Black Friday Read online

  The golden aphorism of the underworld is that anything that is known to more than two people is no longer a secret. There are hundreds of informers or khabris in Bombay. They straddle the two worlds of the underworld gangs and the law enforcement agencies. They secure vital information from the agencies, and just as often provide them with invaluable tip-offs, a fact that these agencies acknowledge. The customs department rewards their khabris by paying twenty per cent of the value of the seized contraband. This means a khabri can become a millionaire overnight if he can tip off the agencies of any cache of gold or contraband worth a crore of rupees. But the smugglers also have their informers within the agencies. Whenever the agencies organize a raid, such informers call up their masters and warn them, often foiling the strike. In return, the informers would be paid anything between Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000, depending on the magnitude of the loss the smugglers would have incurred had the seizure taken place.

  The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) received specific information that between 21 and 24 January, Tiger Memon and Mohammed Dossa were likely to organize a landing of arms and explosives at Rohini and Dighi, two of the many landing spots in the Raigad area. Information about landings can seldom be more specific, as even the landing agents are frequently not aware of the date until the last moment. That is because the exact date of a landing depends on a number of factors, which include the date of the cargo leaving its port of origin, weather conditions, and the level of vigilance on the part of the Indian authorities. Thus a large part of a landing agent’s work is to be constantly ready for whenever the cargo lands.

  The DRI director, S.P.S. Pundir, at once alerted his deputy, V.M. Deolekar, and the superintendent of police (SP), Alibaug, T.S. Bhal, under whose jurisdiction the jetties came.

  The second alert, on 25 January, came from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) who received a tip-off that some arms were likely to land in one of the nodal coastal points of Raigad sometime in the next fifteen to twenty days.

  On the same day, the collector of customs, S.K. Bhardwaj, also received a tip-off. He in turn alerted the police, the navy and his own men. He telephoned his assistant collector of customs (ACC), R.K. Singh, and followed this up with a secret demi-official letter (known as a DO), stating that intelligence had been received that a large quantity of automatic weapons would be smuggled into India by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) and the controlling syndicate in UAE. These weapons were likely to be landed sometime in the next fifteen to thirty days at Vasai, Dadar Penn, Srivardhan, Bankot, Ratnagiri and the southern beaches of Goa.

  Bhardwaj also sent separate copies to his immediate subordinates: Additional Collector of Customs (Addl. CC) S.N. Thapa, in charge of the marine and preventive (M&P) wing of customs which had jurisdiction over the seas, and Addl. CC V.M. Deophade, who was in charge of the rummaging and intelligence (R&I) wing, whose jurisdiction was on land. In practice, the officers of two wings often trespassed on each other’s territories.

  26 January—Republic Day—was a holiday. Both Thapa and Deophade received the DO only on 27 January. Since the landing of contraband fell in Thapa’s jurisdiction, he took serious note of the alert and informed all eight ACCs under him about it, so that they in turn could notify their subordinate officers.

  Hareshwar, the small government rest house at Srivardhan, nestles in picturesque surroundings. On 29 January, ACC R.K. Singh, the first recipient of Bhardwaj’s alert, checked into this guest house at 4 p.m. Singh had barely settled in when a jeep entered the compound. Customs Inspector S.S. Talawadekar and Phanse came into Singh’s room. Singh and Talawadekar, law enforcement officers, were Phanse’s co-conspirers.

  After the meeting, Phanse, Parkar and Laundrywala gathered some forty men from the village. They hired two huge boats, owned by Harihar Khopatkar and Yashwant Boinkar, which were used for carting the contraband to shore. Normally each boat could carry up to 125 or 150 silver ingots, worth Rs 3.5 crore in the open market. However, the wages that the boatmen were paid were minuscule, despite the great risks that they had to take.

  Boinkar in fact resented this so much that he had already decided that he would help Phanse and then later squeal on him. That way he would get his money from the smugglers as well as the government reward for khabri, which he estimated should be about Rs 70 lakh, twenty per cent of the value of the ingots in his boat. He knew Phanse trusted him, and was unlikely to be suspicious.

