Black Friday Read online

  The sights were gruesome. A paanwala ’s head was severed from his torso and deposited on the counter in front of him. The body of Neogi, manager of the Bata shop, was found sandwiched between two walls that collapsed on each other. Flying shrapnel was lodged in the stomach of Darius Khavarian, who had come from Iran to see his brother Minocher, owner of the Asian Stores and Restaurant. Sudesh Bhandari of the Blue Star Laundry died when shrapnel pierced his heart. Karim Ramodaya and his brother Rajabhai, the owners of Ramodaya Mansion, who were standing outside the Taj Cake Shop, were also killed.

  Pradeep Manjrekar, the owner of Manjrekar Sadan, was using the telephone at the wine shop on the ground floor of his building when the blast occurred. ‘First there was a cloud of dust, followed by thick white smoke, and then came the bang that shook the bottles in the wine shop. I saw limbs and objects flying all around, and vehicles on fire.’ He said he saw at least five BEST buses and some fifteen cars burnt completely.

  Raj Nath Ganjoo, the marketing manager of BASF, never stepped out of his office during working hours. But on that day, his watch had suddenly stopped working and he had been feeling uneasy about it. The bomb went off as he went out to get his watch repaired at a shop a few yards away. He was killed instantly.

  Prachee Vartak and Sandhya Roy, trainee airhostesses at East West Airlines, were driving down the road in a company car. This had been Prachee’s first day at work, and she was just returning from her first flight from Vishakapatnam. She was looking forward to going home to Worli and telling her parents about it. Hers had been a long battle to get the job, for her sister Aruna was already employed with East West and their company policy did not permit employing family members. The blast destroyed the car. The driver Rajan was charred beyond recognition. Prachee was rushed to the King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital with thirty-five per cent burns, and died after three days. Sandhya sustained only minor injuries.

  Darshan Lalan, in his first year at Lala Lajpat Rai College, had gone with four friends to see the 3 p.m. show at Satyam Theatre. His friends had already crossed the road to enter the theatre when the bomb exploded. Darshan, who had stepped back to dodge a speeding taxi, was blown to bits. His friends were fine; only one suffered a minor leg injury.

  This was eventually to be the deadliest of the blasts, killing 113 and injuring 227.

  Back in the heart of the city the governor, P.C. Alexander, the titular head of the state administration, was informed of the blasts. The telephone lines were down, so he had to send a message to Samra through the police control room. Samra could not respond immediately. It is not known where Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, who had assumed office barely a week previously, was.

  When Samra heard of the blasts at Dadar and Worli, the first thought to cross his mind was the possibility of communal violence erupting again, a horrifying prospect after the events of the previous December and January. Determined to prevent it, he ordered the police control room to relay a message to the senior officer at every police station, that every policemen should come out on to the roads. Samra firmly believed that the sight of the men in uniform not only instilled confidence in the public, but also prevented hooliganism.

  After this Samra tried to contact Alexander. The only mode of communication functioning was the police wireless. But, after struggling to instruct the governor for twenty-five minutes on how to operate the system, in full hearing of the entire police network, the commissioner gave up.

  At about 3.15 p.m., while Kulkarni and Singh were at the Air-India building, they heard of the Sena Bhavan and Worli blasts. The fire officer left immediately for Worli. When his car came on to the main road, Kulkarni realized that the entire city had started driving home towards the suburbs, clogging the roads. He told his driver to take the wrong side of the road, meant for traffic heading into the city, and pushed ahead with his siren blaring and emergency lights flashing. He reached Worli in fifteen minutes, perhaps a record for inner-city travel.

  Rokade was informed that there had been a blast in Zaveri Bazaar, the gold market, the day’s sixth blast, and the fourth in his jurisdiction. A taxi had blown up at the junction of Shaikh Memon Street and Mirza Street, at the southern end of the gold market, at 3.05 p.m., shattering windows of buildings in the area and destroying nearby vehicles. The blast was low on intensity but high on volume, and was heard at the Lokmanya Tilak (LT) Marg police station, one kilometre away.

