Black Friday
Among the policemen in the cell was one who seemed to be an officer. He looked at Khurana in the next cell and said, ‘Khurana, if you do not reveal Pilloo Khan’s whereabouts by tomorrow then I will drag your wife here and ask my men to treat her just as badly.’
When Khurana was released on 14 April, he went home to his wife Neeru, three-year-old son and two-year-old daughter. That night, as his family was sleeping, he pulled out his .32-bore revolver, which he had bought for self-defence but never used. He shot his wife and children. He later put the bodies in his car and drove down to a deserted lane in Juhu where he shot himself.
The city was shocked. The police did their best to play down the incident. In a press conference on 15 April, CP Samra said that Khurana ‘had not been arrested but only interrogated. We never suspected that he had close links with Pilloo Khan. We only wanted to try to get a clue about the notorious drug baron’s whereabouts’ (Times of India, 16 April 1993). In a follow-up story by Naresh Fernandes (Times of India, 22 April 1993) Samra is quoted as saying that Khurana ‘must have had a guilty conscience otherwise he would not have taken such a drastic step.’
The situation in Raigad was similar to that in Bombay. After Asgar Mukadam, Abdul Gani and others had confessed in the third week of March about the landings of the RDX in the area, the attention of the police turned to the three villages of Srivardhan, Mhasla and Mahad. Some 400 people, an overwhelming majority of whom were Muslim, were locked up and interrogated. The SP, Alibaug, T.S. Bhal, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), Chandrashekhar Daithankar, and Inspector S.A. Patil of Srivardhan directed operations.
At least some of the people arrested in Bombay—Mukadam, Imtiyaz Ghavate, Abdul Gani and Parvez Shaikh—had been closely connected with the planning and implementation of the blasts. In Raigad, however, very few of the people picked up had any connections with Tiger Memon. The few who had helped with the landings were porters, loaders and boatmen, who had no idea of the goods they were transporting or to what end they would be put. They had earned just minimal wages for their work, as for any other job. Many of them could not even say RDX, but said Iodex instead. There was little that they could reveal. Those who had been part of the larger conspiracy—the landing agents, customs and police officers—managed to get away.
As Olga Tellis wrote in her column in the weekly Sunday Observer on 19 June, ‘the police have indeed tended to preen themselves on the completion of their task when, in actual fact, what they have accomplished is the arrest of a bunch of coolies.’ Human rights activist P.A. Sebastian observed in the same issue:
They picked up a broom maker who apparently loaded RDX. Maybe the man was paid Rs 100 instead of Rs 50 to load the box, how was he to know what he was loading? ... in Thane and Ratnagiri, which have several quarries ... the police have arrested people who had licences to deal with explosives.
The Haspatel clan lived in Walavati village, two kilometres from Srivardhan. Their nightmare began when some rocket-like objects were recovered from a lake near the village. Acting on a tip-off, the Srivardhan police raided the house of Iqbal Haspatel on 13 April. During the search, they came across some ‘missiles’ kept in a showcase. The police dismantled all the furniture and domestic appliances in their zeal to recover the entire cache of weapons. They decided that the missiles were actually rocket launchers used by the Afghan Mujahideen and arrested the entire Haspatel family. Those hauled to the police station included Iqbal Haspatel, his wife, sister, daughter, daughter-in-law, sons Mobin and Nadeem, besides six other villagers from whose house the police had discovered some sophisticated knives.
Bhal wanted this recovery properly publicized and issued an official press release. According to the Times of India (14 April 1993):
Another arms haul was reported from Walavati area of Srivardhan late yesterday evening. Twenty-five projectiles and seventeen pipe bombs and ammunition were recovered from the creek. Combing operations were going on ... In nearby Murud, five bombs were recovered, the Raigad police reported.
It was also reported that the military experts had identified the projectiles to be highly deadly missiles and that a further report was awaited.
Between 13 and 20 April, the Haspatel family was detained. According to Aparna Borkar of the Indian Express, ‘A police team allegedly stripped and beat Mobin and Iqbal with belts and rods, burnt them with cigarette butts, gave electric shocks for two weeks and illegally detained two women of the family.’
