Byculla to Bangkok

  ‘I’ll kill you, Gawli, even if it’s the last thing I do in my life!’ he swore and began weeping again. He felt orphaned. His brother had continued to shield him even after he had become paralysed; Amar had smuggled him out of India on a forged passport and flown him to Canada and the US to get him the best medical treatment. He was hoping to get his brother to walk, but the doctors had pronounced the unfortunate verdict that he would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

  ‘In the history of the Mumbai mafia, there has been no one like Dada. The police could never lay their hands on him; he was slippery as wet soap. Dada never kept in touch with any friends and even his wife and children would never know when he sneaked in for a visit,’ Ashwin said as he kept talking about his brother that night.

  In the interview with us, Ashwin spoke about his brother’s death. ‘The police claim it was an encounter, but everyone knows how much Arun Gawli paid to get my brother killed. He [Amar] did a lot for me. I cannot let his death go unavenged. Besides, the boys from the gang had to be looked after. The show must go on.’

  In bed, sleep eluded him. ‘It’s a cold-blooded slaying,’ his mind was telling him. He kept thinking about the turn of events that had turned him into a fugitive and robbed him of the right to perform the last rites of his slain brother. ‘I should have been next to my dada, holding him and cradling his head. Instead, here I am, stuck in this strange, foreign land with no family and no shoulder to cry on.’

  How he missed his beloved Dada and 144 Tenements, back in Chinchpokli. He missed everything about his country and wished he could take the next flight back and lead a normal life. Of course, if he took the next flight back, he would land not in the arms of his family but of the Mumbai police. Not for the first time in his life, he rued the day local goons had disrupted their peaceful middle-class existence at the Dadar vegetable market and turned their lives upside down.

  If they hadn’t intervened, he would probably have been at the crease with bowler Balwinder Sandhu and batsman Chandrakant Pandit, both of whom had practised at the nets with him at Shivaji Park under the tutelage of the great Ramakant Achrekar, who had chiselled Sachin Tendulkar into a master batsman. Dada had been very keen that Ashwin pursue cricket but there was no question of chasing the ball in the face of bullets.

  The morning after news of his brother’s death reached him, Ashwin was red-eyed. The glamour of living in the US suddenly began to pall. He looked around his bolthole. It was a warm and cosy place, and safe. It had been home for two long years; he had come straight here from Canada, after jumping bail in December 1995. In the beginning, Neeta had managed to meet him somewhere midway. But that too had stopped.

  Something else was niggling at him. Neeta, his beloved wife and now a Shiv Sena corporator, had been giving him the cold shoulder for a while now. Even the death of his brother had not made her sensitive to his feelings. She had said not a single encouraging or soothing word to him.

  Ashwin knew he had to take charge of the family and the business – or they would lose out in the race for survival and supremacy. In the last few years, Amar had established a crime syndicate that spanned the Afghani drug cartels and Sri Lankan Tamil groups like the LTTE and the People’s Liberation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE).

  With Ashwin’s help, Amar Naik had become the most resourceful don in Mumbai. None of the other gangsters – except Dawood and Chhota Rajan – had his chutzpah, and very early on in the business, he had realized where the big bucks lay: drugs, weapons and, of course, real estate.

  Amar possessed immense charm and power too; he had managed to crack the inscrutable Pathans who rarely dealt with non-Muslims. After Dawood, Amar became the only don to have penetrated the drug cartels of the Pathan syndicate, spread out between Kabul in Afghanistan, Peshawar in Pakistan and Ahmedabad in Gujarat.

  Amar was also in cahoots with Abdul Latif Khan in Gujarat, Nari Khan of Mumbai and the international drug trafficker, Naved Khan. Then there was his fascination with guns. He had never personally killed anyone, but he loved the sense of power that came with a gun. He was the first to smuggle an Austrian Glock to India. It was while getting an Israeli Uzi sub and other weapons for his gang that he had realized that he could use his network to supply weapons to those who needed it. He became inexorably drawn to gun running, which is a corollary to narco-terrorism.

