Let Me Say it Now

by Rakesh Maria

Preeti’s support and her endless love and admiration are the ingredients which have contributed and shaped my career immensely. She recognised my imperfections and stoically bore my mood swings and conniption fits. Life was always full of challenges. At every step one was expected to face failure as well as success; heartache as well as joy. On those dark and dreary days (of which there were many), the thought that there is somebody who is waiting for you at home with warm cuddles and the sweetest smile in the world acted as a therapeutic cure to all the maladies that life threw at you. It was Preeti’s positive attitude, sense of humour and the ability to see the silver lining behind every dark cloud that helped me tide through crises. She kindled in me the feeling to look at life in a happier and positive way. A good wife is a man’s most precious treasure. Preeti has been this and much more. She is the soul of the house, of the family, of the home. Preeti has been the backbone of the family providing us with nurturing care, love and oodles of happiness. To me she is like a lighthouse – shining a light across the dark sea, guiding me to become better; she is also the rock which keeps me steady and strong when the times are rough.

Seldom expressed, but these ‘trivial’ things as one may perceive them to be, have an immeasurable bearing on the heart and soul of a man who has unquestionably and unwaveringly given his blood, sweat and tears to his work and who had settled for nothing less than giving all that was he was capable of giving, to the only job that he ever wanted and wished for.

those of us who did not take to academics were never humiliated or ill-treated.

My hero who had catered to every single wish of mine; the man who supported me and gave wings to my dreams; the man who had taken pride in all of my achievements, big and small, lay before me, so close yet so far and I was absolutely helpless. I died a thousand deaths – just holding his limp hand and watching him float away from us. Fortunately, he did not suffer for too long. In March 1983 he passed away. As soon as the funeral rites were completed, I went back to training with a part of me gone forever. Life would never be the same anymore.

Every ASP has to personally investigate six important cases in a year.

Different things work with different criminals.

It was Julio Ribeiro and Y.C. Pawar who took up the challenge to curb Varda’s activities and targeted him systematically. They succeeded.

At such times, besides luck, a lot depends on the officers’ presence of mind and their ability to control their own and their juniors’ panic reactions.

Shrikant Bapat was an officer who was known for his sterling integrity and undoubted professional competence.

The administration permitting Muslims to spill over on to the streets to offer Friday namaaz and thereby obstruct traffic and use loudspeakers to announce the daily azaans, have long been contentious civic issues in Bombay.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander was the argument which was difficult to fault, especially in the current scenario.

It was a very important lesson learnt and ingrained in my mind. No matter how serious the crisis, how stressed you are, to build the morale of your juniors is a leader’s foremost duty.

opportunities often come disguised, sometimes as crises. I have always dreamt of being a good detective. And when I am picked to solve a really challenging case, here I am, developing cold feet. Should I not be excited! What’s wrong with me!

Dawns at police stations are peculiarly uneasy like dawns in hospitals. Daybreak takes away merely the darkness, but not the gloom or disease or evil, nor the unpleasantness of the measures to be taken to combat the disease or the evil. The uncertainty of the outcome hangs in the atmosphere like an invisible smog.

‘The more sugar you put in the tea, the sweeter it will be; the more the mehnat (hard work), the better the results,’

‘God will be with you since you are on the path of truth.’

Aggrieved and angered by the riots, they had easily fallen prey to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Muslim dons of the underworld and ended up doing all the legwork to execute the conspiracy. They were car mechanics, men doing menial jobs, daily wage earners, brainwashed and radicalised. Poor, illiterate youth manipulated by Dawood and Anees Ibrahim, Mohammad Dosa and Tiger Memon through their lieutenants who had played upon their emotions.

Post the Bangladesh debacle, the ISI had been trying hard to gain a foothold amongst the Indian Muslims to destabilise India, but without much success. It was only in the late eighties that their sustained efforts reaped some success as the ‘Students Islamic Movement of India’ (SIMI) began making headway in influencing young impressionable Muslim youth.

The underworld grapevine has it that after the first phase of the December 1992 riots, some of the aggrieved Bombay Muslims had sent a message to Dawood Ibrahim for help; but he could not oblige. To provoke and instigate him into action goes the story, some Muslim women sent him bangles, the ultimate Indian way of humiliating a man, by questioning his masculinity.

in December 1992, Dawood, Tiger Memon, and Mohammad Dosa got together along with the ISI to hatch the conspiracy and began planning it meticulously, taking care and exercising caution to keep their Hindu henchmen completely in the dark.

