A doleful Dawood now wanted to get out of the whole mess and come out clean. He wanted to assert his innocence and convince people he was not involved in the blasts. The irony was that the don, who was once near impossible to seek an audience with, now found no one willing to give him a patient hearing. A flood of hate mail had been steadily piling up in Dubai where he lived then. Epithets like ‘Qaum gaddaar (traitor to the community)’ and ‘mulk gaddaar (traitor to the country)’ were frequently hurled at him. Avalanched by all the ill-will, Dawood could barely bring himself to read a couple of bile-filled letters before returning to his despondent state.
It was shortly after this incident that it began to dawn on Dawood that the hate mail cut across communities, coming from those of every faith and allegiance, and among those leading the charge were his fellow Muslims. In fact the day after the blasts, he received a call from a Maharashtrian woman police officer of the Mumbai police then posted at the Mumbai airport. As one of his aides brought him the phone, Dawood was not prepared for her angry, accusatory speech. ‘Besharam! Tujhe sharm nahi aati hai? Jis mitti par tune janm liye, ussi mitti ko badnaam kiya! [Have you no shame? You have humiliated the same country where you were born!]’ raged the officer on the phone. Dawood had nothing to say, silently hearing her out. The barrage left him so stunned that even when it was over he held the phone close to his ear until much later. As if it was not enough that his post box was full of such hate, it was now being delivered to him on the telephone.
The fact that Muslims were also so angry with him left him flummoxed. After all, it is a documented fact that when Hindu-Muslim violence broke out across Mumbai in 1992-93, Dawood categorically refused to be drawn into the mess of communally motivated action. It was then that he began receiving ‘gifts’ at his White House villa in Dubai. Some of these dubious presents included boxes of broken bangles with a note attached: ‘Yeh us bhai ke liye jo apni behen ki hifazat na kar saka [this is for that brother, who couldn’t defend his sister]’.
Mocked and chastised for not taking up arms back then, he was now a traitor in the eyes of the entire world for allegedly taking action. This was a very sticky situation. Dawood sat for hours, mulling over each option. These options, he noticed, were slowly dwindling. Finally, he decided to make his move and called out to one of his aides for the telephone.
The period immediately after the blasts and months after that were difficult for Dawood in more ways than he could have imagined. He used his contacts in the police and found out the enormity of charges and the strength of the evidence against him. He realised that the Mumbai police, despite all their fancy investigation and sleuthing, had managed to only extract two confessions against him under the heinous TADA Act. (Later the Central Bureau of Investigation got one more confession that named Dawood in the conspiracy.) All the statements dwelled on the fact that Dawood was involved in the conspiracy and had agreed to provide logistical support to Tiger Memon for the execution of the serial blasts. But Dawood realised that this was hardly a watertight case and that he could easily defend himself in a court of law.
Dawood was aware of advocate Ram Jethmalani’s reputation as one of the top lawyers in India. If there was anyone who could get him out of this mess, it was Jethmalani. So, the don decided to call the advocate at his London residence. Typically not wanting to waste time in small talk, Dawood kept it short and simple. ‘Mr Jethmalani, I want to surrender,’ he said, quietly and humbly.
Surprised that a fugitive don was calling him and that too for legal counsel, Jethmalani was not very keen on speaking to Dawood. But the don was insistent that he wanted to return to India and he persistently called the advocate, who at last relented. Dawood said he was willing to face the government and the charges against him in the blast case and that he would do so with total cooperation.
However, he had certain conditions which were to be fulfilled before he would turn himself in. Apart from the charges in the 1993 blasts case, he wanted all previous charges against him to be dropped. Additionally, for the duration of the blasts case, he was to be kept under house arrest and not in a jail. If these two conditions were accepted, he added that he would happily return to the country of his birth and surrender.
Dawood’s offer sent ripples across India and created an uproar in Parliament and Mantralaya in Mumbai. A section of senior intelligence operatives did not want Dawood to come back as they felt he would go back on this deal. Yet senior leaders in Parliament wanted him to return and face the music, because having Dawood Ibrahim surrender to their government would be a historic achievement. Members of the ruling party could thump their chests in pride at what they had accomplished.
