My Name is Abu Salem Read online

  Salem then heard Gulshan asking an old woman to let him into her hut. He realized it had been around ten to fifteen minutes since the execution had begun. He issued instructions to Raja to wrap it up and get out of there. Raja approached Gulshan, who begged Raja to spare him. And Salem finally got to hear what he had been aching to hear for so long—the sound of the once-defiant music mogul begging for mercy. Raja pumped six rounds into Gulshan and left him for dead as he rode off on his bike.

  India was shocked. Mumbai had witnessed many mafia killings, but this one surpassed everything. Salem’s monstrosity was discussed from Parliament to pub houses. The prime minister of the coalition government, Inder Kumar Gujral, reacted immediately to the killing: ‘This criminal act is totally out of place in a civilized society and particularly in a city known for its discipline and civic consciousness. Gulshan Kumar,’ Gujral said, had ‘carved a niche for himself in the world of film music. His loss will be mourned by all music-loving people.’ Headlines screamed Salem’s name and asked for justice. The furore felt like accolades to Salem. He was delighted that the Times of India and the Indian Express had branded him L’Enfant Terrible of the Underworld.

  The film fraternity froze with fear at the murder. Director Mahesh Bhatt, who directed the hit Aashiqui—which featured music produced by T-Series—summed it up aptly when he said, ‘When you kill Gulshan Kumar, you kill one of the biggest people in the entertainment industry. By killing Gulshan Kumar they are saying, “We are calling the shots,” and they have proved it . . . The entire film fraternity is in a state of terror.’

  Fourteen

  Extradition Embarrassment

  SALEM WAS DETAINED IN DUBAI CENTRAL Jail at Al Aweer Road, within a week of Gulshan Kumar’s murder. Less than a month later, at a strategically planned police conference, the new police commissioner R.H. Mendonca named musician Nadeem Saifi as a prime suspect in the killing.

  The mention of Nadeem’s name at the packed-to-the-rafters press conference sent shockwaves through the country. It was almost as shocking as the disclosure of film star Sanjay Dutt’s purchase of weapons during Mumbai’s serial blasts. The skeletons had begun tumbling out of Bollywood’s tightly locked cupboard.

  Like Sanjay, Nadeem too belonged to a highly respectable family. His father Yunus Saifi was the largest publisher and distributor of the Holy Quran in the country. The Taj Book House, right across Mumbai’s famous Minara Masjid at Mohammad Ali Road in the Muslim segment of South Mumbai, is regarded as the hub for Islamic book lovers across the Indian peninsula.

  Saifi Senior, a devout Muslim, was shattered at the allegations. ‘We belong to a scrupulous family. My son has been brought up on the sublime ideals of the Quran. He will never kill or be part of any killing,’ he said, tears streaming down his cheeks. Nadeem, who was based in London, was also rattled at the developments in Mumbai. He immediately called Mendonca and assured him that there had been some sort of a mistake. He promised to take the first flight into Mumbai and cooperate with the investigation. ‘Gulshanji was like my father. I cannot even imagine killing him,’ Nadeem reportedly told the top cop on the phone.

  The government, however, was in no mood to buy Nadeem’s explanations. It was by now in a tearing hurry to indict him and bring him to India, with or without his cooperation. On 4 September, the Mumbai Police formally approached Interpol seeking his arrest and on 17 September, Nadeem received a call from the Metropolitan Police asking him to present himself at the Charring Cross police station.

  Nadeem gave himself up at the station, accompanied by his solicitor, Henry Bradman. He was charged with conspiracy to murder. Subsequently, the extradition department of the New Scotland Yard took over and he was produced at the Bow Street Magistrate’s Court in Covent Garden. Bail for Nadeem was set by Magistrate Ronald Bartle at GBP 200,000 in financial guarantees, and his passport was confiscated, to prevent him from fleeing the country.