The cities on the bomb blasts list included the metro cities of Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bengaluru, Surat and Ahmedabad.

Between December 1992 and January 1993, Dawood and Anees Ibrahim, through Tiger Memon, summoned eight other conspirators to Dubai. They included Mohammad Dosa and Tiger’s two brothers Yakub and Ayub. Yakub was a chartered accountant and his office premises in Mahim, ‘Tejarath International’, was heavily damaged in the communal riots. The brothers were deeply disturbed, seething with anger and desperate to wreak revenge.

Between January and March 1993, at least twenty-three such boys were sent to Islamabad via Dubai. Their families were informed that they were going abroad ostensibly for jobs and had no inkling whatsoever that they were recruits for terror operations to wage a war against India. The training was supervised and controlled by Pakistani agents and army officers who taught them to use grenades, rocket launchers and automatic weapons and also to assemble bombs with timer devices and detonators.

The first landing was organised by Mohammad Dosa on the coast of Village Dighi in Raigad district on 9 January through his landing agents, Mechanic Chacha and Uttam Potdar. To ensure a smooth landing, on 6 January, Mohammad Dosa and Mechanic Chacha met Customs officials at Hotel Persian Darbar in Panvel and secured their connivance.

Two more landings took place at the Shekhadi coast in Shrivardhan Taluka in Raigad between 2-8 February 1993. These were organised by Dawood and Tiger Memon through their landing agents, Dawood Taklya, Dadabhai Parkar and Rahim Laundrywala. For these landings, Tiger met Customs officials on 2 February at Hotel Big Splash in Alibaug to secure their connivance.

On 4 March, Tiger Memon held important preparatory meetings at Hotel Taj Mahal. It was attended by some of his most trusted lieutenants including Badshah Khan, who later turned approver.

The targets selected were the Shiv Sena Bhavan, the Bombay Municipal Corporation building, the Bombay Stock Exchange building, the Air India building, the Sahar International Airport, Plaza Theatre, Century Bazar at Worli, Hotel Searock at Bandra, Hotel Centaur at Juhu, Hotel Centaur at Santacruz and the oil dumps at Chembur.

Tiger saw to it that his entire family was moved to the safe haven of Dubai between 3-11 March. While the Memon family were all safely ensconced abroad, the saboteurs were preparing car and scooter bombs in the garage and open spaces in the Al Husseini building to cause mayhem and destruction in Bombay.

On the night between 11 and 12 March, Tiger conducted the final meeting at Al Husseini building to ensure perfect and flawless execution of the blasts. Satisfied that everything was lined up with clockwork precision, he handed a lakh of rupees to Javed Chikna and gave each of the saboteurs 5,000 rupees to see them through to Nepal. Then he hugged each one of them, promised to see them in Dubai and left for the Sahar Airport to catch the 5:30 a.m. Emirates flight to Dubai.

At 1:30 p.m., a car bomb exploded at the underground parking lot of the Stock Exchange building, killing eighty-four and injuring 218. At 2:15 p.m., a scooter bomb exploded in Katha Bazar, killing five and injuring sixteen. At 2:30 p.m., a car bomb exploded at the Lucky Petrol Pump next to the Shiv Sena Bhavan killing four and injuring fifty. At 2:45 p.m., a car bomb went off at Century Bazar in Worli, killing 113 and injuring 227. Laden with five kg of RDX, the Century Bazar car bomb was a Commander jeep and the largest bomb of the day to explode. It accounted for the highest toll destroying in its wake, an entire BEST bus packed with passengers!

At 2:45 p.m., a Maruti van with five men had just crossed the Passport Office in Worli. The massive explosion at Century Bazar lifted the Maruti van up in the air and brought it down with such an impact that it shattered the nerves of the men within. In the panic and anticipating the police to set up nakabandis or checkposts all over the city, the trained terrorists abandoned the van near the Siemens Factory and fled. They were on their way to the BMC Headquarters in Fort to gun down Shiv Sena and BJP corporators and carried automatic weapons and hand grenades. At 2:45 p.m., another car bomb exploded, this time in the tunnel road of the Air India building and killed twenty persons and injured eighty-seven. Around the same time, at 2:45 p.m., six saboteurs passed the Mahim slope hutments in a Maruti van and lobbed hand grenades at the fishermen’s houses, causing three deaths, injuring six persons and sparking off a communal riot in which several cars and shops were gutted. At 3:05 p.m., a scooter bomb exploded in Zaveri Bazar, at the junction of Shaikh Memon Street and Mirza Street, killing seventeen and injuring fifty-seven. At 3:10 p.m., in Hotel Sea Rock, a five-star hotel at Bandra Land’s End, a suitcase bomb exploded. It damaged property, but fortuitously there were no casualties. At 3:15 p.m., a car bomb exploded in the compound of the Plaza Cinema in Dadar, killing ten and injuring thirty-six persons. At 3:15 p.m., two saboteurs on a motorcycle reached the flyover ne...

