Dongri to Dubai (40 page)

Abu Salem Abdul Qayyum Ansari belonged to a family of conservative Muslims, who hailed from a small hamlet of Sarai Mir some 30 km from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. His father Abdul Qayyum Abdul Hafiz Ansari was a respectable lawyer in his village and wanted his children to study. Known as Qayyum Vakil, he had never been able to make it big in the legal circuit. After Qayyum’s death, Salem’s mother Jannatun Nisa began making beedis to make both the ends meet.

Salem, being the second eldest, had attended school until Class IX, but after his father’s death in a road accident, he had dropped out and begun looking for work. Salem and his elder brother Abu Hakim both started working as bike mechanics as their two other brothers Abu Jaish and Abu Lais were still in their teens. Initially, he tried to work in Delhi for a few months but finally moved to Mumbai.

In Mumbai, his uncle gave him a small stall in Arasa Shopping Centre and allowed him to sell belts and moonlight as a real estate broker. It was during these stints as a broker that Salem came in touch with Anees Bhai. Once indoctrinated into the gang, he followed any instructions Anees gave him slavishly. After a few assignments, Anees began using him as a top confidante, and after the communal riots of 1993, assigned him the major task of delivering guns and grenades to Sanjay Dutt.

Salem almost fainted when he was told to pay a visit to Dutt at his bungalow at Pali Hill. Salem, like all the village youth, was star struck. He delivered the deadly package of weapons and explosives but did not lose the opportunity to hug the star several times. He could never forget his encounter with Dutt: it was his first meeting with a film star. What is more, Dutt was a reigning superstar and son of the legendary actor and member of Parliament Sunil Dutt. Back in his village, Salem could never have dreamt of such a moment. The sheer proximity to Dutt had boosted his ego. And Dutt had welcomed him warmly, like a friend and brother.

Much later, when he reached the shores of Dubai, the naive Salem realised, of course, that it was not his personality that had made Dutt warm to him; rather his connection with the Bhais or the dons. The man who has a gun owns the world, he thought to himself.

He thought that if he could become powerful, the whole of Bollywood would pay obeisance to him. Salem decided that if Shakeel could be the right-hand man for Dawood Bhai, he could acquire a similar status with Anees Bhai. All he had to do was handle this smartly.

Anees had told him once, ‘
Hamara dhanda, darr ka dhanda hai aur Dawood bhai ne sabke dil mein darr bitha diya hai
[our business is the business of fear and Dawood has planted fear in everyone’s hearts].’ Salem looked at him replied, ‘
Bhai, main samajh gaya, Dawood ke darr se yeh dhanda chalta hai
[Bhai, I’ve understood what you’ve said about Dawood and fear].’

Salem got down to work seriously. He knew that in Mumbai real estate builders and Bollywood were two money churners. If he kept them scared, he could fill his coffers for three generations.

The year 1995 began with a bang for the Anees-Salem combine. Just three years ago, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao with the help of the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh had opened up India’s economy, after years of permit raj. He had thus rendered India an open economy, after years of protectionist policies and regulatory constraints. The impact was far reaching as private players were allowed into many new spheres. The doing away of an over-bureaucratised system which inhibited competition, innovation, efficiency, and economic growth was appreciated everywhere, and the resultant free flow of capital brought with it tremendous opportunities. The first sector that saw plenty of activity was the building and construction industry.

And where could this increased activity be evidenced more than Mumbai? Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, was one of the first cities to show evidence of the effects of liberalisation. Construction activities began everywhere. To Salem, it was clear that the builders were minting money, not just in Mumbai but also in the city’s outskirts. Western suburbs extended to as far as Mira Road, Nalla Sopara, Vasai, and Virar and the Central Exurbia stretched from Mumbai’s neighbourhood city, Thane, to Mumbra, Dombivali, and Kalyan.

