My Name is Abu Salem Read online

  ‘Salaam alaikum, my name is Malik, and I am a childhood friend of Salem’s. I am not meeting you because I wanted to but I was asked to and could not refuse,’ he said curtly. I sat down with my diary and pen, and assured him that all I needed was a couple of hours of his time. But the man was still hesitant. He looked at the sky, sparkling sporadically with fireworks, and asked, ‘Do you know that I am a part of the team that organized this show?’

  It was this cover that facilitated his trip to Dubai and his ability to move around incognito. ‘We have used over hundred computers to synchronize and choreograph the whole spectacle,’ he boasted. Over two hundred expert technicians from the US-based Fireworks by Grucci had been called in to work on the show. The UAE government had spent over $6 million on this record-breaking display.

  ‘Make me a promise,’ he said somewhat dramatically, ‘no one should ever know that I have spoken to you and told you this story.’ ‘I promise,’ I said and asked, ‘but then tell me why Dubai? Particularly at this time of the year.’ He grinned. ‘I can escape under the cover of the fireworks and disappear. No one will ever know that we met here.’ I nodded.

  Malik began Salem’s story. I began writing furiously on my notepad and later hammering away at my laptop. Malik was a chain-smoker and he spoke through a constant plume of greyish-blue smoke swirling around us. Time flew by and I barely noticed that he had been speaking for hours.

  It was close to daybreak and Malik had begun rambling about Salem’s links to various politicians. The final salvo of the fireworks formed an artificial ‘sunrise’ along the seafront, heralding a new dawn for this city of big dreams and unrelenting ambition. Thousands of amethysts lit up the night sky as red and silver fireworks cascaded down the 828-metre tower. This year’s top highlight, however, was the firework display shaped like the petals of the Hymenocallis desert flower—on which the Burj Khalifa’s design is based. The petals created the illusion of it enveloping the tower. The huge edifice being enveloped in flower petals was a breathtaking illusion.

  Atlantis the Palm, at the far end of the Palm Jumeirah, had organized Sandance, its hugely popular monthly festival, on Nasimi Beach, with a New Year’s Eve line-up that included DJs Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong. At the other end, the Jumeirah Zabeel Saray on the west crescent of the Palm Jumeirah, used as a set in Tom Cruise’s fourth outing as Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and often hosts Hollywood A-listers when they visit the Middle East, had a plush party of its own.

  It was in this segment of Dubai that Salem owned his properties. Malik said Salem had five bungalows at Jumeirah Beach. He lived in one, used another as an office, while the other three were rented out. ‘This should give you an indication of his affluence,’ Malik said. The whole story related by Malik was a dazzling account of Salem’s rise and growth in Mumbai’s underworld, his connections in Bollywood and politics. By this time, the muezzin had begun to sound the azan.

  Malik looked at me and said, ‘There is only one man who could tell you a better story than this one.’

  I looked at him curiously.

  ‘Salem himself,’ he said.

  After bidding me farewell, he said, ‘Khuda haafiz’, and left in his car, leaving me alone on the highway. I realized my story would remain incomplete until I met Salem. But Salem was not a free man any more. He was now lodged in the high-security confines of the Taloja Central Prison.

  Taloja, a small, sleepy township about fifty kilometres from the tumult of Mumbai, had shot to fame for its exceptionally delicious biryani. Over time, however, the famed Taloja biryani lost its flavour and its cuisine became a matter of history. In the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots, the government decided that a company of the Rapid Action Force (RAF), a paramilitary unit, should be stationed close to the city to respond to any riot-like situation. And that’s how Taloja next came under the spotlight. Over the last couple of years, however, this sleepy township shot into the headlines once again when Mumbai’s most notorious undertrial, Abu Salem, was shifted from the Mumbai Central Prison, popularly known as Arthur Road Jail, to Taloja Central Prison.

  Taloja Jail seemed quite at odds with its surroundings. The jail was surrounded on three sides by the fancy neighbourhood of Kharghar. I wondered how the builders would sell flats in these high-rises. Would they market their flats as Jail View, Main Gate of Jail View, Prisoner’s Compound View, etc.? The Bombay High Court had recently clamped down on the construction blitz, issuing instructions that there should be no new buildings less than 500 metres from the jail.