  Nadeem was also instructed not to leave his Kingsbury address until the next court hearing on 24 September. Kingsbury, a posh suburb in Middlesex, is home to many corporate executives, bankers and mid-level businessman. Over the years, it had become a neighbourhood populated by Asian expatriates, especially Gujaratis and other nouveau riche Indians. Kingsbury, like neighbouring Harrow, represented the affluence of the Indian diaspora in and around London. Nadeem’s wife Sultana had suffered a miscarriage after five months of pregnancy, which led to Nadeem’s decision not to return to India. The Mumbai Police could only get him if they managed to extradite him from the UK.

  There was now a long legal battle on the cards for the music composer and the Mumbai Police. The crown prosecution service would ask the Mumbai Police to present evidence against Nadeem, on the basis of which a decision on extradition would be taken. When reporters began investigating why the government had been so quick in indicting Nadeem and seeking an Interpol notice against him, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister Gopinath Munde explained, ‘We wanted to extradite him because it’s easier to get him from London than Dubai. Were he to go to Dubai, it would be impossible to bring him back.’

  Munde must have forgotten that India had consistently failed to get its accused back from Britain. One prominent instance was that of Iqbal Mohammad Memon (aka Iqbal Mirchi). The Maharashtra state government which spent an obscene amount of money in court proceedings in both cases not only faced abysmal failure but even ended up paying costs and damages to both the accused in foreign currency.

  Mirchi, who had been on the lam ever since his escape from India in the early 1990s, was arrested from his home in England by the Scotland Yard in April 1995 and charged with possession of drugs. With two drug cases pending against Mirchi in Mumbai courts (in 1986 and 1994), the legal team sought to have him extradited and brought back to the city of his birth, where he would be tried. Everything seemed to be in order and extradition seemed all but imminent. Except for one tiny glitch. According to the extradition treaty drawn up between India and the United Kingdom, all the documents upon which the case was based had to be authenticated by the minister of state for external affairs.

  As it turned out, in a huge gaffe that nobody could explain, the entire charge sheet against Mirchi was authenticated by some other official, not the minister of state for external affairs. As a result, no material could be put before the British authorities. And the extradition request was turned down by the Bow Street magistrates. India did not even appeal the decision.

  Mirchi’s case had gone on for just four brief months. Nobody from the CBI or any other investigating agency, government office or the Indian police had even gone to London for it. An officer from the Indian High Commission was the only representative of the Indian government at the hearings. Advocate Ram Jethmalani, who had gone to London to argue the case against Mirchi, recounts that the main point raised by the British counsel was: ‘Where is the authentication from the Indian government?’ There was, apparently, no answer to that question.

  India, inexplicably, made the same blunder in the Nadeem case. The Government of India had sought the extradition of Nadeem. This time around, Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam and advocate Majeed Memon went to London. But they needn’t have bothered. The case ran its course for three to four months and was dismissed. The reason? A lack of authentication by the minister of state for external affairs!

  In retrospect, and in Jethmalani’s view, it never seemed like the Indian government was keen on having either of the two extradited. ‘The Government of India has its own priorities that do not include bringing back accused who have been arrested overseas. There has been absolutely zero application of mind and the government has for some reason or other been disinterested in bringing the duo back to India,’ he said.

  The cops maintained that they had evidence against Nadeem. When his non-film album Hi Ajnabi failed, he had squarely blamed Gulshan Kumar. ‘Have you received calls from my friends? You don’t know me,’ Nadeem reportedly threatened Gulshan. Apart from family statements
and other indications about the growing acrimony between Gulshan Kumar and Nadeem, the biggest evidence that the cops banked on was the statement of several film stars who were present at the opening of the Royal Empire Hotel on 12 June, where the Nadeem–Shravan duo had performed for free, allegedly at the behest of Salem.

  Film stars, including Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Jackie Shroff, Aditya Pancholi, Atul Agnihotri, Chunky Pandey and Pooja Bhatt, were summoned to the Crime Branch for their statements to be recorded. The police claimed that they had managed to piece together evidence from their statements and corroborated how Nadeem was sitting with Salem for hours and hatching the plan to take out Gulshan if he failed to agree to the terms set by Nadeem.