A spanner was, however, thrown into the works by the apprehensions of a few politicians from Maharashtra. They were concerned that if Dawood was to return and come clean, a lot of shady dealings by a number of people in the state and at the Centre would be revealed. As the man on trial, Dawood was ironically shaping up to be the executioner for a number of politicians. If he was brought back, information on all illegal meetings with him in Dubai and London would be out in the open. Every instance of Dawood coming to the aid of these politicos would be out in the open.
This particular lobby was up in arms about the conditions laid down by Dawood as part of his surrender deal. They told Jethmalani that India was a democracy and as such would not allow a fugitive don to dictate terms. He was still welcome to surrender and would be given a fair trial. However, none of his conditions would be complied with, the government said.
As eager as Dawood was to clear his name, he was not naive. He knew that if his conditions were not met with, the Indian government would take him to task.
Later that year, developments around the Memon family’s surrender proved him right. He stood vindicated in his decision not to surrender unconditionally, when he saw what happened to Yakub Memon, who came back to India with a tonne of evidence against the various accused in the blasts case. But he was tried like a street thug and given the death penalty. There was no compassion for the man who had readily volunteered information and agreed to surrender.
Thus, the Indian government let one of the biggest fish in the underworld slip through its net. Experts believe he could have been brought back and then the government could have quickly reneged on the deal struck with him. The end result was that Dawood remained a free man and managed to wreak havoc on India later, from the secure palatial mansions of Karachi.
9
Maal, Moll, or Mole?
The infinite smoothness of her skin, her barely-clad bosom, a flimsy white saree teasingly caressing her under a gushing waterfall: this was how cinemagoers saw India’s sexy new actress on screen. Mandakini, or Yasmin Joseph, was a buxom, young girl who was originally from Meerut and later grew up in the middle-class Antop Hill area in south central Mumbai. Her father was an Anglo Indian, her mother a Muslim.
Mandakini’s terrific complexion was as natural as her well-endowed figure, and she soon attracted the attention of the film world. At the age of 16, she got a break that any new actress would have died for. Veteran filmmaker Raj Kapoor identified her as the new chosen one for his youngest son Rajiv Kapoor’s debut in Ram Teri Ganga Maili. The movie was not the hit of the century, but Mandakini’s breasts became the talk of the town in direct proportion to her popularity. She was the stuff titillating dreams were made of.
Mandakini has been touted as Raj Kapoor’s hottest find. Raj Kapoor’s role in an actress’ career was legendary. Although it was Dev Anand who brought actress Zeenat Aman to Bollywood, it was Raj Kapoor who uncovered Zeenat in full frontal glory in Satyam Shivam Sundaram; the graceful Simi Garewal in nude and Padmini with open bosom both in Mera Naam Joker. Mandakini’s daring drenched pose on the marquee became the stuff of unrealised wild fantasies. The cascading Ganga waters drenched her, and as her shy nipples peeped through the saree, the stringent Censor Board of India could do little to
delete those scenes; Kapoor himself maintained that the scene had been shot tastefully.
Certainly Mandakini, or for that matter Zeenat Aman before her, could not bathe in the confines of their shanty and would not be fully draped from head to heel. The only way to do it was to shower in the open exposing their curves. In the movie, Raj Kapoor had gone a step further and had even showed Mandakini breastfeeding an infant. Even when the infant was through his feed, Mandakini’s bare breast was exposed.
Months became years and after scores of flops or semi flops, Mandakini soon joined the bevy of young girls who were on their way to stardom. She bagged projects with successful co-stars like Mithun Chakravarty, Govinda, Sanjay Dutt, and Anil Kapoor. The filmmakers emulated the great Kapoor and made Mandakini expose in all her roles, whether it was Param Dharam with Mithun or a miniscule role with Anil Kapoor in Tezaab, where she appeared in a two-piece bikini.
In the early nineties, Bollywood was abuzz with photographs of popular stars posing with Dawood Ibrahim. However, close on the heels of the 1993 blasts, public sentiment was raging against these denizens for hobnobbing with the man who laid the city low. The air was thick with fear, intrigue, denials, and some brave admissions from a few who said they were pressured into socialising with Dawood. Not that the photographs evidenced it. But there was one picture that set tongues wagging.