On 20 April it was discovered that the ‘launchers’ were spindles destined for the Solapur textile mills, and had been dumped nearby when a truck overturned at Mahad in 1986. Some children had brought them home to Walavati. They had been thrown into the lake because the villagers feared that the police would accuse them of stealing them. ‘A police complaint with the Mahad police registering the incident and confirmation from the Solapur textile mill where the spindles were headed, corroborated the facts,’ reported the Indian Express.
The growing pressure from the human rights groups and the realization of the error regarding the ‘missiles’ compelled Bhal to release the Haspatels. The reports in the press attracted the attention of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which launched a probe into the alleged atrocities. The judicial magistrate of Srivardhan court, M.M. Sakarkar, registered a criminal case against Bhal and ten of his officers, including Daithankar, Patil and Chavan. The case is still on at the Alibaug sessions court.
While the men arrested in Raigad did not know the details of the conspiracy, they could give the police the names of those who had hired them for the landings. The three people who were instantly named as the leaders of the landing operations on 3 and 7 February as soon as the arrests began in the latter half of March were Dadabhai Parkar, Dawood Phanse and Rahim Laundrywala. It was also learnt that Phanse had been to Dubai on 25 January and had received specific instructions from Dawood Ibrahim to help Tiger Memon to land some ‘chemicals’.
Bhal was however reluctant to arrest Parkar, Phanse and Laundrywala without more clinching evidence. The Bombay police had alerted Bhal about the role of the three landing agents by the second week of March. But despite receiving verification from the Raigad detainees, Bhal did not take action, a fact that was highlighted in the national media.
Finally, the Bombay police decided to act on their own. A police team from the Worli police station, led by Senior Police Inspector H.B. Pawar, swooped down on the landing agents and arrested them towards the end of March.
At the end of March for the Bombay police, the landing agent Dadabhai Parkar’s statement to DIG P.K. Jain was an education on the finer points of smuggling.
‘I and my partners, Dawood Phanse and Rahim Laundrywala, have been active in smuggling for the last five years. We have worked for Tiger Memon for the last year and a half, and helped in six landings. Four of these were of silver ingots, and the last two were of arms and explosives.
‘For each landing we had to pay customs, the DRI and police officials to ensure that the goods could be unloaded unhindered and transported to the city. We also had to hire men to offload the goods. Each silver ingot weighs about thirty kilograms. For every ingot we earned Rs 7,000. The four consignments of silver we had were for 135 ingots, 143 ingots, 210 ingots and sixty-five ingots. For us, the more ingots the better—because for each landing we have to pay a fixed sum of money to the customs, DRI and police. So if there are more ingots, our profits are more, because the costs are fixed. Which is why when Tiger organized the landing of only sixty-five ingots we had quite an altercation with him ...’
Parkar went on to detail how much each customs and police officer had to be bribed. The amounts ranged from the thousands to several lakhs, and involved officials from the police, customs and even the DRI.
Rahim Laundrywala and Dawood Phanse were also interrogated, and their statements corroborated Parkar’s list of the corrupt customs, DRI and police officers who had helped Tiger.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau of the CBI was ale
rted, and it was decided to raid the houses of the officials who had been named by the landing agents. The CBI officers raided their homes in Thane, Alibaug and Malad among other places. However, the raids yielded nothing.
Addl. CC Thapa was outraged at hearing that his officers had colluded with the smugglers and suspended three of them.
9
Enter Bollywood
Among the detainees at the Mahim lock-up, SI Virendra Vani was the most feared policeman. He was a national-level boxer, and was nicknamed Arnold Schwarzenegger for his build was truly fearsome.
On 11 April, Vani entered one of the cells and glanced at the twenty-odd men huddled there. One of the men seemed to be in slightly better shape than the rest, and Vani decided that he was to be his target. This was Ibrahim Chauhan, also known as Baba Chauhan.
‘Sahab, chhod do, sahab. I have said everything I know,’ Chauhan said in a pleading manner.
But Vani was relentless. ‘I want the complete story. How you and your friends did it, and who all were involved. Samjha, b... ? Or else ...’