  Boinkar had come to this decision in October 1992 when Tiger had smuggled in some 700 ingots of silver and Boinkar had assisted Phanse, for what he considered were inadequate wages. The fisherman had contacted his long-time confidant, Ram of Bhardkool. The primary school teacher in Bhardkool village, Mahendra Mhatre, had a brother, Inspector L.D. Mhatre, who was a customs officer posted at Uran. Ram contacted Inspector Mhatre, who organized a meeting with his boss, Addl. CC Thapa.

  In the customs department, officers of Thapa’s calibre were rare. He had more than two-and-a-half decades of experience in anti-smuggling operations. Thapa met Mhatre and Ram in the first week of December 1992. Babri Masjid had yet to be demolished. In that meeting, Ram and Thapa developed a good rapport. Thapa assured a reward to Ram in return for his pakki khabar about future landings.

  On 29 January, when Boinkar was hired for this other landing, he again got in touch with Ram who spoke to Mahendra Mhatre. Mhatre sent a message to his brother. The journey to Uran took six long hours. By the time Mhatre could inform Thapa it was 10.30 p.m. There was no way a raid could be arranged that night. The following day, 30 January, Mhatre learnt that the landing had not taken place that night. In case the landing occurred that night, Thapa made the requisite preparations for a raid.

  Thapa had emphasized utmost secrecy so that Tiger would not be alerted about the raid. Tiger was reputed to have dozens of customs officers on his payroll, as did many other smugglers. Thapa also knew that should they interrupt a landing or hold up a convoy, Tiger’s men would not shy away from a gun battle. That was why surprise was essential to give his men an advantage. He decided to take a group of men from Thane, a city near Bombay, as men from Bombay were adjudged to be more likely to have connections with Tiger’s gang. He made several calls to his most trusted officers from that area, and gathered some twenty men. The officers were instructed to carry their guns and travel in unmarked Maruti 800s.

  As a seasoned customs official, Thapa knew that all smugglers had a limited choice of roads to reach Bombay. There were only two arteries that connected the landing points near Srivardhan village to the junction of the Bombay–Goa highway, which led to Mahad and then Bombay. Since one of them, the Mhasla-Sai Morba Road, had a steep climb, Thapa surmised that Tiger would not take that route. Therefore, Thapa laid an ambush at a spot called Purarphata on the other road, which went from Mhasla to Mangaon, where there was a bridge which was so narrow that only one large vehicle could cross at a time. The road leading to the bridge snaked through thick jungle. Thapa had received information that Tiger Memon would lead two trucks in an open Commander jeep. He had decided to intercept the convoy the moment the jeep crossed the bridge. Since the trucks would be blocked on the bridge itself they would not be able to turn back.

  Thapa had heard so much about Tiger’s penchant for firing at customs officers that he decided to take no risks. He told his men that Tiger could easily be identified as he had a heavy beard. ‘Shoot him dead. I’ll take responsibility for what happens later.’

  The dense bushes on both sides of the road proved good cover for the customs team. After taking their positions, the team began their long, arduous wait, in a deathly silence broken only by the call of jungle animals. They kept watch from 9 p.m. until 1.30 a.m., when there occurred an unexpected interruption.

  An anonymous caller had informed the police at Mhasla that armed terrorists were hidden in the Purarphata bushes, waiting to waylay travellers. The police team reached the spot, surrounded the customs officials from all sides, and ordered the ‘terrorists’ to surrender
.

  Taken completely by surprise, the customs team sat stunned. Finally, Thapa stepped out of his Toyota and walked out to identify himself. He then called off the surveillance because he knew that in all probability Tiger would not pass that night.

  The officers decided to meet again the following night. The ambush was shifted to a spot called Dehanphata, which lay between Srivardhan and Purarphata. The road there was narrow and curved so that vehicles were forced to slow down. Thapa stuck to his original plan of zeroing in on the trucks only after the jeep had moved ahead. But the bad luck of the customs officials continued. Tiger did not pass by on that night either.

  During the course of that vigil, in the early hours of 1 February, Thapa received a call from his colleague Deophade, who warned him that an arms landing was likely to occur near Mhasla that night. Thapa informed ACC R.K. Singh and asked him to step up the vigilance at the landing spots of Dighi, Bankot, Mhasla and Srivardhan. He also alerted the customs control room, which sent out a coded message warning all customs officials about the impending landing.