Salem asked his boys to do some scouting around the city and got hold of some builders’ phone numbers. A string of calls were made to builders across the city and Salem, with his unpolished Mumbai lingo and a smattering of Urdu, spoke with a distinct Uttar Pradesh inflection, managed to frighten a lot of builders.

Salem had managed to instil fear in the hearts of the Mumbai’s business community. Several builders began loosening their purse strings. The initial flow of cash from Mumbai boosted Salem’s morale and he began to exult. Most of all, Anees was pleasantly shocked; he could never have anticipated that a man from the back and beyond of Azamgarh could fatten his kitty by actually shaking up Mumbai’s rich and knocking some money out of them.

Intimidation thrives on violence and bloodshed. Yet Salem had not shed any blood so far; he had been milking the Dawood terror factor. He realised that he did not have any foot soldiers to execute his diktat, if some builder were to defy him. Salem’s thoughts went to the rampant joblessness and poverty in his hometown, Azamgarh.

The north Indian provinces of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are notorious for their lawlessness. There is hardly any development, corruption is rampant, and administration non-existent. Abject poverty has driven and continues to drive youngsters to crime.

In the wake of this convenient demand-supply situation, Salem hit on the idea of importing sharpshooters from his hometown, which though not ingenious was radically unconventional. Most of the village youth had used a country-made revolver, known as a
katta
, at some point of time. A
katta
is a handgun moulded in a small-scale iron-welding unit and is good for a single shot. After a bullet is fired, it cannot be reloaded and used again. The
katta
industry is a cottage industry in many Bihar and UP villages and the weapon comes in handy for village ruffians looking to intimidate lesser mortals.

Salem, who had grown up amongst street thugs, knew most of these youth could pull a trigger and run from the scene if required. Any of them could be hired for a paltry amount of 3,000 to 5,000 rupees. If the shooter were smart enough to duck the police, he would be paid his remuneration and if he got arrested, there was no liability for Salem.

Salem became the first ganglord to import shooters from Uttar Pradesh. These boys were told to fire at the door of the builder, shatter the glass pane, or just barge into the office, brandish the gun, and scare the manager. Filmmakers Subhash Ghai and Rajiv Rai were threatened in this manner. Later these boys were also assigned the task of shooting to kill. As the boys had no police records in Mumbai, the cops were totally taken aback by these new entrants in the world of crime.

A spate of shooting incidents was reported across the city and the cops were reduced to mere spectators. The only clue to these killings and shootouts were Salem’s own claims to his victims, while boasting about his exploits.

Builder Pradeep Jain was one such victim who was targeted by Salem. Salem had wanted a share in a property that Jain was developing, but he refused to buckle under Salem’s threats. On 7 March 1995, Pradeep Jain was shot dead by Salem’s men outside his Juhu bungalow. Jain was regarded as a top builder in the city, and his killing established Salem as a ruthless don and announced his arrival on the crime scene.

The killing also had a suitable impact on the business community. Everyone began to pay up quietly. This attracted other lumpen elements towards the Salem gang. The two most dreaded shooters who joined Salem immediately were Salim Shaikh alias Salim Haddi (
haddi
means bone, and the nickname was used because of his reed-thin physique) and even a suspended police constable, Rajesh Igwe. Igwe was associated with the local arms division II of the Mumbai police and had been suspended on corruption charges. Igwe, who was proficient at handling all kinds of weapons, wanted a comfortable and lavish life. He joined the gang and began working for Salem. It was unprecedented in Mumbai’s mafia history for a policeman to join a mafia gang and execute killings at the instance of a ganglord. But Salem now had this unlikely new gang member on his side.

Salem began to expand his circle of victims; the next person he chose was Omprakash Kukreja of Kukreja builders in Chembur. The police dossier describes Kukreja as a Rajan sympathiser and financier, while the newspaper reports claimed that Kukreja contributed 50 lakh rupees every year to the annual Ganeshotsav celebrations organised by Sahyadri Krida Mandal at Tilak Nagar. When Salem’s men reported this to him, he began calling Kukreja for protection money.