‘Sahab, I am a builder and businessman. I went to Dubai with my brother-in-law. We were having lunch at Hotel Delhi Durbar when I met Anis Ibrahim and Abu Salem. I was told that Anis was the brother of Dawood Ibrahim, and Salem was his close friend. It turned out that like me Salem lives in Andheri. We became friends and met several times in Dubai. When I returned to Bombay, we kept in touch.
‘On 15 January, Salem came to my office and said that Anis bhai had some work for me. In a little while, Anis called and asked me if I had any garage space available. I said no, but I promised I’d try to find some. Then Salem took me to the office of Magnum Videos at Santacruz. There I met Samir Hingora ...’
‘Who is this fucking Samir Hingora? The one of Samir-Hanif fame? Why are you trying to implicate him?’ Vani growled.
Chauhan could barely speak. ‘Sahab, sach bol raha hun (I am telling the truth). It is the same Samir, and not just Samir but Hanif Kadawala is also involved. They both know Salem and also Anis Ibrahim. Once when I was with them, they both spoke to Anis Ibrahim on an overseas call for such a long time that Hanif ended up paying a bill of Rs 1,300.’
■
Samir Hingora and Hanif Kadawala were film producers, and partners in a company called Magnum Videos. Their films included the Sanjay Dutt-Madhuri Dixit starrer Sanam. This was not the first time that they had been named in the context of a criminal nexus. They were said to organize shows in Dubai for Dawood Ibrahim, for which they would ferry well-known film personalities. Maria decided to follow up on Chauhan’s story. He sent off two police teams to get the producers. Until they returned, he took over the interrogation of Chauhan.
The unmarked police Maruti car halted outside Guru Nanak Park, near Turner Road, Bandra. It was 11.25 p.m. A dog barked somewhere.
SI Nadgouda rang the bell of Kadawala’s plush apartment. A woman opened the door.
‘Hanif Kadawala hai?’ Nadgouda asked.
‘Haan hai, who are you?’
‘I am a police officer.’
‘Kya kaam hai ?’
‘Call him, I say,’ Nadgouda glared. The woman retreated. The door opened again. It was a stout man of medium height with a moustache. ‘I am Hanif Kadawala.’
‘Maria sahab has called you to the Mahim police station.’
‘What nonsense? What have I done?’ Kadawala said in a tone of righteous indignation.
‘Mr Kadawala, I think you should reserve your anger for my boss, Mr Rakesh Maria, as he has sent us here. You can ask him the reason.’
After a short argument, Kadawala got into the waiting Maruti car.
Hanif Kadawala (Courtesy Mid-day)
‘At least now will you tell me why I am being harassed in this manner?’ Kadawala asked Nadgouda in a more subdued tone.
‘For your involvement in the bomb blasts and having connections with Dawood Ibrahim.’
‘This is absurd. I am innocent. I am not involved in the bomb blasts. As for Dawood Ibrahim, I don’t know him from Adam.’ The belligerence was returning.
‘Look, you are wasting your energy on us. Why don’t you just shut up? If you are innocent you will be let off.’
According to Nadgouda, Kadawala offered him five petis to let him off (a peti was a lakh in Bombay slang), which he refused.
After a while, Kadawala spoke up again. ‘Your police always goes after small fry like me and let off influential people.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean if you are really serious, then why don’t you arrest Sanjay?’
‘Sanjay, who Sanjay?’ Nadgouda was surprised that Kadawala had started revealing information rather than arguing. And that too, with no prompting.
‘Sanjay Dutt.’
‘Sanjay Dutt ... who?’ Nadgouda wanted to make sure. ‘Come on sahab, you don’t know Sanjay Dutt, the film star, the son of the member of Parliament (MP), Sunil Dutt?’
It was shortly after 11 p.m., normally there would be much more traffic. But tonight even the traffic on the road seemed to have fallen silent not to disturb the tension in the room.
Maria continued the interrogation of the trembling Ibrahim Chauhan. His tone was quiet but steely. ‘Chauhan, you have a choice of either talking to me here now or talking to Vani in the lock-up.’
Chauhan looked up at Maria and sobbed, ‘Sahab, I will tell you everything ...’ His voice was raspy. He asked for some water, which Maria asked an orderly to get. Chauhan gulped down the water and continued to sob.