  Amar’s connection with Krishna Pillai and his son Kumar Pillai paid off. The Pillais put him on to LTTE operatives, and he managed to strike up a rapport with the top bosses. For the LTTE, Amar Naik was an obvious choice; everybody in the know of weapons-smuggling was talking about his arsenal and his network. For any other gangster, to deal with the Pathans and the LTTE would have been like running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. But Amar Naik pulled it off. He also introduced his brother to the top commanders of both the outfits – this was to lead to Ashwin’s downfall.

  It was late evening in early 1997 and the sun had just set when Ashwin Naik arrived in India, via the porous town of Raxaul in the East Champaran district of Bihar. For an exit, he preferred North 24 Parganas in West Bengal. (At that point, Raxaul and North 24 Parganas were the chosen gateways for those who wanted to cross the border while giving the police the slip – North 24 Parganas was mainly used by Bangladeshi immigrants who came to India looking for a better life.)

  Once back on Indian soil, Ashwin weighed his options. The Mumbai police were not to be trusted. They had become trigger-happy, and had killed Amar even though Neeta held an important position in the civic body and was known to be close to Bal Thackeray. Ashwin realized that his immobility would make him an easy target. Mumbai was off limits for him for some time.

  He decided to stay in New Delhi. This would help him remain close to the gang as well as his family, and he would also be off the radar of the Mumbai police. Neeta could always travel to New Delhi without arousing any suspicion.

  Ashwin managed to buy some property in Delhi, which included a palatial bungalow and a couple of farmhouses. The properties were under the control of Neeta. Since she was part of the state government, nobody would raise an eyebrow at her wealth.

  Back in Delhi, Ashwin settled down in his flat in Geetanjali Enclave in posh south Delhi. He thought that, like in the US, where he had managed to remain incognito, nobody would know about his whereabouts in Delhi. For two years, he remained undercover and, if he had not been exposed by a strange turn of events, he would have probably accomplished his dream of liquidating Gawli and his empire.

  But old sins cast long shadows. Trouble came from the most unexpected quarter.

  On 7 June 1999, LTTE commando Sriram alias Lamboo was gunned down and his aide Shiv Raman injured in the Nangloi area in west Delhi, by unidentified assailants. During investigations, the Delhi police recovered some fifteen kilos of drugs from their hideout. Subsequent investigations led to the arrest of drug baroness Hemlata Mankoo, and the seizure of heroin worth over Rs 80 crore. Hemlata was Delhi’s top woman drug peddler, with connections to the LTTE. Some of the documents seized during the raids contained phone numbers which led the Delhi police to Chennai and from there to the training camps of the LTTE and PLOTE. The Delhi police were flummoxed when they found that the LTTE had joined hands with Pakistani and Mumbai drug traffickers to finance their proxy war and that Ashwin was their main conduit.

  Sriram’s killing proved to be a double whammy for Ashwin.Sriram had been planning to kill Gawli and avenge Amar’s killing. His arrest not only put paid to the plan of avenging Amar, it landed his boss in the Delhi police net.

  It transpired that Ashwin used to procure drugs from his Pakistani contacts and give them to the LTTE, who sold them in return for a supply of sophisticated weapons from their allies in West Asia, including Israel. Once the drugs reached Delhi through the Rajasthan border, they were sent to Chennai, packed into concealed spaces built into folding tables, through Sriram and Shivraman. From there, they went to Rameshwaram and were transported on boats to Sri Lanka. Ash
win was the channel between the Pathans and the LTTE, and the Delhi police realized that if he had managed to juggle two such dreaded groups, sitting right in the heart of the national capital, he was an exceedingly shrewd player.

  Unlike the Mumbai police, who were known for their knee-jerk reactions, the Delhi police took their time. They were yet to be initiated into extra-judicial killings, and they decided to take it step by step. First, they found out where Ashwin Naik lived, then they tapped his phone. When they learned about his plans to escape from the country, they closed in. They arrested him and two of his aides, Amit Mukherjee and Kishore Rajput, while they were trying to cross the West Bengal border.