Dawood, Anees, Tiger Memon and Mohammad Dosa had masterminded the storage and distribution of the smuggled weapons among a large number of operatives through their lieutenants who included Baba Musa Chauhan, Samir Hingora, Hanif Kadawala, Salim Kurla, Abu Salem and Manzoor Ahmed Sayed Ahmed. When such suspects were pulled in for questioning, they would not easily part with the truth. They would try as much as possible to obfuscate matters or extricate themselves by putting the blame on others. The attempt would be to get to any extent to avoid admitting culpability. To trace each transaction with facts and to establish links, meticulous interrogation and investigation were necessary, that too in the shortest possible time. This was the case with the role of Baba Musa Chauhan and the manner it led to some shocking discoveries.

When Baba Chauhan was questioned, he stated that he was a peripheral participant, but Hanif and Sameer know more about it. And who were Hanif and Samir? None other than Hanif Kadawala, the owner of ‘Tawaa’ – a famous eatery in Bandra, and Samir Hingora, the President of the Indian Motion Pictures Producers’ Association (IMPPA). Together they ran a company called Magnum Videos and produced films.

They said that it was Baba Chauhan who had brought the car with the weapons to them at Anees Ibrahim’s bidding. Samir had merely piloted it to Sanjay Dutt’s bungalow where the weapons were offloaded. After a few days, Baba Chauhan had sent another vehicle, a Maruti 1000. This time it was Hanif who had piloted it to the Dutt bungalow. Sanjay Dutt had retained some weapons and returned the rest. And what was the destination of the weapons from there? They said they did not know.

Confronted with irrefutable details and facts, he had no other option but to admit his part and said that the car used for the second trip belonged to one Manzoor Ahmed.

Manzoor provided the name and address of one Zaibunnisa Qazi residing near the Mount Mary Church in Bandra.

Manzoor disclosed further details of the Zaibunnisa Qazi home visit and gave me a name I had never heard before. Abu Salem Abdul Qayyum Ansari, a youth just around twenty-five years old. Manzoor said that it was this Abu Salem who had called him in his car. Both of them belonged to Azamgarh in UP.

through sustained interrogation, what we found was that on Anees Ibrahim’s directions, Baba Chauhan had sent Abu Salem in a Maruti van fitted with a hidden cavity to Gujarat, to transport weapons from Bharuch to Bombay. Once the weapons were brought into the city, they needed a quiet, secluded nook to open the cavity and unload the weapons. Baba Chauhan dialled Anees and sought his directions. Anees thought that Hanif and Samir’s office on Linking Road would be the perfect spot. So he phoned them; but, they said that it was unsafe to use their office as they had an ongoing dispute with the landlord who used to frequently summon the police at the slightest excuse. So they suggested to Anees, ‘Why not use Hero’s house?’ ‘Hero’ was none other than Sanjay Dutt who was known to Anees Ibrahim. Anees jumped at the idea and promptly phoned Sanjay Dutt, who too was game for it.

Sunil Dutt, the sitting MP from Bombay north west, was perceived as pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu by the Hindu Right-wing. They held him responsible for the sprawling Muslim slums that had come up at the Bandra Reclamation and accused him of minority vote bank politics. Sunil Dutt was among the activists who saw the State and police as failures in their duty to protect the Muslims during the riots. In protest, he had even tendered his resignation which was not accepted. He had also done a lot of relief work for the riot-affected and had been receiving threats for his work. Therefore, a police guard had been stationed at his house since the riots.

On 16 January 1993, Anees directed Hanif and Samir to take the arms-laden car to Hero’s house. Driving his own vehicle, Samir piloted the Maruti van driven by Abu Salem to the Dutt bungalow. Baba Chauhan also went along. The Hero was expecting them and asked the constable on guard duty to stand away so that t...

He kept 3 AK-56 rifles, twenty-five hand grenades, one 9mm pistol and some cartridges for himself, put them in a duffle bag and carried them inside the house. Their task accomplished, Samir a...

