My Name is Abu Salem Read online

  Big-banner films like Vidhaata, Taaqatwar, Hathyar and a host of others established him as a bona fide star, even as the walls were closing in all around him in his personal life. As his drug problem escalated, the actor was forced into a rehabilitation facility, where he met actress Richa Sharma. Unlike the star Sanjay had become, Richa was a relative newbie in Bollywood with only a couple of films under her belt—having made her debut with the 1985 film Naujawan, where she was touted as Dev Anand’s find. The duo hit it off almost immediately and were married in 1987. Two years later they had a daughter, Trishala.

  Meanwhile, Sanjay’s films were doing brisk business at the box office and had transformed him into a cult phenomenon, a trend witnessed most prominently after his 1990 film Thanedaar. Starring Jeetendra, Madhuri Dixit, Jaya Prada and Sanjay, the film is another tale of vengeance—a rather common theme in his films—and redemption. It captured the imagination of millions.

  Those were the pre-digital poster days and Bollywood poster art was all the rage among youngsters and film lovers. One of the most popular of these prints, sold at railway stations, footpaths and even in gift stores, was a still from Thanedaar. It depicted a moustachioed Sanjay Dutt in police uniform, with a carelessly unbuttoned khaki shirt and a police hat thrown on casually. While the man’s unmistakable and inimitable machismo was still a major part of his image, there was now a new sense of irreverence and a strong anti-establishment vibe.

  Having ‘cleaned up his act’ and kicked his drug habit (at least as it seemed at the time), Sanjay’s life at this point took a new turn and he began cultivating fresh interests and hobbies—premium whisky and fast vehicles (all of which bear the registration number 4545), particularly motorcycles. But his most interesting new pursuit was the acquisition of firearms. He was an avid game hunter and would reportedly never leave home without a loaded pistol in the glove compartment of his car.

  On one occasion, Sanjay was even stopped at London’s Heathrow Airport for carrying a firearm, even though it was a licensed weapon. Clearly, the troubled son of a respected member of Parliament and his late actress wife, a devoted humanitarian herself, was blurring the lines between his real and reel lives. His action-hero image was beginning to catch up with him and he seemed to have felt a constant urge that could only be charitably labelled as ‘infantile’, to live up to that image.

  The years 1991 and 1992 proved to be extremely fruitful for Sanjay. It saw the release of the Feroz Khan-directed Yalgaar, which became a personal favourite of Abu Salem’s. It was, in fact, director Feroz Khan who had ushered Sanjay to the underworld, having first introduced Anis bhai to Sanjay as a good friend. Soon after, Anis bhai had hosted Sanjay at his home in Dubai during the shooting of the film. It was during the course of the shooting of Yalgaar in Dubai that Sanjay was introduced to Dawood, Qayyum and others. And Anis had promised Sanjay that if he needed any help in Mumbai, he should never hesitate to call them.

  As 1992 drew to a close, the simmering communal fervour in the country came to the boil as a BJP-led mob demolished the 465-year-old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. Mumbai witnessed some of the bloodiest riots in the country. The senior Dutt organized help and medical aid for those injured, regardless of their religion, origin or constituency, while the junior too pitched in.

  But not everyone, it soon became clear, approved of this Hindu family helping out Muslim victims of the communal clashes. Incensed groups of radical Hindus—including members of the Shiv Sena—subjected the family to abuse, threats and attacks. The otherwise revered MP was actually attacked on a number of occasions, including one instance when an angry mob launched a furious assault on his car. Undeterred, he continued to do his humanitarian work.

  His son, however, had just about enough of the threats and attacks. Realizing that the police would not offer special protection even after revolting phone calls (in which one caller allegedly threatened to rape Sanjay’s sisters, kill his father and burn down the house), he decided to take matters into his own hands. After all, he rationalized, what good did it do being simply a celluloid hero? After years of playing characters in countless films about redemption and justice, the time had come to be a real hero, and stand up to protect his family.