  Ashwin’s arrest on 6 August 1999 exposed the negligence of the Mumbai police. They had received intelligence that Ashwin Naik had returned to India two years ago, but something or somebody had obviously prevented them from doing their job.

  In an interview with The Week, Ashwin regretted his bad timing. ‘If I had managed to get out that day, I would never have come back.’

  Ashwin Naik was charged with 16 cases of murder, extortion and criminal assault. After the cosy confines of his luxurious flat, he found himself in a cold cell in Tihar jail.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Murder of a Mafia Queen

  It was exactly 12.15 p.m. In the area around 144 Tenements, mostly residential buildings with a working-class population, people went about their business of daily living.

  A chilli-and-spices mill hummed with activity. Children were walking to school and there were a few passers-by, who barely noticed a car drawing up near an apartment called Shubhashis. A few minutes later, a woman stepped out of a taxi and walked towards the building. She was alone.

  Neeta Naik was returning from Nagpur after attending a Shiv Sena rally. As she strode forward, three men who were watching her from the top of the building took a deep breath. One of them gave an almost imperceptible nod to the others, signalling the job at hand.

  As she approached her second-floor flat, they came down the narrow flight of stairs till they too arrived at No 12. The woman saw one of the men, but ignored him and kept climbing the stairs. He gazed at her for a long time, his eyes filled with awe as he drew out his gun. She was a statuesque woman who wore her clothes – mostly expensive saris – beautifully. The woman looked at him and gave him a look of scorn. Guns did not frighten her. She was married to the mob after all. She thought this was another trick, a ploy to make her do their bidding. Then she saw the other two men, all part of her own gang. A question formed in her mind but before she could voice it, the first man pointed the gun at her head and fired two rounds. She did not even have the time to scream, as bits of her skull and brains splattered the walls and the stairs. Neeta Naik collapsed in a heap.

  The man who had pulled the trigger was Sunil Jadhav alias Ekka. Ekka was a hardened killer. This was not his first assignment. He was immune to blood and gore, a human killing machine who executed his job with little emotion. He was trained to think that the victim deserved to die for his or her misdeeds. But when Neeta Naik tumbled down the stairs like a limp doll, he could not control himself.

  He ran up to her and hugged her. ‘Vahini mala maaf kara, vahini mala maaf kara! (Forgive me, my brother’s wife, please forgive me),’ he exclaimed, and burst into tears holding her lifeless body.

  The other killers who had come with him, Santosh Bhalekar and Manoj Pagarkar, had to tear him away from Neeta’s blood-soaked body. The wailing had alerted curious neighbours, who were opening their doors to check on the commotion.

  They discovered its source soon enough. Neeta Naik was rushed to King Edward Memorial Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

  Bhalekar and Pagarkar had not known how to react when they were first assigned the job. They venerated Neeta Naik, and to kill a woman who meant so much to them was beyond their imagination. Ekka then showed them the photograph. Neeta with Ashwin on their wedding day, juxtaposed with Neeta with Constable Lakshman Ziman, her bodyguard, who had been assigned by the Mumbai police to protect her. The intimacy between the two people in the second picture outraged the middle-class sensibilities of Bhalekar and Pagarkar. Ekka also showed them a handwritten letter apparently written by Ashwin, asking everyone to follow his instructions and obey him.

  Ekka told them about Neeta’s betrayal of Ashwin Naik, the man whom she had professed to love from the core of her being at one point.

  Soon after he fled India in a wheelchair, Ashwin Naik’s life and love had taken a nosedive. Neeta was left on her own. In the initial years, she pined for him and was his compliant wife, waiting to do his bidding. As her stature and position in society as a civic corporator grew, however, she developed a different kind of world view. This was a miserable period for her, trying to fit her aspirations and potential into an inherited title and a life she did not want. Initially, she was very clear about her goals when she opted for politics. ‘I am tired of the midnight knocks of the policemen who barge into our homes and disturb our children. If I get into politics, I can save my family from such harassment. We want peaceful nights,’ she had said in her first interview to the Afternoon Dispatch & Courier, explaining to the reporter why she wanted to become a corporator.