  Their quarry was as near as they could hope. When Thapa had been coordinating with Singh about stepping up vigilance, Tiger was at Hotel Vesava, Mahad. An hour after the customs alert had been sent out, Tiger received a call from a customs officer, who asked him to proceed towards Alibaug, which was also under surveillance at the time. Tiger immediately checked out and drove for over two and a half hours to Alibaug, where he checked into Hotel Big Splash at 6.45 a.m.

  He asked the receptionist to dial a local number, 2050, the number of the customs control room. However, his contact ACC Singh was not there. He then called Singh’s residence, and Singh asked him to call at the control room five minutes later, by which time he would be there.

  During a second call from the control room, Singh asked Tiger to wait at the hotel, and assured him that he would send over his men soon. In a few minutes, Singh sent the Alibaug customs superintendent, Sayed Sultan, to meet Tiger. When Sultan went to the Big Splash, he found Tiger Memon sleeping in his suite. But he met the landing agent Parkar.

  The landing did not take place on 2 February either. Tiger slept throughout the day in his suite although his men had gone to the landing spots and returned empty-handed that night. But Tiger received confirmation of the landing from Dubai on the morning of 3 February.

  Between 29 January and 2 February, Tiger’s landing agents had contacted various customs officials and police personnel in Srivardhan and Mhasla, and arranged for their cooperation in the landings. Laundrywala had ‘fixed’ the Srivardhan customs officials and a police inspector; while Phanse had sought help from the Mhasla customs officials and police officials. They were all promised a consideration, starting from Rs 1 lakh. They had advised the landing agents to bring in the goods only after 2 a.m.

  On 3 February, sixteen of Tiger’s men assembled at the Big Splash where Tiger had booked rooms for them. They were Javed Chikna, Anwar Theba, Badshah Khan, Shahid Qureishi, Shahnawaz Qureishi, Shaikh Ali, Shaikh Mohammed Ehtesham, Parvez Nasir, Parvez Kelawala Qureishi, Akbar, Karimullah, Riyaz Khatri, Munna, Imtiyaz Ghavate, Yaqub Khan alias Yeba Yaqub, and Bashir Ahmed. Some were old associates and some were new men, personally handpicked by Tiger and his ace-confidant, Chikna. They were told to assemble in Tiger’s suite at lunchtime, where he addressed them.

  ‘You know what happened to our brothers during the riots in Bombay. I have requisitioned some weapons from outside so that we can settle scores with the Hindus. The cargo will arrive tonight. I must warn you that your participation in this venture has become mandatory. If any of you try to squeal to the police then I will not only eliminate that person but also his entire family.’

  There was silence in the room as each man realized that the die had been cast. They were given instructions about what to do.

  Tiger’s group left the hotel at 4 p.m., and drove for about four hours along the breathtakingly beautiful road to Shekhadi. The village was small, merely some thirty or forty houses, predominantly Muslim with many of the villagers hailing from the Konkani community. The group was joined by a further thirty men from the village, and they all went down to the shore to wait. There were also two large trucks waiting. Tiger had a radio in his hand, and periodically he and Theba would communicate on it.

  Around 11 p.m., a motorboat came to the shore. Somebody called, ‘Are you people from Bombay?’ After Tiger replied in the affirmative, he and a few of his men boarded the boat, and sailed towards the open sea. After about ten minutes the motorboat rendezvoused with a large red speedboat.

  Tiger jumped onto the speedboat, and helped to hand some thirty or so large cartons packed in gunny bags from it to his men in the motorboat. When the motorboat was full, they returned to the shore. The whole operation had taken about twenty minutes.

  The cartons were carried to a hut. After the last carton had been stashed, Chikna and Badshah Khan opened one and were dumbfounded to see huge, unwieldy guns of a kind they had not seen before. Though Chikna was Tiger’s second-in-command, he was a streetside tough, and had never encountered such sophisticated weapons.

  Tiger stepped inside the hut and said, ‘Yeh AK-56 hai. ’ He opened another box and removed some round objects, which he identified as hand grenades. ‘If anybody tries to stop you or intercept you, remove this pin and hurl it at them,’ he instructed.

  Tiger handed over an AK-56 to each of his Bombay associates. They began to familiarize themselves with the guns and their various latches and switches. Tiger told some of them to go atop the cliff and keep watch. ‘If you spot any policemen or customs men coming towards you, shoot those b. . . s,’ he ordered.