Maria waited, a trifle impatiently. Realizing that, Chauhan began speaking. ‘Sahab, you know Samir and Hanif are close to Anis Ibrahim. They had spoken to Anis in Dubai over the phone ... they are involved ...’
‘I know that already. Tell me how they are involved.’
‘Anis had instructed me and Abu Salem to deliver some guitars and tennis balls to Sanju Baba’s house at Bandra. Which I had done faithfully and apart from that I did nothing.’
Maria was yet to be fluent in the jargon of the Mafia, though he understood a fair amount. Guitar and tennis balls were not part of his vocabulary.
‘What are guitars and tennis balls?’
‘Sahab, a guitar is an AK-56 rifle, we also call it lambiwali, the long one, because it is larger than a handgun. Tennis balls are hand grenades.’
Maria suppressed a smile at the ingenious coding. ‘Who is this Sanju Baba?’
‘Sanju Baba is the film star, Sanjay Dutt.’
Maria had been sprawled in his chair. At this, he sat up and his eyes widened with shock and disbelief. ‘What are you saying? Sanjay Dutt and Anis Ibrahim. How the hell does Sanjay come in the picture?’
‘Sahab, Sunil Dutt had done a lot of relief work for Muslims after the riots of December and January. Sanju Baba too had chipped in. As a result, the Shiv Sena guys had been threatening him. Sanju had requested Anis bhai for some guns to defend himself and his family against the Shiv Sena ...’
Chauhan continued, but Maria’s mind was elsewhere as he pondered on the consequences of this revelation. It was only when Nadgouda entered that he snapped back to his immediate surroundings.
‘Sir, we have brought Hanif Kadawala. He says that Sanjay Dutt, the film star, is involved ...’ Nadgouda began.
Maria interrupted, ‘Bring him in.’
Kadawala swaggered in. There was an air of disdain about him, but he greeted Maria pleasantly. Maria ignored his greeting. ‘Are you Hanif Kadawala?’
‘Yes, sir, I am.’
‘What is your profession?’
‘Sir, my partner, Samir Hingora, and I produce films and purchase official rights for videos. Our firm is called Magnum Videos.’
‘How many films do you hold the video rights for? How many films have you produced?’
‘We hold the video rights for over 500 films. We have produced five films, and there is one—Sanam, with Sanjay Dutt as the hero—which is currently under production.’
‘Sanjay Dutt ... well ...
Is it true that you people have an underworld syndicate in which you, Samir, Abu Salem, Baba Chauhan and Sanjay Dutt are members and Anis Ibrahim is your boss?’
Kadawala’s face turned ashen as this question took him by surprise. He regained his composure with visible effort. ‘Sir, there is no such syndicate, and Anis Ibrahim is not our boss. He has nothing to do with our business though he tries to interfere. My partner, Samir, introduced me to him when we were in Dubai. Anis Ibrahim has interfered in our business several times, for example he fixed a high price for the rights of Feroz Khan’s film Yalgaar. I don’t like the man.’
‘If you don’t like him and he has nothing to do with your business, then how come you obeyed him and delivered arms and ammunition for him?’
‘Sahab, we were forced. I opposed it strongly. But we knew that if we refused, we could get killed.’
‘Cut the crap. Tell me the entire incident in detail. Just remember, if you do not tell us the truth you will pay for it ...’
Kadawala sighed and seemed to be making a very unpleasant decision. As he began to speak, there was an interruption. The police party that had gone to fetch Samir Hingora had returned. Maria asked them to wait and waved at Kadawala to continue.
‘We had erected a huge set of a carnival at Film City in January for shooting Sanam. But in the first week of the shooting itself, the riots broke out again and we had to abandon it. During the riots, the entire film fraternity used to assemble at Sunil Dutt’s bungalow, Ajanta, at Pali Hill for relief work.
‘It was during one of these relief meetings that I heard Sanjay talking to Anis Ibrahim over the phone and asking for the delivery of arms and ammunition. Samir also told me how he was compelled by Anis ...’
Suddenly Maria signalled Kadawala to be quiet. He signalled his officers to bring in Hingora.