  Unlike the way the film industry folks and others rallied behind Sanjay Dutt—including his father’s political detractors, Shatrughan Sinha and Bal Thackeray—when he was arrested, Nadeem had no supporters. His repeated pleas seeking intervention from Thackeray, whom he kept referring to as ‘Thackeray Uncle’, did not work in his favour either. Like Mirchi, who never returned to Indian shores, Nadeem, too, was destined to remain holed up in London.

  Fifteen

  The Fallout

  EVER SINCE SALEM ARRIVED IN DUBAI, he had been filling Anis’s dwindling coffers. In fact, Salem was Anis’s most loyal soldier, but the latter did not reciprocate equally. When the noose tightened around Salem’s neck, his boss did not stand up for him. Gulshan Kumar’s killing had appalled the Indian government and they had used diplomatic channels to put pressure on the UAE government to hand Salem over.

  The signing of an extradition treaty in 1996 between the UAE and Indian governments had been a landmark event. The treaty bolstered the Mumbai Police’s efforts in launching an offensive against organized crime. They had failed to extradite Dawood following the serial blasts, because such a treaty did not exist in 1994. But this time they were confident that they would not allow Salem to slip through their fingers.

  The Dubai government, upon checking records of Indians living under the residential visa programme, found no one by the name of Abu Salem Ansari in Dubai. The Dubai government’s response unsettled the Indian bureaucrats and police. However, the CBI, the nodal agency for the Mumbai Police to deal with foreign police and governments, refused to give up easily. They swung into action with renewed vigour and got several agencies working in tandem.

  This time they managed to dig out details on Salem, including his criminal profile, his photographs and his fingerprints from D.N. Nagar police station and sent a detailed dossier to the Dubai government. The Dubai Shurta, or CID, realized that these details matched a Deira resident, Akil Ahmed Azmi, whose passport had been issued from Lucknow.

  As soon as this development came to light, Azmi (i.e. Salem) was detained in Dubai and thrown behind bars along with ordinary criminals. Salem was shocked at the treatment meted out to him. He was being treated like an ordinary criminal, something that had not happened to him even in Azamgarh or Mumbai, barring a couple of days at the D.N. Nagar police station.

  Salem had witnessed the power of Dawood’s connections in the past. He was capable of having anyone released or locked away for all eternity, depending on how he felt. Salem’s grouse was that if Anis had wanted, he could have had him released from police custody in no time.

  In 1995, for example, when Sunil Sawant, one of Dawood’s sharpshooters, was killed in Dubai by Chhota Rajan’s contract killers, the local police had detained Sharad Shetty, the kingpin of the cricket betting racket, and Anil Parab, alias Wangya, Dawood’s one-time sharpshooter. Shetty had managed to convince Dawood that he was innocent, while Wangya could not. Dawood ensured that Shetty was released within hours of his detention, while Wangya had to suffer incarceration for three months, with no help from the Company.

  Days passed and Salem kept expecting help from his bosses, but it never came. Days turned into weeks and the weeks melted into months, but there was no sign of any reprieve for Salem. He was rotting in jail, along with ordinary pickpockets and petty thieves, and no one tried to get him out. Worse, Salem learnt, his wife Sameera had been left to fend for herself with nobody offering her financial assistance or even visiting her. Sameera had left her family behind to marry Salem and now she was alone in an alien city without a shoulder to lean on. She also had to coordinate with lawyers, meet Salem in jail, and follow his instructions about collection and distribution of finances.

  Even the slightest support from the Company would have lifted Sameera’s morale. Salem had imagined that the blood, sweat and tears he had expended on the Company would earn him and his wife assistance in their hour of need. But Anis turned out to be a fair-weather friend. Not once did he visit or provide assurances of expediting Salem’s release. The once-dreaded scourge of Mumbai was alone and abandoned.

  In the meantime, the efforts of the Indian government to extradite Salem had begun losing steam. The Dubai courts went on to rule against the extradition of Akil Ahmed Azmi of Lucknow. The Indian government was left shell-shocked.

