy. No one wanted to seem like they were taking sides with the tainted lot, and this did not spare the best actors in the country either. Sharma was given carte blanche, with a rider to ‘be discreet and not let the shit hit the fan’.

Thus began the biggest star parade of the world in the high security precincts of the Mumbai police headquarters. No police headquarters in any city has ever witnessed the kind of spectacle Mumbai recorded in its annals of crime history.

The first one to be summoned to the Crime Branch was Shah Rukh Khan. Dressed in a black jacket and denims, he tried hard not to look nervous and tense. Khan was ushered into the small cabin of Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP), L.R. Rao. For the huge and bulky ACP it was his hour of glory: sitting across King Khan and quizzing him over his indiscreet presence at the wrong party.

Rao was deferential with Khan and questioned him for over an hour as he recorded his statement formally. Shah Rukh, in his two-page statement, admitted that he had gone to Dubai for a Bollywood show organised by Dubai locals, but that he did not know the organisers personally and had no inkling that Salem and Anees Ibrahim were actually managing the whole show from behind the scenes. When he heard of their involvement, he had made an excuse, saying he had slipped and injured his leg, rendering him unable to attend the Nadeem-Shravan party.

Shah Rukh was allowed to leave, but not before he was mobbed by the waiting hordes of media men and camerapersons. Shah Rukh, who was smoking constantly, was sweating when he stepped out of ACP Rao’s cabin. When some reporters accosted him and asked him questions, he got livid and scolded them, in an unlikely display. ‘Can you please at least let me light my cigarette before hounding me with your questions?’ he snapped at me when I asked him. The superstar was visibly trembling though it is not clear whether this was due to rage or nervousness. Somehow he managed to get into his car and vanish from the scene.

Jackie Shroff and Aditya Pancholi were next to be summoned to the Crime Branch and they had to pass through a similar routine. Unlike Shah Rukh, at least Shroff tried to keep it amiable with the media men and he did not get into an altercation with them.

Salman Khan, who had heard of the media circus, outsmarted the reporters and requested the cops to talk to him in a smaller office to which the media did not have access. He was called to the Bandra unit office where he spent a couple of hours with Crime Branch investigators. But he was let go after making his statement to the cops, and nothing much came of it any more.

Sharma had successfully managed to ward off the raging storm. But this was just a temporary reprieve. Sharma had not forgotten Fawda, and neither had his detractors.

15

Clandestine Coups

T
he Mumbai police is the most unique law enforcement agency in the world. One of its most fascinating methods of dealing with an escalating crime situation is the ‘encounter’. The media dubs police encounters as ‘extra-judicial killings’ where criminals are purportedly killed in what is reported as encounters.

The Mumbai police has scripted hundreds of encounters since 1982, when Julio Ribeiro was at its helm. The narrative of a police encounter rarely has any variation. The police
vaarta patra
or a press communiqué generically reads: ‘A police team had gone to arrest criminal X. When the cops asked him to surrender, he opened fire at the police. When the cops fired back in self-defense, X was fatally injured and was rushed to the hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries’.