However, Kukreja refused to pay up and increased the security cover at his Chembur office instead. Salem asked his two ace shooters Salim Haddi and Igwe to punish Kukreja for his impudence. The two stormed Kukreja’s office on 18 September 1995 and not only killed the builder but also other employees who were present in the office, including Deepak Bilkiya and Mohammad Ansari.

But the Mumbai police also killed both the shooters, in the notorious ‘encounter’ style. Igwe’s death was particularly important; other ex cops in this lawless city would get the message.

The police failed to detect the Kukreja murder case. After a yearlong investigation, they had to close the case on 11 November 1996 classifying it under ‘A’, meaning true but undetected.

Significantly, Kukreja became the first casualty of the inter-gang rivalry between Dawood and Rajan. Infuriated at Kukreja’s murder, Rajan decided to retaliate.

13

Shocking Bollywood

T
he five-pound hammer hurled in the air came crashing down, reducing the windshield of a spanking new white Contessa to smithereens. The shattered windscreen and the accompanying deafening noise brought the car to a screeching halt.

The serene quiet of Perry Cross Road in Bandra West, known as the queen of Mumbai’s suburbs, had been pierced by a few gun-toting men dressed in black. The quartet closed in on the car. One of them nudged at the shattered windscreen; the laminated polyvinyl acrylic sheet gave way easily, giving the gunmen an unhindered view of the people inside.

They pointed their guns towards a man wearing a black suit, comfortable in the rear seat. After pumping several bullets into him, the killers disappeared from the scene.

The incident was over in little more than a minute, enacted in full view of the street’s bystanders. Shocked residents peeped out of their balconies. Perry Cross Road residents had never witnessed violence of such an inhuman, gruesome nature before.

The killers had left behind two things: a hammer and a dead man riddled with thirty bullets. The victim was airline tycoon, Thakiyuddin Wahid, of East West Airlines. Wahid, an entrepreneur from Cochin in Kerala, came from a humble background. Initially, he had established a successful travel agency at Dadar, central Mumbai. Subsequently, in the post liberalisation era of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s government, with Dr Manmohan Singh at the helm of the country’s economy, Wahid became the first businessman to launch a private airline and compete with the government-run Indian Airlines and one fledgling airline, Vayudoot.

But one cruel stroke of fate killed not only the man behind the enterprise but the spirit behind it. Wahid’s killing proved fatal for East West Airlines and its other businesses.

The high-profile murder pulled Police Commissioner R.D. Tyagi, Joint Commissioner of police, crime, R.S. Sharma and some top politicians to the spot immediately. The hammer lying on the bonnet of the car stumped them; an odd choice as a signature. But the hammer subsequently became the signature of Rohit Verma, Rajan’s ace hitman.

Within two months, Rajan had decided to avenge the Kukreja killing and had not wasted any time before retaliating. He wanted the opposition to know he was giving it right back to them. Like the others, he had figured out that after every high-profile killing, the cops stepped up their security arrangements and rounded up the usual suspects from their respective gangs; thus ensuring that they beat a hasty retreat from the city. This kind of swooping crackdown was a dampener for the hired mafia killers and they resurfaced only when the police became a little more complacent. Rajan had waited a requisite two months before it was safe to strike and settle scores with Dawood.

Now, the killings of Kukreja and Wahid had not only shaken Mumbai’s moneyed class but also rattled the top brass of the police force. When the mafia takes to the streets, it is always the Mumbai police who receive unremitting flak both from the public and the nervous politicians. The police tried to say that those killed had some connections with the mafia and that innocent people were not affected by these inter-gang tensions. The state administration and the politicians, however, were intent on proving that the police had failed, dealing a body blow to the law and order system in the state.

But no one, not the police, nor the administration nor the politicians had any clue of what was to come. They had no idea that what they had witnessed was just a preview.