  Niwas Garge, his wife and young son were walking through Dhanji Street at the northern end of Zaveri Bazaar when the explosion occurred. Garge heard the awful bang, and the next minute all three were thrown face down. A taxi nearby caught fire, and Garge could feel his face burning too. He rolled over and struggled to his feet, looking for his wife and son. His wife was burnt badly and he could not find his son. He put her in a taxi and sent her to the hospital, while he stayed behind to look for the boy. He never found him. His wife died in the hospital.

  The toll in this blast was seventeen dead and fifty-seven injured. The gold shops at the end of Mirza Street collapsed after the explosion.

  As the wireless crackled with news of the blasts, Addl. CP Yadavrao Chinda Pawar, the deputy inspector general of police (DIG) of the central region, and his deputy, DCP (traffic) Rakesh Maria, who held additional charge of Zone IV, were at their common office above the Matunga police station. Bombay was divided into four regions and ten zones for police purposes. Each region was headed by an officer of the rank of DIG who was designated additional commissioner of police. The central region extended from Byculla, Worli, Dadar and Mahim to Vakola and Vile Parle.

  Pawar and Maria rushed out. Since Sena Bhavan was a sensitive spot, and under his jurisdiction, Maria ordered the driver to take him there. He realized that people’s mood could slowly turn from panic to anger, and the situation could explode anytime.

  The crowds at Sena Bhavan had already started anti-Muslim sloganeering. Maria, taking advantage of his six feet two inches, walked up to the leader of the mob and looked down at him. ‘No, it’s got nothing to do with religious groups, this is part of a bigger conspiracy,’ he said with great authority. He was not sure if this was true but it worked for the moment. The crowd slowly scattered. But even as it did, Maria heard on his wireless that communal riots had broken out at Mahim.

  Pawar had taken the same route as Maria, but had been delayed in the traffic at Dadar Tram Terminus (TT). As his car neared the junction at the Plaza Cinema, Pawar heard a loud bang and saw people rushing away from the cinema. It was 3.13 p.m. As he got down from his car, Pawar could see that the Plaza, associated in the minds of the people with the state’s legendary film star V. Shantaram, had been reduced to rubble. It was an important landmark: people crossing the Dadar bridge instinctively turned to look at the imposing façade.

  Ten cinema-goers were killed and thirty-seven injured.

  It took a little time for Pawar to grasp that an explosion had caused the devastation, but within minutes he was issuing orders and guiding the rescue work. Like every other Bombay policeman, he too thought of the biggest nightmare of all: communal riots. As if on cue, his wireless came alive, with news of Muslims being attacked at Mahim. Worse, there was also a report that some people had driven up in a Maruti van and lobbed grenades at Machhimar Colony, the predominantly Hindu fishermen’s colony in Mahim, and sped off. The grenade attack had left three dead. Another six who were injured were being attended to. The fisherfolk had now come out on the Mahim Causeway, baying for blood. Leaving his subordinates to deal with the fall out of the blast, Pawar rushed to Machhimar Colony.

  As he pulled in there, he saw the situation was almost out of control. Angry fishermen had stalled the traffic on the causeway, and were in no mood to relent. Those who had done this must pay: it was simple. Pawar was faced with a dilemma. While he was a firm believer in the efficacy of lathi charges in certain situations, he was hesitant to use it on the fishermen who after all were the victims in this attack. Then the fishermen made up his mind for him as the
y went on the rampage. They besieged a bus belonging to Anjuman-i-Islam, a Muslim boys’ school.

  He ordered a lathi charge. As the policemen cut a swathe through the crowds, the traffic started flowing once again.

  As Maria headed for Machhimar Colony, he saw that a mob had surrounded a BEST bus, and was dragging out and beating up people. As he stepped out of his car and moved towards the bus, he saw an old man being beaten up. As the attackers seemed undeterred by the presence of an uniformed police officer, Maria pulled out his service revolver and fired into the air. The assailants scampered away, and Maria picked up the victim and had him sent to the Bhabha Hospital at Bandra.

  It was due to the efforts of officers like Maria and Pawar that a communal riot was averted in Bombay that day. Though each member of the police force performed nobly on that and subsequent days, many going without sleep for forty-eight hours as they kept watch, Samra later wrote in a letter circulated among the police hierarchy that ‘Pawar and Maria were the heroes of the day’.