  Enter Hanif Kadawala and Samir Hingora. Disillusioned with the Mumbai Police’s inaction, Sanjay shared his predicament with this film producer duo. All he wanted was a means to protect himself and his family. That would entail beefing up his threadbare arsenal of firearms. Having already been introduced to Anis Ibrahim and been a guest at the gangster’s home in Dubai, Sanjay knew who to get in touch with for the arms. Eventually, it was decided that Salem would accompany Kadawala and Hingora to Sanjay’s residence with an array of guns and grenades.

  Reports of the streets of Mumbai being painted crimson in the aftermath of the Babri demolition had upset Salem greatly. The way he understood it, the blood being spilled was Muslim blood alone. His grief for the plight of his fellow Muslims later gave way to resentment against Hindus and, finally, an all-encompassing thirst for retribution. This was in stark contrast to things back at Salem’s hometown, Azamgarh. The difference, he believed, was that not a single drop of Muslim blood could have been spilled there, because in Azamgarh, no one dared mess with the Muslims.

  Following the riots, Salem decided to lie low. For a few weeks, he stayed out of any sort of trouble and kept his name out of the headlines. Then one day, he received a phone call from Anis, asking how he was holding up. Anis went on to drop a bombshell. Salem would have to make a very special delivery. His job was to hand over some samaan to a friend in Bandra (in underworld parlance, ‘samaan’ usually refers to ‘ammunition’). This sounded simple enough, for Salem had run several such errands in the past. But his jaw hit the floor when Anis named the consignee—Sanjay Dutt.

  This was the most interesting piece of news Salem had heard in a long time. The young Salem was in awe of Sanjay Dutt and regarded him as something of a role model. In the days leading up to the drop, Anis provided all the logistical information and details. The plan entailed first picking up the samaan in Bhiwandi, hauling it across the city to Bandra and handing it over. The package would have to be delivered directly to Sanjay, in person, at his Pali Hill residence, Ajanta. It all seemed simple enough.

  Aziz and Salem set off from Mahim in a white Maruti car driven by a Gujarati boy, whose name the gangster does not recall. In his CBI confession, he said he was so caught up in the excitement of meeting his hero that he did not pay attention to the car’s registration details or the name of its owner. They just didn’t seem like important details at the time.

  About two and a half hours later, they reached a place near Bhiwandi and waited outside a small hotel by the road. Aziz and the Gujarati kid entered the hotel and made an entry in the register. Money exchanged hands. Shortly, all three of them found themselves relaxing in one of the rooms in the hotel waiting for further instructions. After around two hours of speculation and idle chit-chat, they were all set to make a move.

  The trio climbed into a Maruti Omni van that was waiting for them; the goods had been loaded into a specially hollowed out cavity in the boot. This was usually used to store contraband like silver; Salem, in his confession, said he naturally assumed that something similar was to be delivered. In Bandra, they were met by film producers Hanif Kadawala and Samir Hingora of Magnum Video fame, and Baba Moosa Chauhan.

  At one point, Samir and Hanif got out of the van to make a call from a cell phone. Salem would later find out that Samir and Hanif had just incurred a whopping Rs 1300 charge on the call they had made to Anis in Dubai. The news was disappointing—the meeting with the Bollywood superstar had been postponed by a whole day.

  The next day they headed to Pali Naka and arrived at the Dutt residence. Sanjay greeted the party at the gate. Samir, Hanif and Baba got out and exchanged pleasantries with Sanjay. Nervously, Salem wiped his clammy palm dry on his trouser leg and approached Sanjay, who strode over and drew Salem in
to a warm embrace. Salem was speechless at the star’s affectionate and humble greeting.

  There was a uniformed policeman standing guard at Sanjay’s gate and the star asked him to leave his post and return in a brief while. Sanjay then asked to see the goods. The cavity in the boot was prised open and his consignment was taken out and laid out for him to see. In his CBI confession, Salem said he was genuinely shocked to see that the samaan consisted of a selection of around nine or ten assault rifles, including AK-56 guns, and between eighty and ninety hand grenades. Salem, whose criminal work at this stage didn’t go beyond roughing up victims using a small gang, had only ever seen sophisticated weapons like these in films.

  Sanjay examined the weapons and seemed completely at home with the guns. He did not want to keep all the weapons and chose three AK-56 rifles and a few grenades. On the way out, Sanjay hugged Salem again and thanked him for coming. It made Salem even happier when he asked him to come back in a couple of days.