In the late eighties and nineties, Bollywood films were full of young girls, starlets mostly, falling for the street thug or the loafer. The mafia’s fascination with film bombshells was nothing short of a global phenomenon. Hollywood had set the precedent in the case of Chicago’s big boss Sam Giancana, who had foisted himself on Marilyn Monroe. Giancana was soon besotted with Monroe and after a brief affair Monroe was found dead under mysterious circumstances. Another mobster, Bugsy Siegel, was crazy about not one but two Hollywood starlets, Ketti Gallian and Wendy Barrie.
Mumbai’s big boys were not to be left behind. Their lust for glamour and weakness for flesh made them weak in the knees for the fair-skinned Bollywood ‘would-be’s. Haji Mastan, for example, married a Madhubala lookalike, Sona, whose flagging career was given a sudden boost after her marriage to Mastan.
The picture that made headlines was of the young starlet Mandakini posing cosily with Dawood Ibrahim at a cricket match in Sharjah. The year 1994 was a time when images of the Mumbai serial blasts were still raw, and when Dawood’s links with Tiger Memon, the main accused, were bared. For Mandakini, the timing was all wrong.
She was a mysterious woman. Like most women who lived in the sulphuric golden shadows of Mumbai’s mafia men, she witnessed the expected meteoric rise in popularity. But till then, to the public, with Mandakini, all her ‘connections’ were speculation and her expeditious success a matter of lucky coincidence. (If that exists!)
After her photographs with Dawood Ibrahim were released in 1994, there was no respite for Mandakini. She was labelled Dawood Ibrahim’s moll, and hounded by journalists, photographers, and eventually the police. But when her film Zordaar released in 1995, no one was to know it would be her last performance in Hindi cinema.
The Mumbai Crime Branch had only just changed their strategy in chasing Dawood. Just as a mouse is baited with cheese, the police went after Dawood’s mainstay in the country: his assets. Every apartment, bank account, farmhouse, money-laundering operation that had any inkling of a connection with Dawood Ibrahim was raided and sealed by the Mumbai police. They were hunting down his money with a vengeance. This same money, they believed, he had used to engineer an instant death for thousands of people. After all, they reasoned, what was a merchant without his money, even if he was the merchant of death?
The Mumbai police received a tip-off about a farmhouse on the outskirts of Bangalore that was purportedly built with Dawood’s money and was one of his many illicit properties across the country. They passed on the lead to their counterparts in Bangalore who raided the property. But to their surprise, the property was registered in Mandakini’s name. The news did not take long to leak out. The press had a field day with the prospect of establishing a connection between the fair lady and the dusky don.
So much did this romantic connection tickle the imagination of the readers that it became an almost permanent feature of page one news. There were so many questions. Why would someone like her get involved with an unsavoury criminal from Dongri? She came, after all, from the glitzy and glamorous world of Hindi cinema. Did she need a ‘mentor’ in the industry? Just how common was this phenomenon in Bollywood? Were more actresses/starlets involved? Where was Bollywood’s cash flow coming from? Why was Mandakini keeping a low profile in Bangalore and almost living in seclusion? Why was she wearing a burkha when she went out? Who was Mandakini really? Was she an innocuous young girl trapped in something far bigger than her understanding or was she a conniving, manipulative woman who charmed her way to stardom using below-the-belt tactics?
The questions were innumerable and no answers were forthcoming. Mandakini refused to say anything but deny her connections with Dawood Ibrahim. She repeatedly said, ‘I am not Dawood’s moll.’ She said she knew him but was never romantically involved with him. Perhaps by then she was just terrified. Perhaps she had not expected the uproar that would ensue. Perhaps she had underestimated the implications of the liaison. Perhaps she had not thought so much about it. Perhaps she momentarily forgot herself. Perhaps the man was just too charming to resist. Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps. The truth we may never know, as Dawood never really spoke much about her. The answer to that question is so fundamental. He may be a murderer, he may be a saint. But the clue to attraction between a man and a woman is more elemental than that. Could there ever be an answer to that question?