  After the blast at Worli, there were five more explosions, all of which took place at intervals of approximately ten minutes. The Zaveri Bazaar bomb went off at 3.05 p.m., the Plaza Cinema crumbled at 3.13 p.m., and then the dance of death continued in the suburbs. It seemed that all of Bombay had been put on a fast-burning fuse that day.

  Arup Patnaik, DCP of Zone VII, in the northwest region, had had it quiet this far. But not for much longer. The northwest region extended from Bandra to Dahisar, and covered the entire western suburbs of the city. At 3.20 p.m., the seventh blast of the day was reported from the high-rise Hotel Sea Rock in Bandra, scenically located right next to the sea on one of Bombay’s most popular promenades, the Bandstand boulevard. When Patnaik reached the hotel, he was stunned by what he saw. There was a gaping hole where one wing of the hotel had collapsed, and the concrete and rubble lay strewn around. By a miracle, no one was killed or injured, but the financial loss incurred by the hotel was the highest of any blast, estimated to be more than Rs 9 crore. The hotel eventually shut down.

  Even as Patnaik began investigations, he was alerted by the wireless that there had been two other blasts in his jurisdiction, both in hotels—the Juhu Centaur at 3.25 p.m. and the Airport Centaur at 3.35 p.m. Shortly after that there was another message, informing him that at 3.30 p.m., miscreants had flung hand grenades over the perimeter at Sahar Airport.

  Ten explosions rocked Bombay that day, taking place with almost metronomic precision at short intervals. Between 1.28 and 3.35 p.m. bombs had gone off across Bombay, the first time any city in the world was subject to serial blasts. The city was soon to spring back to its feet, but its severe lack of infrastructure to tackle a crisis of such proportions was exposed.

  A city with a population of over thirteen million had only 1,500 firemen and forty-five fire engines. The fire chief, Durgadas Kulkarni, later lamented that had he had more men at his command, more lives could have been saved. The hospitals where the injured were brought were unable to cope with a crisis of this magnitude. JJ Hospital put all its five operation theatres at the disposal of the injured, but this was inadequate for the needs of the 138 people admitted. Forty-five of the victims admitted there were to die of their injuries. As many as 135 people were taken to St George Hospital, the remaining to JJ Hospital and GT Hospital. Some patients were later transferred to private hospitals.

  Rumour mills worked overtime, and even government news agencies were not immune to them. Doordarshan, the sole, government-run Indian television channel, reported that the B.Y.L. Nair Hospital at Agripada was damaged in a blast, while the BBC reported that between 700 and 800 had been killed, a figure dismissed by Chief Minister Sharad Pawar. At his press briefing in the evening, Pawar put the figure at a conservative 100 killed and 500 injured. Subsequent police investigations revealed that 257 persons were either killed or went missing in the blasts while 713 were injured. Property worth Rs 27 crore was destroyed.

  The worst carnage was at Worli. The maximum financial damage was at Hotel Sea Rock. At the Juhu Centaur, three people were injured; at the Airport Centaur, two hotel employees were killed and eight others injured.

  At 4.30 p.m., the police wireless crackled, ‘The king is coming.’ That was the code for Samra. After a whirlwind visit to the BSE and the Air-India building, he was proceeding towards Century Bazaar at Worli when Doordarshan contacted him, asking him to address the public that evening over the metro network, which Samra agreed to do.

  After visiting the Doordarshan studios and Century Bazaar, Samra left for the western suburbs. He used the drive to exhort his men over the police wireless to maintain peace and avoid communal incidents.

  His Contessa came to a halt at the portico of the devastated Hotel Sea Rock. Accompanied by DCP Patnaik, he examined the damage to the hotel. At 10.30 p.m., as Samra was having coffee, his walkie-talkie came to life, ‘Charlie Mike wants to talk to you.’ The chief minister and the police commissioner had not spoken a word to each other all this while, as both were engrossed in getting the city back on its feet. They talked briefly about the situation.

  Samra then left for central Bombay. Half an hour later, he got another message from the chief minister. This time Samra went to the Bandra police station to talk to Pawar on the telephone. They discussed the conspiracy behind the blasts. ‘It is a proxy war,’ Samra told Pawar. ‘It seems to be serious bombing; plastic explosives were used and not gelatin.’