  By their next meeting, Sanjay had had plenty of time to get used to the weapons and he explained that he did not want to keep that many weapons at home. He added that one AK-56 would be more than sufficient and then sent Salem on his way with another warm hug. Having received three hugs from Sanjay Dutt, Salem could not stop boasting to his friends and associates for days.

  Subsequently, he took the bags containing the remaining weapons to the home of a woman called Zaibunissa Qazi. After the 1993 blasts, the police was leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to put people behind bars. Hanif and Samir had been detained by the Crime Branch and Baba Chauhan had also been arrested. Sanjay’s name cropped up in the investigations and he was slapped with charges under TADA.

  From a hero, Sanjay had gone to being branded a ‘terrorist’ in the short space of three months. During a raid, in addition to the AK-56, the police had found five other firearms stashed away in his home. The star’s reputation was ripped to shreds and even his father’s squeaky clean image was tainted. The man who encashed on the negative publicity of Sanjay Dutt and laughed his way to the bank was, of course, Subhash Ghai.

  While all those involved in delivering the weapons and grenades to Sanjay Dutt’s house were booked under TADA, including the star himself, and suffered the ignominy of jail, Salem managed to escape the long arm of the law.

  Five

  The Big D

  AN ORDINARY MAN FROM AN ORDINARY family in an ordinary locality with neighbours just as ordinary—that was Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar. But what he did with his commonplace roots is what made him an extraordinary leader of the Mumbai underworld. Legend has it that at his peak, the merest mention of his name was enough to make brave men tremble, the very aura that drew Salem to him. Like hundreds of misguided Muslim youngsters in Mumbai, Salem saw the kingpin of the D-gang as a role model. For them, Dawood was a man who rose despite the odds, defied a heavily biased system and emerged successful. Salem was in awe of the man.

  The Ratnagiri-born Dawood was among twelve children of Ibrahim Hasan Kaskar, a police head constable in the Mumbai Crime Branch. Dawood spent most of his childhood in the company of street kids, and made his foray into the world of organized crime by doing odd jobs to earn a bit of money for his large family. It was here that he ran into the local gangs. Over time, he crossed paths with the lynchpins of the smuggling industry—Haji Mastan and Karim Lala—and began his own low-level smuggling business with his brother Sabir. Dawood’s father had developed a friendship with Mastan and Lala during his service in the police force and he remained friends with them even after he retired.

  Dawood’s ambition to make it big saw him opening an electronics goods store in Manish Market, still sometimes referred to as Mumbai’s grey goods supermarket. Along with his trade of pushing smuggled electronics, Dawood also had a finger in the extortion pie. With brother Sabir in tow, he went around demanding protection money or maliciously wrecking shops belonging to other businessmen dealing in smuggled goods in Manish Market and elsewhere.

  Even as a youth, Dawood had believed in the expansion of businesses, and so he tried his hand at conning people too, often selling them a watch or an expensive piece of jewellery and switching it with a stone or rock in the final seconds of the transaction.

  Sabir was the unofficial first member of what went on to become the D-Company (and very briefly the Young Party). The party’s first major haul came in 1974 when Dawood hit upon the idea of hijacking a private courier, or angadia, as they are called in Mumbai. Back then, if large sums of money had to be sent from one person to another, a carrier would be hired to quickly ferry the cash across. The angadias embarked on their journeys unprotected, and Dawood realized that they would be relatively simple targets that would yield maximum gains.

  And so, in December that year, Dawood and his gang of seven faithful cronies decided to waylay an angadia after a tip-off about its route. Despite the clumsy execution, the octet managed to decamp with a large sum of money that they were to later realize was around Rs 4.75 lakh, belonging to the Corporation Bank. The Pydhonie police registered the case as the biggest bank robbery till date. After lying low for a while, Dawood and Sabir came out of hiding as changed men. They were now powerful. This is believed to be the moment that turned Dawood the thug into Dawood the don.