  The motorboat made several trips from the speedboat to the shore. Each time it carried wooden boxes and cartons, some eighty in all, packed in gunny bags. Unlike the cartons of ammunition and weapons, Tiger showed no interest in inspecting the wooden boxes. The boxes were loaded in the trucks. Tiger told some of his men to travel in the trucks. Their destination was the Wangani Telecom Tower, a deserted spot in the Raigad hills. The convoy— two trucks and four Commander jeeps led by Tiger in a Maruti van—left for Wangani Tower.

  At the Tower, Badshah Khan, who had met Tiger for the first time at the Big Splash, but had already attracted the latter’s attention by his obvious intelligence and keenness, supervised the unloading of the boxes and cartons from the trucks. He made an inventory of them according to the numbers written on them, and handed the list to Chikna who checked it before giving it to Tiger. Badshah and a few others opened the cartons and unpacked the hand grenades, AK-56 rifles, magazines, automatic pistols, live rounds for pistols and detonators in them. The boxes contained a black, sticky, malleable substance, which resembled the black soap used for washing utensils. Tiger explained that this kala sabun was the deadliest item of all: RDX. There were at least fifty cartons of RDX, packed in corrugated boxes, each weighing at least thirty kilograms. While the other packets and boxes were unpacked, the RDX was left untouched. Some 1,500 kilograms of RDX were loaded in a tempo. The empty cartons and boxes were burnt behind the Tower.

  Tiger had a tried and tested method for transporting goods. He believed that such goods should never be carried in trucks, as heavy vehicles were stopped more frequently at checkpoints than battered cars and jeeps. He had first tried this method in October 1992, when he brought in a large consignment of silver. He hired trucks to carry the ingots from Mhasla to the Tower, and from there he transferred the goods into jeeps. Each jeep had a false bottom, which could hold a large number of ingots. The jeeps would then travel to Bombay, with Tiger leading the convoy.

  Meanwhile the customs officials were totally flummoxed by all the information that had been pouring in. They had been keeping vigil since 30 January and were totally exhausted by 3 February when the landings actually took place. It has never been conclusively established whether the false alerts were deliberately issued to confuse and tire out the customs officials, which they undoubtedly did, or whether
there had been a genuine delay in the delivery. But whatever the reason, Tiger’s mission was accomplished: the jeeps carrying the goods made it back to Bombay where they were stashed in safe hideaways in Mumbra and Byculla. Tiger travelled with the convoy, and returned to his home in Mahim.

  On the morning of 7 February, Tiger gathered some of his trusted lieutenants at the Hindustan Soda Factory at Mahim, a regular meeting point. Nasir Dhakla, Farooq Pawle, Parvez Kelawala and Yeba Yaqub left with Tiger in a Commander jeep and Maruti car. At Vashi checkpoint, Theba, Munna, Karimullah, Ehtesham and Akbar joined them. Later, a third group arrived, which included Chikna and Badshah Khan. The group halted for lunch at a restaurant at the Nagothane petrol pump. Tiger also hired an open Canter tempo for transportation and asked Badshah Khan to direct the tempo to the landing spots. The convoy reached Shekhadi at night. This time the goods had already landed, and all the boxes were wrapped in gunny bags. The boxes were loaded on to the tempo and covered with grass. Then the vehicles drove to the Wangani Tower, where there were three Commander jeeps, three Maruti cars and other vehicles waiting. Except for the RDX, which was kept in the tempo, the other goods—AK-56 rifles, magazines, pistols, hand grenades, detonators, pencil detonators and wires—were distributed among the jeeps and the cars, and carried to Bombay.

  The arms were all in place. All that was needed was the men to use them.

  ■

  The challenge that now faced Tiger was how to transform his enthusiastic but untrained men into the skilled mercenaries needed to carry out the complex bombing operations. Even his trusted lieutenants had never seen AK-56s or handled RDX before. Ideally, they should have been trained for months but Tiger thought that that could be dispensed with as their opponents—Bombay security men and police—were hardly skilled or expert either. He decided that about ten days’ intensive training should put his men on par with their adversaries. It was an open secret that most Bombay policemen had not fired a single round in years!