  For Samra, the serial bombing was a reminder of the recent and chillingly similar car bomb blast in the basement of the World Trade Centre, New York on 26 February, less than a month earlier, and of the bomb blast in the PanAm flight over Lockerbie in 1991.

  Since the riots, the army had been stationed in Bombay. That night fifty columns of the army and a hundred platoons of the police State Reserve Force (SRF) were posted on the roads. As the long and terrible day finally came to a close for most Bombayites, for senior police officers, there was still work to be done.

  1

  The Beginning

  The explosions of 12 March had their origins in an event that had occured three months earlier in a small town 1,300 kilometres to the northeast. The Babri Masjid at Ayodhya had been a bone of contention between the Hindus and Muslims for over five hundred years, since the time when Babur’s general Mir Bagi had destroyed a temple there in 1528 to build a mosque he named after his master. For many Hindus the mosque was reputed to be built at the birthplace of Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, and hence a sacred site. The antiquity of the mosque had given it similar sanctity for many Muslims.

  The issue had been dormant until the 1980s when a series of events brought the dispute back into prominene. As a result, the ultra-orthodox Hindu Sangh Parivar, which comprises the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), among others, decreed that the mosque should be razed and a temple built in its place.

  In 1984, the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the VHP, was formed with the stated intention of recruiting men for militant action to establish a Hindu nation, and for the construction of the Ram temple. International conferences were organized, and funds poured in. In 1986, a court ordered that the doors of the Babri Masjid be opened and puja permitted inside the structure. Muslims were forbidden from offering prayers. Neither the central government nor the state government questioned the decision. But this did not satisfy the Sangh Parivar, who called upon the government to transfer the property rights of the Ayodhya site so that the biggest temple in the world could be built there. Ram Janmabhoomi became a symbol of militant Hindu nationalism.

  In 1990, L.K. Advani of the BJP launched a rath yatra from Somnath, the site of a Hindu temple that had been destroyed by a Muslim invader, Mahmud of Ghazni. A group of young men at Somnath offered Advani a cup of blood, signifying their readiness to achieve martyrdom. During September and October 1990, Advani travelled some 10,000 kilometres across the country, expounding on the need for militant Hinduism and leaving c
ommunal riots in his wake. On 30 October 1990, members of the Sangh Parivar stormed the Babri Masjid and raised a flag above it. Fifty people died in police firing. On 29 November 1992, a week before the demolition, Advani stated, ‘The BJP is committed to constructing the temple. Court wrangling can delay and New Delhi can obstruct, but no one can deny permanently.’ The rest is history—the demolition of the mosque on 6 December and the transformation of the BJP into a major constituent of the national government after the 1998 and 1999 elections.

  As the news of the demolition of the Babri Masjid spread, riots began all over the country. The worst incidents took place in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Banaras and Jaipur. There was widespread violence in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bidar, and Gulbarga.

  Bombay witnessed two spells of rioting, from 6 to 12 December 1992, and from 7 to 16 January 1993. According to the Srikrishna Commission Report, commissioned by the government, 900 people died (575 Muslims, 275 Hindus) and 2,036 people (1,105 Muslims, 893 Hindus) were injured in these riots. The loss to property was incalculable. Some 50,000 people were rendered homeless.

  Poet Jagannath Azad wrote after the demolition of the Babri Masjid:

  Ye tune Hind ki hurmat ke

  aaine ko toda hai

  khabar bhi hai tujhe masjid ka

  gumbad todne wale.

  (You have shattered the chaste soul of India,

  Are you aware O ye who demolished the

  domes of the mosque.)

  ■

  The postman handed the shabby rectangular packet, tied firmly with strong thread, to the servant through the large wrought-iron gate. It was the week before Christmas 1992. Earlier that week, two similar packets had been received. The address on all was rudimentary: Dawood Ibrahim Bhai, White House, Dubai, and the postmarks indicated that they had been sent from Bombay. It was a measure of Dawood’s clout that even in a city like Dubai, famed for its strict compliance with regulations, he still received mail that was not correctly addressed.