  Salem returned to his house in Dubai a transformed man. He looked back at his empire. From a life of poverty, he had built a vast fortune and in the process, had lined Anis’s pockets too. Anis had been happy to reap the fruits of Salem’s handiwork, but when it came to reciprocate and be a good boss, he had ignored Salem. What irked Salem the most was being treated by Anis as no more than a glorified errand boy.

  He was never treated with civility in the presence of other Company members. Sometimes, Anis deliberately humiliated him by chiding him for no reason in front of others or made him do a small task when he could have asked any of his several servants instead. But Salem quietly swallowed his pride and remained subservient to Anis. But the period in jail had taught him one thing—Anis was not someone who could be relied on in a crisis.

  His frustration began to grow, and he now started to spend more time with his friends and lackeys; he also threw himself into philandering with starlets flocking to visit him in Dubai. His marriage, which had never been happy since Dubai, now began to crack. Sameera was an outspoken woman with a bitter, sharp tongue when she was angry. Salem found it hard to tolerate her anger and blunt remarks, and began to beat her up regularly. He once hit her so hard that she had a deep gash on her forehead. She was rushed to a hospital bleeding profusely and was sent home with twelve stitches.

  Salem also lost interest in his work. He was not keen on making any more money for Anis and, as a result, stopped making calls to India. The extortion business came to a standstill. He suddenly stopped going to his office. The Indian business community and Bollywood breathed a sigh of relief.

  Eventually, Salem decided to go his own way, knowing that he did not need Anis as much as Anis needed him. As a first step, he pulled down the huge portrait of Anis that adorned his office wall. Then, in a fit of anger, he smashed the frame and tore the portrait.

  News of Salem’s intentions could not have been kept away from Anis. Losing no time, Anis landed up at Salem’s house at Jumeirah. When he did not find Salem, he screamed at Sameera and spoke to her rather rudely, leaving her rattled. She was probably the only educated woman in the entire fraternity and did not hesitate to convey her disgust to Dawood through Chhota Shakeel’s wife. Dawood called her up to inquire about what had happened. When Sameera complained to him about his younger brother’s behaviour, Dawood sounded apologetic and assured her that she would not be bothered any more.

  Dawood had by then relocated to Karachi, but made a trip to Dubai to mediate between Anis and Salem so that they could be friends again. Both Anis and Salem respected Dawood immensely and there was no way either of them could refuse him. They agreed to a truce, but there was an underlying tension now in their friendship. While Anis had begun to dislike Salem, the latter had lost all respect for his one-time boss and mentor.

  Salem knew too that with the hounds of the Indian government hot on his trail, it was possible that he could get into trouble again. He had to protect himself and S
ameera. It was circa 1998 and he slowly began planning to leave Dubai and settle down elsewhere. It would not happen overnight. It would require a lot of planning, transferring of funds, getting a house elsewhere and investing in some properties abroad.

  Salem decided to first shift Sameera so that Anis could not torment her any longer. He would join her later. He began weighing his options. Pakistan, already a safe haven for thirty-three of the accused in the serial blasts and other gangsters, was ruled out. Dawood would have been happy to have him there and Salem had been to Karachi once during Dawood’s brother Mustaqim’s wedding; but there was no way Anis would allow him to rest in peace there. No country in the Gulf would be safe for him either.

  After much thinking, Salem decided that the USA would be the best bet. Anis would not be able to touch him there. He zeroed in on Atlanta, Georgia. But Sameera would need a new identity before she could leave. Salem needed to procure a fresh set of passports for both of them. Salem got in touch with his contacts in Hyderabad for new identities and passports.

  Sixteen

  Duggal’s Doll

  MONICA BEDI WAS BORN TO A middle-class Sikh family in a small village in Chabbewal, fifteen kilometres from the town of Hoshiarpur in Punjab, on 18 January 1975. Her father Prem Bedi was a doctor, while mother Shakuntala was a housewife. It was an era when most Punjabi families aspired to migrate to the West in search of their fortunes. Even before Monica’s first birthday, Dr Bedi had decided to move his family to Norway.