  The prison also seemed to have been deliberately built at the foot of the hills in order to provide for additional security. This security is external—to ensure no one escapes. But what if an inmate wanted to kill a fellow inmate inside the jail? How could internal security be fortified? Last year, Salem had narrowly survived an attempt on his life when gangster Devendra Jagtap had fired on him in the jail barracks.

  At the massive wrought iron gate, when a burly policeman asked me the purpose of my visit, I told him I wanted to meet Salem. He looked me up and down. My black trousers and starched white shirt gave the impression that I might have been Salem’s lawyer. So he just waved me inside without frisking me.

  Once inside the jail, it was a walk of another 200 metres to the meeting room. I saw the children of detenues playing in the compound. Infants when their fathers were arrested, they had grown up to be schoolgoing children, studying in class five and so on. Further ahead, I saw an old man whose white hair and white beard were dyed with henna to a shiny red. The man was the ‘tiffin-delivery chacha’, whose job it was to provide food to several inmates who were permitted home-cooked food by the court.

  I then decided to walk to the meeting room, and asked to meet Salem. The meeting room had ten stalls, each with its own glass partition. As in the movies, the undertrials sit inside and their lawyers or relatives sit outside and speak to each other over an intercom. I wondered whether I should pretend to be a lawyer or a relative of Salem’s to ensure my smooth passage into the meeting room.

  My thoughts were thrown into disarray by a lawyer in the room. He had realized that I was not with any of the bonafide groups of visitors to the jail and sympathetically suggested that I should not push my luck any further. It would be wiser of me, he said, to try and meet Salem in the sessions court, where he is a daily visitor for hearings in his case.

  Meeting Salem on the fourth floor of the new building of the City, Civil and Sessions Court outside courtroom number 54 was easier than expected. It was lunchtime at the courts and their recess generally lasts from 2 to 2.45 p.m. I saw him standing in a corner in the corridor, surrounded by his jail escorts.

  Dressed in a well-ironed pair of trousers and a checked half-sleeve shirt, he was voraciously gobbling down his lunch of butter chicken and naan, which had been brought for him by one of his lackeys. This would not be the first time I was meeting Salem. He knew of me. He also knew of my previous work and had expressed his disapproval at my portrayal of his love story in Mafia Queens of Mumbai. He expected an apology. I offered none.

  I reminded him that I was in the process of writing a book about him. He asked quizzically, ‘Why a book? Write a movie script on me. I don’t like small-scale things like books. Who reads them anyway? I want to do things on a grand scale.’

  ‘Well, I am a journalist and a writer; I can write. I can’t write a script or make a movie,’ I tried to explain.

  ‘I will help you to make the movie. It will be a mega-budget movie. My story is so interesting that people will see it without getting up from their seats to take a break for a smoke or to go to the loo,’ he persisted.

  ‘I can’t take your help in any venture. I want to do things in my limited capacity. And with that in mind, I wanted you to tell me your story.’ I dug my heels in, expecting a long argument.

  But he surprised me: ‘I have written some 100 pages of my life story. I am prepared to give it to you if you seek the court’s permission.
’

  Apparently, Salem had given this spiral-bound book to several people to develop a movie script. Meanwhile, Salem’s security ensemble had begun to get impatient. They realized I was neither a lawyer, nor a relative, not even a henchman of Salem’s. So I had no right to be talking to him for so long.

  I left the courts empty-handed that day, but it only took a couple of weeks for me to acquire Salem’s handwritten autobiography. While Salem was lodged in Arthur Road Jail, this mini-autobiography had been written by one of his English-speaking cellmates to whom he dictated. Throughout this 12,000-word story, Salem had portrayed himself as a do-gooder, a generous friend, a guardian angel and a messiah for the meek and downtrodden. He saw himself as a hero who had been wronged, but stood against injustice and showed exemplary courage and bravery. What an interpretation of a life full of crime and violence!

  One

  Barrister’s Boy

  IT HAS TO BE ONE OF the bigger ironies of our times that two of India’s most feared criminals were born into the homes of agents of law and order. While Dawood Ibrahim’s father was a constable, Salem’s father was a noted criminal lawyer in the legal circles of Azamgarh. Nevertheless, his family led a hand-to-mouth existence.