He phoned Anees and requested him to take away some weapons. So Anees entrusted the task to Baba Chauhan. Baba Chauhan, in turn, asked Abu Salem to go to the Dutt bungalow to collect the weapons, but Salem feared that he may not be allowed entry. So Anees asked him to go to Hanif and Samir and take them along. Abu Salem needed a vehicle to ferry the weapons. So he summoned his friend, Manzoor Ahmed, with his car. Manzoor drove Abu Salem to Hanif and Samir. Hanif in his own car then piloted Manzoor’s car. The Hero was again present. He returned two AK-56 rifles, hand grenades and some cartridges. Hanif returned to his office and Abu Salem took the weapons in Manzoor Ahmed’s car to Zaibunnisa Qazi’s house in Bandra. He left the bag with her for safekeeping, explaining to her what it contained. After a few days, he returned to fetch and take the deadly consignment away.

There was massive tension between the Shiv Sena and Sunil Dutt. Post the riots, Sunil Dutt had taken part in a dharna and also led a peace march with his daughter, Priya Dutt. He was taking a strong position against the government. Samra wanted us to be very careful or we would unnecessarily invite flak which would derail the investigation and only benefit the accused.

The reporter was Baljeet Parmar.

Much later did the reporter disclose, in a press interview, that it was a cursory remark by our senior colleague Y.C. Pawar that had led him on the scent. At that time, however, all of us were totally clueless about how it had leaked.

Sanjay Dutt was not going to be like ordinary criminals. He was the son of a Hindi film hero-turned-Congress leader who had impeccable secular credentials. He was the son of a Muslim actress who was synonymous with ‘Mother India’ – her role as a dedicated and just mother in her epic film by the same name. She had died of cancer when this child was in his teens and the ‘boy-child’ was reported to have had a lot of ups and downs in his personal life.

And the ‘poor boy’ could have run away from Mauritius, but he was returning to India. The Bombay police had already been called upon to prove before a judicial commission that they were not anti-Muslim, was going to have to deal with this ‘poor boy’. The party supporters and the activists were all getting ready to roll up their sleeves for a good fight. The entire world’s attention was now on Bombay police arresting a well-connected secular celebrity who was involved in the serial blasts.

He is used to the canopy of his family’s name and respectability. As long as he is under its shade, he will not come out with the truth. He will have the whole shebang of legal eagles who will do their best to strategise and prove the police theory wrong and packed with falsehood.

‘Will you tell me the truth or do you want me to tell you your story?’ I asked him. ‘Sir, maine kuchch nahi kiya!’ He was sitting on a chair, looking at me with soulful eyes and whining: Sir, I have not done anything! The tension and stress of the last few days caught up with me. I could not bear the lie and couldn’t help but plant a tight slap on his cheek. He tilted backwards, his legs going up in mid-air and I swiftly held him by his mane of long, gold-tinted hair. Looking literally down upon him into his horrified and scared eyes I said, ‘I am asking you like a gentleman, you answer like one.’ ‘Sir, can I talk to you in private?’ He asked in a quavering voice, looking up at me in a frozen stare, broken and shaken. This was much shorter and quicker than I had expected! I sent the officers out and, then Sanjay Dutt told me everything, crying like a child. He corroborated all that Hanif, Samir and the others had said. ‘So, the weapons are in your house?’ I asked him. ‘Come and show me where they are.’ He fell sobbing at my feet and said, ‘Sir, I have destroyed them.’ Then he catalogued in detail how, after the news report had appeared in The Daily, he had tasked his friends to go to his house, take out the weapons and destroy them. I immediately sent teams to pick up his friends Yusuf Nullwala, Ajay Marwah, Kersi Adjania and Rusi Mulla who had aided and abetted Sanjay in destroying the weapons. After he had finished, he fervently pleaded, ‘Please don’t tell my father any ...

Giving patient hearings to the families of the serial blasts accused, especially parents, was a routine thing for me. The parents used to be in utter disbelief that their offspring could do such a terrible act against the State. When I informed them that I had no reason to implicate anyone falsely, they would agree, but still not believe that their sons had committed such a heinous crime. Ultimately, I would let the accused speak to them to ascertain if I was lying. Invariably, the accused would confess and the crestfallen family would leave shaken and shocked. Today, the same predicament awaited a celebrity father who treasured his family’s patriotism and could never conceive that his son hobnobbed with anti-nationals or had a hand in nefarious activities.