  Unfortunately, Sabir’s days of thunder were slowly drawing to a close, partly because Dawood and he had made too many enemies and partly because they had been living just too dangerously. After kick-starting a feud with the Pathan brothers—Amirzada and Alamzeb—the duo employed the services of gangster Manya Surve in 1981 to help them get their revenge. But as it turned out, Sabir’s car was followed to a petrol station where he had pulled over. The Pathan brothers made the most of the opportunity and, along with their associates, ambushed Sabir and pummelled his body with bullets.

  The murder shocked Mumbai’s civilians and policemen alike and created ripples within the underworld. With Sabir lying in his grave, Dawood took over the reins of the Young Party/D-Company and subsequently the gang. A few years down the line, Dawood had made quite a reputation for himself as a hot-blooded and violent young man who had laid waste the business interests of numerous non-cooperative shop owners and other businessmen.

  The downside of this, of course, was that Dawood and his tiny band of acquaintances were beginning to attract the attention of the police. Tales of his methods of extortion and the mayhem he was capable of unleashing were making the police nervous. It is believed in some circles that being the son of a constable made the police even more determined to bring him to justice.

  This is where the Mumbai chapter of the then fledgling D-Company came to a sharp and sudden close, with the young Dawood hurriedly setting off for greener pastures—Dubai. Having landed in Dubai, the don set about putting his house in order. He gave his lieutenants, corporals and foot soldiers a single order—wind up your business affairs and occupations, and leave for Dubai.

  The urgency of Dawood’s message was not lost on his minions who began trooping across to the Gulf. Two of Dawood’s closest and most powerful aides at one point were Rajendra Sadashiv Nikhalje and Shakeel Babumiya Shaikh, better known as Chhota Rajan and Chhota Shakeel respectively. Rajan arrived in Dubai nearly a year before Shakeel, giving him that much more time to ingratiate himself with Dawood. Shakeel answered the D-Company head honcho’s call sometime in 1988 and came to Dubai to find Rajan enjoying the power, responsibility and privilege that came with being Dawood’s right-hand man. For all his hard work and efforts to please the D-Company’s leader, Shakeel had to spend a few years picking up the scraps.

  Gradually, Dawood’s little group expanded into a vast empire that had its fingers in all sorts of dirty pies, ranging from extortion rackets to smuggling, and even the Hindi film industry. At one point, it was fair to say that Dawood’s empire was almost the underworld equivalent of the business holdings of the Ambanis, Tatas and Birlas.

  The don bought himself a massive mansion in Dubai and christened it White Hou
se. Decades later, Forbes magazine would confirm the notion that Dawood had about himself by proclaiming him to be one of the most powerful people in the world—almost up there with the President of the USA. Sitting comfortably in his heavily guarded mansion, Dawood would remote control proceedings in India with a few people on the ground.

  Anis, in the meantime, was riding on the notoriety and fear that his brother, Dawood, evoked. He was part of the gang, but preferred to have his own people and lieutenants working for him. He focused on property encroachment, and extortion from builders and film producers—businesses that made him very rich. Salem’s smuggling business also became a lucrative part of Anis’s portfolio.

  By the time the 1990s rolled in, the D-Company’s grip on Mumbai was gradually tightening and all was well for Dawood and his men—until Babri Masjid and the communal riots that followed. The reaction of Muslims in Mumbai was like a slap across Dawood’s face. One Muslim woman reportedly sent Dawood a box of broken bangles, that worst insult for a man, for it ridiculed his inability as a man to protect fellow Muslims. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought the D-Company to a crossroads. The gang’s next step would be the one that determined its future course.

  Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was now truly salivating. It had been waiting for such an opportunity and here it was on a silver platter. For years, the ISI policy in its Kashmir operations had been to ‘prick and bleed’. Now, the plan was to make a ‘deep incision’ in the heart of the nation’s psyche. But in order to execute this plan, the ISI would need some people on the ground as executioners.

  In addition to groups like the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Afghan Mujahideen, the ISI contacted various wealthy Dubai-based businessmen, as well as Dawood, Anis, Mohammad Dossa, Tiger Memon, Tahir Merchant and a number of other Indian dons, briefing them about their latest operation: Tehreek-e-Inteqaam (the initiative of revenge).