  Advocate Abdul Qayyum Ansari, who lived in Sarai Mir, practised in the Azamgarh court. He travelled fifteen kilometres from his home to the court by Rajdoot motorcycle every day. People looked up to him in the semi-urban, dusty sprawl of the town. After all, a motorcycle was one of the signs of a stable and well-to-do home.

  Abdul Qayyum and his wife Jannatunissa had four sons. Abu Hakim was the eldest, then Abu Salem, followed by two more sons, Abu Lais, alias Ejaz, and Abu Jaish. The youngest child was a girl who was named Anjum. It is striking that all the boys had the prefix ‘Abu’ in their names—this is primarily an Arab Muslim custom. The first name is usually something like ‘Mohammad’, followed by an epithet like ‘Abu Hakim’, which means the father of Hakim. It is generally considered polite to call people by this epithet in their name, rather than their first name.

  The family owned a flour mill near their home, a major source of income. They used to sell ice cream and ice as well. But when Salem was only five years old, his father met with an accident on the way to the Azamgarh court. His motorcycle suffered a nasty collision with a bus and he was left on the side of the road, bleeding for hours. When he was finally taken to hospital, Qayyum was declared dead.

  The Ansari community that Qayyum belonged to is not generally considered to be very well educated. But the lawyer and his brother were exceptions, and had studied as far as college. Salem and his brothers fit the stereotype a lot better, since they all studied up to only class six or seven in an Urdu-medium school before quitting. Salem himself got only as far as Class 6.

  What he lacked in education, though, he more than made up in manners. Salem’s mother was very strict and though she could teach him very little mathematics or science, she was very particular about etiquette and instilled in him a sense of social propriety. As a result, Salem was very well mannered and highly respectful of his elders. He never cursed or quarrelled; instead, he always smiled and spoke with deference.

  After Qayyum’s death, Salem’s mom took to making and selling beedis in order to earn a living. Eventually, Salem began to show an interest in automobile and motorcycle repairing. By the age of fifteen, he had become proficient enough to be known across Sarai Mir as an excellent mechanic. It was then that ambition—an integral part of Salem’s psyche—kicked in. He thought it was time to move to a bigger city where his talent would be recognized. He wanted to eventually open his own car-and-motorcycle repair garage. So at fifteen, he dropped everything, packed his meagre belongings and set off for Delhi. He spent a couple of years struggling in Delhi, repairing motorcycles; but slowly came to terms with the fact that he was getting nowhere.

  Two years later, Salem realized the time had come to move on. He didn’t know what he would do but he knew he couldn’t go back home. The idea of going back to Azamgarh would be admitting failure. So, despite his brothers Abu Hakim and Abu Lais calling him back home to start a business there, he refused. Instead he moved to Mumbai.

  His cousin Akhtar Ansari had told him that he owned a shop in Jogeshwari’s Arasa Shopping Centre where he sold belts, perfumes and other assorted items. Akhtar’s shop was a tiny stall among hundreds of others packed in closely, many of them selling similar items. Naturally, competition was cut-throat and stall owners would try various things to gain a small advantage, including hiring members of the underworld for protection. This would be Salem’s first brush with the mafia.

  Arasa Shopping Centre had several shops which were owned by gangsters. This was a legitimate front for their illegal activities. So it was usual for the shopkeepers and owners to wine and dine together. Impressionable and unlettered Muslim youths, like Salem, tended to look up to such gang managers, wanting to emulate them.

  Salem worked at the shop for three years and over the course of this time became familiar with a man there called Sayyed Liyaqat, who was also known as Sayyed Topi because of his habit of wearing a topi. Sayyed Topi was Anis Ibrahim’s—Dawood Ibrahim’s brother—point man in Arasa. He handled Anis’s extortion activities between Bandra and Borivali, and had been handling such affairs since 1985.

