Dongri to Dubai - Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia

Hussain Zaidi

Description

Dongri to Dubai is the first ever attempt to chronicle the history of the Mumbai mafia. It is the story of notorious gangsters like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem, but above all, it is the story of a young man who went astray despite having a father in the police force. Dawood Ibrahim was initiated into crime as a pawn in the hands of the Mumbai police and went on to wipe out the competition and eventually became the Mumbai police’s own nemesis.The narrative encompasses several milestones in the history of crime in India, from the rise of the Pathans, formation of the Dawood gang, the first ever supari, mafia’s nefarious role in Bollywood, Dawood’s move to Karachi, and Pakistan’s subsequent alleged role in sheltering one of the most wanted persons in the world.This story is primarily about how a boy from Dongri became a don in Dubai, and captures his bravado, cunningness, focus, ambition, and lust for power in a gripping narrative. The meticulously researched book provides an in-depth and comprehensive account of the mafia’s games of supremacy and internecine warfare.

Sujets

• Dubái
• Varadarajan
• Karim Lala
• Dongri
• Islamic view of David
• Haji Mastan
• Chotta Rajan
• True Crime
• Monica Bedi
• Mudaliar
• Sicilian Mafia
• Abu Salem
• Dubai
• Mumbai
• Mafia
• Organized Crime
• Murder
• Power
• Ibrahim
• Corruption
• Bollywood
• Bombay

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 10 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788174368188
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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Lotus Collection
© S. Hussain Zaidi, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published in April 2012 Fifth impression, July 2012 The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
The Lotus Collection An imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash II Market New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 4068 2000 Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185 E-mail: [e-mail]; Website: www.rolibooks.com
Also at Bangalore, Chennai, & Mumbai
Layout: Sanjeev Mathpal Production: Shaji Sahadevan
ISBN: 978-81-7436-894-2

Dedicated to my friends
Dr Shabeeb Rizvi Chandramohan Puppala Mir Rizwan Ali
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: Up, Close, and Personal
Part 1
1. The Big D
2. In the Beginning: Bombay 1950–1960
3. Bombay’s Midas
4. Madrasi Mobster
5. Tamil Alliance
6. Pathan Power
7. The Original Don: Baashu
8. The Star called David
9. The Baap of Dons
10. Of Young Turks
11. David versus Goliath
12. The First Blood
13. A Seed is Sown
14. Beginning of the Bloodshed
15. The Executioner
16. The Emergency
17. Mill Worker-Turned-Don
18. Pathan Menace
19. Mastan’s Masterstroke: The Truce
20. Dawood’s Smuggling Business
21. A Don in Love
22. Ageing Dons
23. Death of a Brother; Birth of a Gang War
24. Dawood’s Coronation
25. Mumbai’s Hadley Chase
26. The Fallout
27. Mafia’s Bollywood Debut
28. Pathan in Patharwali Building
29. Typewriter Thief: Rajan Nair
30. Pardesi Kills Pathan
31. Circle of Revenge
32. Rise of Chhota Rajan
33. Enfant Terrible: Samad Khan
34. Dawood’s Better Half
35. Escape to Dubai
Part 2
1. Making of an Empire
2. Wiping Out Rivals
3. Mafia’s Most Daring Operation
4. End of Dawood-Gawli Alliance
5. Shootout at Lokhandwala
6. JJ Shootout
7. Communal Strokes
8. Surrender Offer
9. Maal, Moll, or Mole?
10. Developments in Dubai
11. New D Company-HQ: Karachi, New CEO: Shakeel
12. Rise of the Minions
13. Shocking Bollywood
14. Peanuts That Proved Costly
15. Clandestine Coups
16. Tech That
17. Close Shave
18. The Art of Survival
19. Post 9/11
20. Not so Chori Chori Chupke Chupke
21. ‘Judge’ Dawood
22. Carnival of Spies
23. Detained in Lisbon
24. The White Kaskar
25. Global Terrorist
26. Salem Extradition
27. Boucher’s Botched Attempt
28. The Big D Makes the Forbes Cut
Epilogue
Sources
Index
Acknowledgements

Foreword
I first met S. Hussain Zaidi in the winter of 1997, when I had just begun writing a novel about the Mumbai underworld. I desperately needed help, and was lucky enough to have a sister who knew Hussain through their shared profession of journalism. So I met up with him at the cheerfully-named Bahar restaurant in the Fort area of Mumbai. I asked questions, and Hussain told me stories about greed and corruption, about shooters and their targets, and despite the chill that passed over my skin, I was aware of a rising swell of optimism—this guy was really, really good.
I didn’t know that day that S. Hussain Zaidi would become a friend, an extraordinary inside informant about matters relating to crime and punishment, and my guide into the underworld. But that is exactly what happened. Over the next few years, as I wrote my novel, Hussain generously shared with me his vast knowledge, his canny experience, and his host of contacts. I can say with certainty that I would not have been able to write my book without his ever-ready help and advice.
It makes me very happy that Hussain has finished his magnum opus, Dongri to Dubai , so that the general reader can now benefit from his expertise. This book does much more than narrate the saga of one man’s rise, it brings alive the entire culture of crime that has grown and formed itself over the last half century in India. And as much as we like to distance ourselves by pretending that the underworld exists quite literally under us, beneath us, the truth—as Hussain shows—is that we mingle with it every day. The influence of organised crime reaches into the economy, our polity, and everyday life.
Yet, our knowledge of the intentions and operations of the players on all sides of the law is mostly a mixture of legend and conjecture. Our histories begin with a few names—Haji Mastan, Varadarajan, Karim Lala — imbued with dread, and continue with still others —Dawood, Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem—haloed with matinee glamour. What we have lacked is a narrative that provides both detail and perspective, that lays out the entire bloody saga of power-mongering, money, and murder. Dongri to Dubai is that necessary book, and more. It gives us an account that is vast in its scope and yet intimate in its understanding of motive and desire. Hussain moves us from the small gangs of early post-Independence India to the corporatising consolidations of the eighties and through the sanguine street wars of the nineties; we better comprehend our present, with its abiding undercurrent of terror, if we follow the tangled, stranger-than-fiction history that puts an Indian gangster in a safe-house in Karachi, with a daughter married to the son of a national celebrity, and his coffers enriched by the bootleg sales of Mumbai movies to Pakistanis.
Anthropologists like to use the phrase ‘thick description’ to describe an explanation of a behaviour that also includes and explains context, so that the behaviour becomes intelligible to an outsider. For most readers, I think, reading Dongri to Dubai will at first feel like a journey into an alien landscape with a trustworthy, experienced guide; by the end though Hussain has made us see, helped us to comprehend, and we recognise this terrain as our own world, and we understand—but don’t necessarily forgive—its inhabitants.
I am grateful for this book. The work that Hussain does is exacting and sometimes dangerous. Reporting about these deadly intrigues and the human beings caught within them is not for the faint of heart; the web stretches from your corner paan-shop to the bleak heights on which the Great Game is played, and there are many casualties. We all profit from Hussain’s intrepid investigations.
Vikram Chandra
Mumbai, December 2011
Preface
D ongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia has been my most complex and difficult project since I took to reporting on crime way back in 1995. The biggest challenge by far has been chronicling the history of the Mumbai underworld and keeping it interesting for lay readers as well as choosing incidents that marked an epoch in the Mumbai mafia.
It was first suggested to me by a friend in 1997, when I was barely a couple of years into crime reporting, that I should try to write about the history of the Mumbai mafia; I was advised to replicate something like Joe Gould’s Secret . At the time, I had not even heard of the book; to be honest, I felt it was too colossal a responsibility for someone who was still wet behind the ears.
But having put my ear to the ground for Black Friday , I felt ready for a bigger challenge. Initially, I set out to find out why so many Muslim youngsters from Mumbai were drawn to crime. Was it the aura of Dawood Ibrahim or was it economic compulsion that drew them? That was the question with which I started. And somewhere along the way, I ended up doing what my friend had asked me to do initially.
When I set off on the story from Dongri, the metaphor was not lost on my friends. Am I guilty of linking members of a particular religion with crime? Unlike in the US, where exhaustive studies have been conducted on race and crime and their correlation, if any, there has been no serious debate or study on the causes that made Muslims prone to following a life of crime in the last fifty years.
When I say Dongri, it is not just the area that starts from Mandvi near Zakaria Masjid but from Crawford Market to the end of JJ Hospital, coveri