  Both she and Anjali (Amar Naik’s wife) had contested the civic elections but Neeta Naik’s effervescence had won her the seat. Anjali, who was more subdued, lost the election.

  In the early days, Neeta was like a little girl who had just discovered she had wings. She bought a car and learned to drive, and she drove very fast. ‘I went zip, zap, zoom from my Chinchpokli residence to the BMC building at Kemps Corner,’ she would say. She was straightforward and honest, and tried her best to be a good politician. The Shiv Sena was happy with her because she was very different from the staid, boring women who usually got elected to the corporation. They could not have asked for a better public relations officer for the party: she was intelligent, good-looking, and possessed of great oratorical skills and leadership qualities. She fared better than all the other male and female corporators put together. She was even elected as the standing committee chairperson, which is a very important post in the civic body, for two terms.

  Despite the glamour of the job, however, she was lonely. Though she was very popular, people were scared to be friends with her; you never knew when you would end up with a bullet in your head in an alley near 144 Tenements. At one point, when Ashwin was in the US, she was desolate and told a female reporter, ‘I am like this dog, very lonely,’ pointing to her dog, who was chained in the house.

  While Ashwin remained in Mumbai and before the shooting that made him a paralytic, she had been the docile wife. She stood by her husband and never failed to turn up in the TADA courts for his hearing. But after he left for the US, his enforced absence and her rising political stature changed the dynamics of their marriage. She was left holding the baby, literally and metaphorically; she had to handle their children, her high-profile job and, of course, the gang.

  Once he returned to Delhi, Ashwin and Neeta were in touch, but after his arrest, she started avoiding him and Ashwin sensed a gradual change in her demeanour towards him.

  They had been very close once upon a time, which is why Ashwin was quick to figure out the meaning of her detachment. He realized that Neeta did not care for him any more. Was she interested in another man?

  Maybe she felt lonely and needed a companion, a shoulder to cry on. But he would have expected her to be direct and honest. This gradual drifting away was excruciatingly painful.

  Finally, Ashwin heard of Neeta’s torrid affair with her bodyguard, Ziman. Ziman had been a commando constable with the Special Operation Squad (SOS) unit of the crime branch. He had resigned from the police force in 1994 and began serving Chief Minister Narayan Rane as his private bodyguard. Neeta met him when she visited Rane on work, as she frequently did. After 1997, Neeta and Ziman abandoned any pretence at discretion and began to spend time with each other freely, even publicly.

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bsp; The news of her betrayal was broken to Ashwin by none other than Neeta’s brother, Hitesh Jethwa. Ashwin was aghast. He expressed his helplessness to Hitesh, who told him to give her a warning. Even before Ashwin could come to terms with the betrayal, he realized that everyone knew about Neeta’s affair. He wished she had at least been discreet.

  When Neeta and his children visited him in jail in June 2000, an anguished Ashwin asked her not to tarnish the image of the family. Neeta did not pay heed to his admonition. As the months passed, Ashwin became increasingly frustrated by her insolence. One day, when the children visited Ashwin with their governess, Padmini Naidu, Ashwin went so far as to ask his daughter to talk to her mother about leaving her boyfriend.

  After the initial shock, Ashwin wanted to kill Lakshman Ziman. He kept thinking of ways of getting rid of him. The man had violated the body that he was supposed to guard, he fumed. He asked his trusted aide Hemant Dhuri to bump off Lakshman.

  Meanwhile, gang members like Ekka, Dhuri and Lali began visiting Ashwin in jail and demanding money from him. Ashwin realized then that Neeta managed the extortion rackets and dictated terms of payments but failed to remunerate his men, pocketing the spoils of the game instead. Ashwin suspected that Ziman was responsible for this. As a result of Neeta’s financial mismanagement, there was growing unrest and disgruntlement within the gang.

  Ashwin began writing letters to Neeta, expressing his anger and warning her of dire consequences. He even wrote to her that if she did not mend her ways and repent, he would be forced to kill her and the children too. But Neeta only laughed off the threats.