  Dawood, Mumbai’s numero uno don during this period, had two of his brothers in his gang—Anis Ibrahim and Noorul Haq, alias Noora. Anis played the more important role and, as Dawood’s power grew through the seventies and eighties, his brother Anis too began spreading his tentacles in smuggling and land-grabbing across the city. In 1986, Dawood and his brothers, including Anis, relocated to the safe environs of Dubai. Before leaving Mumbai, Anis had appointed several point men, working for him in various parts of Mumbai, one of whom was Sayyed Topi.

  Salem looked up to Topi and desperately wanted to work for him. Unfortunately, Topi did not open up to him. He sensed that Salem was an ambitious man and with time might topple him. Undeterred, Salem would keep trying to curry favour with him.

  One day, Aziz Bilakhia—known rather cruelly in the underworld as Aziz Tingu on account of his diminutive stature—came to Arasa to meet Topi. Over the course of this visit, he met Akhtar and subsequently, Salem. Aziz and Salem hit it off and became firm friends. It wasn’t long before this friendship bore fruit and Salem was introduced to Baba Moosa Chauhan and Riyaz Siddiqui, two other D-Company associates. It was in this way that Salem’s circle of contacts began growing and started including many men who worked for Anis.

  Salem soon become a diligent soldier. His work for the don included money laundering, collection of extortion money, delivering confidential information and occasionally roughing up people. Anis found Salem to be a reliable lieutenant. Dawood too had heard of him and was quite pleased with his work.

  As his stature began to grow slowly in the underworld, Salem began recruiting people. He got fifteen to twenty boys who were willing to assault people, break bones, and smash furniture at his command. He was now also talking regularly to Anis, through Aziz, and conferring with his men in Mumbai.

  Soon, Salem began to feel like he was stagnating at the stall in Arasa Shopping Centre. In 1987, he decided to kick up operations a notch and, along with Siddiqui, Baba Moosa Chauhan and Aziz, opened an office in Hasnabad Lane near Gulmohar Road, Santa Cruz, by the name of Lutfi Enterprises. This was supposed to be a manpower recruitment and export office to send Indians to Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries for jobs—lutfi, in Arabic, means gracious, an apt name for the business. Lutfi was also the first office—but certainly not the last—where Salem would hang a huge portrait of Anis on the wall. It’s unclear whether this was a sign of his sycophancy or dedication to the man.

  For Salem, Lutfi would also be a front for smuggling—with men used as carriers for sneaking in gold and other contrabands. After kicking off his new business of recruitment, Salem started to make frequent trips to Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia. Unlik
e other gold smugglers who remained confined to their cities waiting for their contraband to reach the city’s shores, he became a globetrotter and frequent traveller. It was a strategy that was to pay off.

  When Dr Manmohan Singh took over as the finance minister in the P.V. Narasimha Rao government, the biggest step he took was the liberalization of the Indian economy and the easing of the Gold Control Act. This had boosted the foreign exchange reserves of India and broken the back of gold smuggling in Mumbai. But criminals have always managed to circumvent the law for their own benefit. They refer to it as ‘qaede ka fayeda’ (the benefit of law).

  The forefathers who had written the rules of smuggling—the likes of Haji Mastan, Sukur Bakhiya and Yusuf Patel—made huge earnings from gold smuggling during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. But after the liberalization of gold imports in 1992, duty was slashed and non-resident Indians (NRIs) were allowed to bring in five kilograms of gold as part of their baggage by paying a duty of Rs 220 per ten grams.

  Never one to give up, Salem began to grease the palms of customs officers. It was an age-old method employed by Dawood. A conniving and corrupt customs officer could be of major assistance in the smuggling of gold. Salem began tapping NRIs who were working abroad and/or had NRI status due to having completed the stipulated tenure of living 180 days abroad.

  He began using them as carriers of his gold consignments. The NRIs were allowed to carry double the permissible quantity and would only have to declare half the gold they brought with them. They were charged Rs 22,000 for every kilogram of gold. Sometimes, NRIs travelled back home with their entire family and brought in even five kilograms of gold. Since their wives and children too were travelling, they got the benefit of doubt. And so, the smugglers’ syndicate made a sizeable killing on gold smuggling through the legal channel. Salem had set up this kind of network for gold smuggling in all the tourist destinations that were nearest to India. These included Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and the Gulf countries.