In the midst of this commotion, the Mumbai police gave the actress a surprising clean chit. They could not find enough evidence to link her with Dawood. No reasons were given and no further questions asked. Maybe now she could find some peace and return to work. However, Mandakini’s career and personal life nose-dived from there on. Film offers dried up and she became a social exile in Bollywood. She was screaming from the rooftops for all to hear that she had no connection with Dawood Ibrahim. But no one was listening.
In 1995, it was revealed that she was pregnant. Her child had a middle and last name before he was born—one that the whole city ridiculed. Like a woman scorned, she lashed out at everyone, saying the child was not Dawood’s but was even less forthcoming about the identity of the father of the child. She dropped out of society, stopped returning phone calls, and retreated to a point, it seemed, of not return.
A few years later, reports turned up her quiet marriage to the unlikeliest of people, Buddhist monk and Dalai Lama follower, Dr Kagyur Rinpoche Thakur. Mandakini herself became a practising Buddhist, in desperate search of the meaning of her life. Popular imagination is fertile and suggested that the change was so she could atone for her sins. But popular interest is also short-lived and if left unstoked soon dies out. Mandakini was a has-been, a short-lived wonder, one of many in Bollywood. Bollywood too, keen to put its underworld connection firmly in the past, did not take a second look at her. And so it seemed her saga would end.
But there is a saying about bad pennies, women, and lost socks. They always turn up again. In 2000, Mandakini produced and acted in two music videos. Music videos were the rage of the season and maybe this was a fit of nostalgia speaking on her behalf. Both the videos, ‘No Vacancy’ and ‘Shambala’ bombed badly. No takers for an ageing starlet. Very few among the generation who watched the videos even remembered her name. Some of the older ones even said she resembled the old actress Mandakini. So much for a comeback. Some say she has found solace in teaching Tibetan yoga and she runs a centre for Tibetan medicine with her husband in Yari Road, Mumbai.
In her last known tryst with the Indian media, it was reported that she was working on an English language film with her husband. But ever since, only si
lence of the most unsettling kind. The quiet kills some people because they can not make peace with their thoughts. But with others, it is a way of life.
For Mandakini, a teenager from a small town, an upcoming Bollywood star, and an alleged moll of Mumbai’s arch nemesis, this is also a way of escaping the goldfish bowl that is public attention, a way to live with the idea that although life has not been perfect, it certainly does not have to be led in accordance with the wishes of a billion people. A million girls would have killed to be her at the peak of her career. A million people would not be seen with her now. Fickle fame and its ways. Nevertheless, Mandakini’s fair-skinned youth remains immortalised.
10
Developments in Dubai
Chhota Rajan’s daring defense of Dawood and challenge to Sena chief Bal Thackeray had pleased the don but there was far too much coming for him from various quarters; this was too little, too late. Sitting in his White House, one day, Dawood decided that it was time to make a decision.
Dawood now realised that he had submitted to the ISI’s designs and gotten initiated into Islamic terrorism on the pretext of avenging the Babri Masjid riots. Deep inside he had always known, of course, that the ISI was executing their own agenda. The gameplan was to frustrate the country and its countrymen to such an extent that they would finally cave in and allow India to hand over Kashmir to Pakistan. But Dawood knew it was naiveté to even dream of winning Kashmir.
Dawood was happy running his global business of real estate and restaurants in various international metros, financing movies, hobnobbing with Indian film stars, and courting Bollywood beauties. He did not want to become a pawn in the ISI’s hands but he understood that the dice had already been cast, leaving him with almost no control over his destiny anymore.
On the other hand, his top lieutenants had been hankering for more power and clout. Dawood knew that Rajan was capable of handling his gang but if he allowed him to continue, he would be faced with widespread mutiny among his own ranks. Shakeel, Sautya, Sharad Anna, and others who seemed to have ganged up against Rajan would not allow him to rest in peace. While there was no way for him to find out if their notion that Rajan had become too powerful and might float his own outfit was accurate, Dawood dithered for a while, trying to avoid a decision.