On most days, one could find two heavyweights of the crime world enjoying their drinks in the bar, Samad Khan and his ally Anjum Pehelwan. Often completely inebriated but still drooling over the girls, Samad would beckon them to his table. As the girl walked towards him he would try to catch hold of their hands and pull them towards him. ‘Kya bhaav khaati hai. Chal na,’ he would say. The women in the dance bar knew how to deal with these clients. They would resist at first, extract enough money and then give in. Samad would often bet with Anjum on a particular girl that he wanted to take to bed that day.

  There was one girl Samad had already tried to take to bed. He had showered her with a lot of cash but she refused to oblige. She was the daughter of a railway employee and had joined the dance bar to earn more money. Samad had been watching her for a few days, but the girl continued to ignore him. One day Samad and Anjum pounced on the girl, lifted her in the middle of her performance and took her out of the bar. No one dared to stop them.

  Samad took the girl to the flat of his mistress in Versova and raped her repeatedly. Anjum stood guard outside the room, drinking. Later, Samad stepped out and went away with Anjum. Meanwhile, the girl’s father, who had already found out about her kidnapping, approached the Colaba police station. Inspector Ishaq Bagwan and his colleagues were on night duty at that time. As soon as they heard Samad’s name they jumped from the seat and proceeded to Versova. Bagwan knew exactly where to find the duo. When they entered the flat they saw the girl weeping in the room. They sent her away for medical examination and went to the spot where Samad and Anjum were sitting and enjoying their drinks. Both were arrested and put behind bars. Samad did not resist the arrest as he knew that the cops could do little to keep him in jail for long.

  And, as expected, he walked free in a few days as the girl refused to give a statement or file a police complaint against the gangster. No law could keep Karim Lala’s nephew behind bars.

  The Most Dangerous D

  Dawood was a master planner and he knew his enemies’ weaknesses. Dawood knew Samad would stoop to any level to get a woman to sleep with him. And that, Dawood believed, would bring about his end. There were other options to target Samad. For example, Dawood could simply tip-off the police and Samad could be killed in an encounter. But then that would not make any statement for the D-Company. Hence, Dawood thought of a bait. A bait that Samad could not resist.

  Dawood meticulously planned Samad’s death. He did not want to be predictable by using a bar girl to lure Samad as there was also a chance that Samad’s loyalists would tip him off. So he called for a new girl from Delhi. Dawood’s orders were simple: find a good-looking girl in need of money. One of his men found Naseem, who readily agreed to work for him. Naseem was then given a job in a dance bar where Samad was a regular. The instructions to Naseem were that she should only lure Samad and no one else. Soon, Samad fell for this beauty and he could not think beyond her. At times he would wonder how this beautiful woman liked an unkempt man like him. But then he would tell himself that he was a Pathan, and any woman would fall for him.

  Naseem knew that if Samad got even a hint of her intentions, he would kill her. But Dawood had promised to protect her. After the attack, she was to be sent off to a safe location and would never again be contacted by Dawood or his men, the don had promised her. And, she would be given enough money to last her lifetime.

  Soon the courtship began. Samad would meet his new ‘item’ at different locations. He would make love to her and send her off. Naseem waited patiently for Samad to get used to her and trust her. Eventually, Samad fixed a location where they could meet every time.

  On the eve of Dassera, Naseem decided to tip off Dawood. She knew Samad would not suspect anything.

  Mumbai underworld’s smartest killer was silenced because of his craze for women. On 4 October 1984, Samad was killed in more or less the same manner as Sabir Kaskar. Helpless, cornered by an entire gang and riddled with bullets till the last breath.

  Samad’s killing concluded a particularly gruesome chapter in Mumbai mafia history. Karim Lala was distraught and his anger against his nephew did not hold him back from attending Samad’s funeral along with over two thousand others, including personalities like Muslim League MP G. M. Banatwala, and filmstar Dilip Kumar’s brother Ahsan Khan.

  All fingers were pointed towards Dawood and the don finally decided to escape from Mumbai and shift his headquarters to Dubai. Over the next decade, between 1984 to 1994, no one could challenge Dawood’s numero uno position in the underworld. It was only much later that Chhota Rajan threw the gauntlet down, but according to cops who knew Samad, it was undoubtedly this Pathan who had the ability to become the unmatched king of the mafia world. With his death, Dawood safeguarded his position and remained invincible till the emergence of the Rajan–Arun Gawli alliance.

  EPILOGUE

  Gunmen’s Gaffes

  In my thirty years of covering the crime beat in Mumbai, there have been a lot of takeaways. Like the realization that courage has its own definition, as elastic and nebulous as its own garb. Some policemen get puffed up in uniform but others don’t need khaki to show their nerve. Ditto the criminal. The guts and glory comes from the little metallic contraption hidden in their pockets for most, others could command a legion of supporters across the board by exuding charm.

  Anything contradictory to this, that is, pure black and white terms, works only in the realm of celluloid as depicted in Bollywood where there are no grey shades, no in-betweens, where the definition of courage means a conscientious younger brother in uniform in a witch hunt for his older brother who is on the other side of the legal fence.

  In the real world, not all the gunmen are sharpshooters. In fact, some of them could not even shoot straight. Both Husain and I, in our combined journalistic careers, have not come across anyone who was gifted with guns. They could only shoot at pointblank range. The weapon made them feel invincible, as well as access to the big don; at other times, they were aided by external forces. Like the time when Amirzada got bumped off in a Mumbai sessions court by David Pardesi.

  When Dawood wanted to avenge the killing of his brother Sabir, he was on the lookout for an assassin who had the mindset of a suicide bomber. Somebody who knew at the outset that the mission could fail and he could lose his life. Amirzada had killed Sabir at a petrol pump in Prabhadevi. Dawood wanted the Pathan dead, not out in the open or behind the still darkness of the night. But in broad daylight in a court room, while the trial procedure was in progress! The assignment was well nigh impossible.

  Nobody was ready to take on the assignment despite the promise of a mouthwatering compensation. Finally, Dawood found a man who was willing to take on the job. His name was David Pardesi. He was lazy, unambitious, a loafer from the Chembur area in northeastern Mumbai. His days passed without any aspiration to do anything at all. So Pardesi thought the best way to tackle his ennui was to accept Dawood’s challenge.

  Dawood gave Pardesi guns to practise at a shooting range at Ulwe near Uran. He offered him fifty thousand rupees for killing Amirzada in the court premises. It was the highest payment ever made for a supari in those times. You could buy four huge flats for that amount. And yes, Pardesi managed to shoot Amirzada dead but with a little help. The twist in the tale. He got a little push from a man in uniform who cannot be named. Dawood trusted Pardesi to do his job but knew that, in a courtroom, he would need help.

  Over the years, I have seen some of the men in khaki do unspeakable things, things that might make the mafia’s shenanigans look sissy. But then they were shielded by their uniforms. While it gave them immunity, it shed their moral fibre.

  The mafia, on the other hand, were sometimes a befuddled lot. There is an interesting tale of a fellow called Umar Asif Shaikh from the Abu Salem gang. Back in the late ’90s, Umar earned the reputation of being one of the daftest in his tribe.

  Umar was assigned the task to extort money from a jeweller in Pydhonie area in south Mumbai. For Umar, it was a promotion. From being a weapon-delivery man, he was being pitched into hafta wasuli or extortion. Enthusiastically, he landed up at the jeweller’s shop without doing the mandatory recce. Umar entered the shop after the customers and staff had left and confronted the jeweller with his gun. ‘Give me all your money or I will shoot you dead,’ Umar threatened the jeweller. The jeweller was used to mafia threats but this one seemed not to follow the line. ‘I don’t have any money to give. Shoot me if you wish. As it is my business is in doldrums, it is better to die than to live like this,’ the jeweller burst out in defiance but with a tinge of depression in his voice.

  Since the threat to kill was already made, Umar felt that not shooting the man in his first assignment itself would make him a laughing stock. The gun was already pointed, so Umar held the gun closer to his victim’s head and aimed to shoot.

  The jeweller closed his eyes and thought of God, waiting for the flying bullet to blow his brains. Umar summoned all his anger and pulled the trigger.

  Seconds ticked away. Nothing happened. Then an ugly sound of ‘khat’ echoed in the shop.

  The jeweller opened his eyes, realized he was still alive and saw a look of bewilderment on the shooter’s face.

  Suddenly the jeweller surmised that his maker wanted him to live. He looked around and saw a small rod lying near his feet. With lightning agility, he picked up the rod and struck at Umar’s head. The youth plummeted to the ground. The cops were summoned and Umar was arrested and thrown behind bars.

  Encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, who killed 111 gangsters in the twenty-five years of his police service, explained the fiasco in layman’s terms. Often shooters fail to check if the gun is in a working condition. Either the bullets don’t fire as they are spoilt over a period of time. Or the firing pin is bad and the hammer will not strike. In this case, it was simply that there were no bullets: the shooter had picked up the pistol in a hurry, and had not checked if the magazine was loaded or not. An experienced gunman would have felt the difference in weight.

  So when Umar pulled the trigger, the empty chamber made a sound indicating that it had a void and could not fire.

  Umar spent several months in jail smarting from the embarrassment. The utter failure in his maiden assignment had made him the biggest joke in the underworld. So he spent every waking hour in jail devising ways to kill the jeweller whom he held responsible for his fiasco. After his release, he would complete his unfinished business and salvage his tattered reputation.

  After spending over six months in the slammer, Umar was released. Within a couple of days of his release, Umar decided to take revenge. This time he decided to be thorough. Umar procured the gun, ensured that the magazine was full, and did some dry runs. When he was confident, Umar landed up at the shop again.

  The shopkeeper was initially nervous to see the man but immediately regained his composure. Umar, on the other hand, was visibly tense and on tenterhooks. The jeweller decided to placate him and negotiate with him. ‘Achcha beta, I will give you dus thaan (ten thousand rupees) today and next month I will give you another installment.’ Thaan means thousand in mafia slang.

  Umar was angry. A silent fury was raging in his frail frame. Months had passed but he had not gotten over his humiliation. He wanted blood as a recompense for his insult.

  ‘Aaj mujhe tere thaan nahin teri jaan chahiyye,’ growled Umar and whipped out his pistol.

  The jeweller seemed resigned but decided not to cower. He would take his chances. ‘Theek hai beta, maar de mujh ko chala goli,’ he said with a tone of resignation in his voice.

  Umar trained the gun and pulled the trigger. And again nothing happened. In desperation, Umar began to pull the trigger repeatedly, hoping for the gun to sputter to life.

  Before Umar could act, the jeweller picked up his metallic cash box and threw it at the bumbling gunman and raised an alarm. The neighbours heard the call for help, gathered there and bashed up Umar and handed him over to the police. This time around, he spent a considerable time at the J J Hospital nursing his wounds before being packed off to the jail again.

  Sharma explained that every Chinese-made semiautomatic star pistol of .30 bore has to be cocked, the barrel needs to be slid backward for the bullet to be primed and ready to fire. Perhaps Umar forgot to cock the gun or he simply did not realize that the lock was still in place. ‘One should always cock and unlock before you shoot,’ Sharma said.

  A famous underworld adage is, Ghoda ghode se nahin goli se marta hai. You can’t kill a horse by merely pointing a gun at it, the trigger should be the bullet that will kill the horse. ‘Ghoda’ is gun in underworld slang.

  In his late twenties, Umar Asif was known to be a romantic man and carried his heart on his sleeve. He often masqueraded as a poet and tried to impress girls with his poetry. To this end, he had an agnomen added to his name. He called himself Umar Dhadkan (the heartthrob).

  His tryst with the jeweller of Pydhonie who lived twice to tell the tale, got him a new title. Umar was nicknamed as Umar Dhakkan (the doofus). The nickname was a metaphor for his stupidity, which he brought forth in his laughable encounters with the jeweller.

  This incident seemed to me to indicate how mafia hitmen have become vestiges of a bygone era, of a time when guns were glory for the underworld. With most of the lethal and dangerous hitmen dead, or languishing behind bars, they are now a vanishing tribe, thankfully.

  First published as The Dirty Dozen, 2017

  This edition published by Simon & Schuster India, 2024

  Copyright © S. Hussain Zaidi, 2017, 2024

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of S. Hussain Zaidi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 57 of the Copyright Act 1957

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Simon & Schuster India

  818, Indraprakash Building,

  21, Barakhamba Road,

  New Delhi 110001

  Simon & Schuster: Celebrating 100 Years of Publishing in 2024

  www.simonandschuster.co.in

  Paperback ISBN: 9788197278952

  eBook ISBN: 978-81-972789-2-1

  The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by her which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

  Typeset in India by SÜRYA, New Delhi

  Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd.

  Simon & Schuster India is committed to sourcing paper that is made from wood grown in sustainable forests and support the Forest Stewardship Council, the leading international forest certification organisation. Our books displaying the FSC logo are printed on FSC certified paper.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo copying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published.

 

 

  S. Hussain Zaidi, The Dangerous Dozen

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends