The hit squad stood calmly by the side of the road till the procession was close enough. Then Dolas stepped forward and stood in the middle of the road, AK-47 in hand.

  Calling out the names of his targets, accompanied by abusive words, Dolas opened fire and his friends followed suit. All the three men were cut down in the hail of automatic fire even as the crowd around them ran helter-skelter, screaming and tripping over each other. Five innocent bystanders were killed and eight injured.

  Neither the presence of the large number of potential eyewitnesses, nor the fact that Ganesh utsav always has a heavy police bandobast acted as a deterrent. This was also the first time that AK-47s were used for a hit job in a city used to witnessing gangland killings by pistols and swords.

  The audacity and the brutal nature of the murders made Dolas the subject of conversation among people throughout the city, policeman and civilian alike. While the cops started taking a close interest in this upstart who had so arrogantly defied them by committing a multiple homicide in full public view using imported automatic assault rifles, the common man started worrying for his own safety.

  Overnight, loyalties that earlier lay with other gangs shifted to Dawood, taking him one step further towards realizing his dream of ruling the city. Phones rang off the hook over the next few days, with businessmen who earlier paid protection money to other gangs being reminded of the daring murder, accompanied by a not-at-all subtle threat that they would meet the same fate if they did not fall in line.

  While Maya’s escape from court told people he was not afraid of the police, the Kanjurmarg shootout gave out the message that eyewitnesses were not a problem for him either. In other words, no one was safe from Maya Dolas.

  As with a lot of stories, the story of the shootout gathered meat in the telling and, somehow, Dolas’ jailbreak was linked to the shootout. It did not take long for people to assume that Dolas was broken out of jail by ‘bhai’ specifically for this ‘bada kaam’ or important task. Being assigned a bada kaam was an honour for henchmen in those days, and being broken out of jail to be assigned one meant the boss trusted you enough to go to that extent for you. It took people even less time to theorize that Dolas was one of the boss’ khaas or special henchmen specifically handpicked for the job, and with this theory, Dolas earned tremendous respect, and more importantly, fear of the people overnight.

  Within a week, Maya had gone from being just another shooter to a fearsome, daring and reckless killer who would come after you if you crossed Dawood.

  The D-gang top brass, who knew that being feared was far more advantageous than being loved, was quick to capitalize on Dolas’ newfound image. He was assigned job after job for maximum visibility, and Dilip Buwa was instructed to work with him.

  Buwa, one of the most coldblooded shooters the underworld has witnessed, was the exact opposite of Dolas in many respects. Where Maya was aggressive and foul-mouthed, Buwa was calm and was seldom heard uttering an abusive word. Where Maya was all about talk and bluster, Buwa was about silent action. While Maya was power-hungry, Buwa was only concerned with shooting whoever it was he was told to shoot and take his share of the money.

  ‘I don’t think Buwa even liked Maya all that much. But the instructions to work with him had come directly from Rajan, and Buwa abided by them,’ ACP Sunil Deshmukh, Dadar division, said. Deshmukh was part of the Anti Terrorist Squad formed by now retired inspector general of police, Aftab Ahmed Khan, who at the time was additional commissioner of police in the ATS. The ATS team later shot Dolas dead in the now famous Lokhandwala encounter.

  Maya’s style of talking, which was uncouth and intimidating at the same time, coupled with his fear factor, soon made him the man of choice to be assigned the job of extortion calls. Dawood started providing a list of targets to be extorted, and Maya would dial number after number every day. It is said that his targets would be visibly shaken by the time the conversations were over. Money started flowing in smoothly, and people started fearing Maya as much as they feared Dawood.

  In the beginning, a few businessmen did not pay up, refusing to take this new, young upstart seriously. Maya dealt with them by barging into their offices and pumping bullet after bullet in the furniture around them, leaving them cowering in fear. A couple of such firing jobs cemented Maya’s image as someone not to be trifled with.

  Dolas took this to be a sign of his growing power, and Dawood and Rajan, while making the most of the fear that Dolas struck in their targets’ hearts, let him believe his delusion. His recent crimes and aggressive behavior was the perfect combination to scare targets into paying whatever amount was demanded. Soon, he became the face of the gang’s extortion racket in the city.

  The Bissi Bravura

  The ‘bissi’ rackets were also a rage in the city at the time. There is no English word for ‘bissi’. The rackets involved a group of people pooling in equal amounts of money at the beginning of every month. Because, when it first started, twenty men contributed, it was named bissi—in Hindi, bees means twenty. At the end of the month, there would be a lucky draw and the person whose name came up would get the entire kitty. So the draw was called the raising of bissi. Once your name came up in the lucky draw, however, you were automatically disqualified from throwing your name in the next draw, so that every participating member had at least one chance of winning the kitty. However, you had to keep contributing to the pool every month so that the total amount was not affected.

  Bissi rackets involved amounts ranging from a few hundreds rupees to a few lakh, depending on who the participants were. Each bissi was managed by an operator who kept track of payments, debts, etc.

  The smaller bissis were held among residents of the same chawl, while the medium-sized ones were between groups of small and medium businessmen dealing in the same goods or operating in the same area. The really serious bissis were played by the bigger businessmen, particularly those who imported smuggled goods under the aegis of the D-gang, and contributions were rarely less than fifty thousand rupees. Dawood’s name, by default, contributed a sense of power to the bissi operators. In those days, cricket-betting and horse-race rigging had not even been conceived of.

  The very nature of the rackets depended on every participating member paying every month, because if even one member refused to pay, the entire system would collapse. For this, a strong persuading factor was required, and for the businessmen connected to Dawood, ‘bhai ka naam’ was as good a persuader as any. Those dense enough to refuse to pay were paid a little visit by Maya Dolas. This gave Maya a chance to further establish himself as a name to be feared. He produced results and produced them fast. The sight of Maya Dolas barging in through the door spewing abuses and threats was enough for anyone to start sweating and do whatever the hell it was that Dawood wanted you to do.

  This, however, did not apply to the medium-sized bissis which did involve some serious amounts of money, though not at quite as high a level as the bigger ones. When a participant in a medium-sized bissi failed to pay up in a particular month, the entire operation came crashing down, leading to the other contributors getting furious over being robbed of their chance to win the pool.

  It was one of these disgruntled bissi contributors who paved the way for the D-gang to enter the bissi racket in a more active way. He approached a D-gang member from that he knew his area and told him about the losses he was facing because another contributor, a businessman from central Mumbai, had failed to pay that month’s instalment. The enterprising member took it up with his higher-ups. Maya and his men were sent to visit the defaulting contributor one fine morning and they spent a couple of hours explaining to him the consequences of not paying up. Maya began with telling the businessman that ‘bhai’ wanted him to pay the instalment, and continued to outline in great detail, peppered with curse words, the damage he would inflict on each of the businessman’s loved ones if he did not pay up that very minute. The businessman called every number in his phonebook till he had scraped together the amount, and Maya walked out with the full instalment in cash, as well as a promise to never default on a payment again.

  Thanks to neighbours who had seen Maya barge into the businessman’s house, as well as other contributors who were part of the bissi scheme, news about what he had done spread within a day to other bissis in the city. Within a month, if one of the members of your bissi club failed to pay for whatever reason, Maya Dolas was the man you consulted for redressal of the grievance.

  A couple of months later, another bissi club member approached Maya, but for a different reason. The man had suffered losses in his business that month and was not in a position to pay the month’s instalment. Facing pressure from his fellow members, the man decided to act before they took the D-way. He went to Maya, narrated his woes and begged for protection, offering to pay whatever he could afford as well as pledging lifelong allegiance to him. Maya was getting money as well as respect, two things he valued the most, and he liked the proposition.

  When the bissi club met the next time, the man walked in with Maya and his men behind him. Maya told everyone present that under no circumstances was his friend to be pressurized for that month’s instalment. Nobody argued.

  In a matter of days, bissi club members were falling over each other to win Maya’s favour. Maya revelled in the respect and showered his graces to the highest bidder. Dawood, on his part, let Maya help recover bissi money or settle pending payment disputes. He delivered speedy and effective results, and this only strengthened Dawood’s grip on the city.

  Manhunt for Maya

  It was around this time that A. A. Khan’s ATS started taking an interest in Maya, as violent criminals with multiple murders to their name were exactly who they had come together to eliminate. Over the next two months, Khan’s team made inquiries with Maya’s friends, family members and targets and tapped scores of ground-level informants. People who were reported to be connected to the D-gang or had been seen in Maya’s company even once were picked up and grilled. The work was slow, as not many were willing to cooperate for fear of Maya finding out. But slowly and patiently, the ATS built up a picture of Maya’s personality as well as his habits.

  By this time, Maya, too, had started taking all the precautions that a wanted man needed to take. Taking a page out of Ashok Joshi’s book, Maya and his gang never stayed in one place for more than two to three days. There was no dearth of places for them to hide, as builders close to the gang always had vacant flats in their buildings or spaces to stay in their under-construction projects. While some offered these spaces to Maya to curry favour with the gang, others did it out of sheer fear. It would have taken a really stupid builder to say no to Maya Dolas in 1991, and builders, as a rule, are a smart lot. Maya kept moving between Mumbai and Thane, and would call his targets to his hiding places to extort money from them, settle disputes or get them to do his bidding.

  The ATS began closing in on Maya’s gang in November 1991, and, on several occasions, Maya would flee from his hideout in the nick of time, with hardly an hour between his hasty exit and the ATS’ arrival. The time gap kept getting shorter. Maya, too, stepped up his security measures, and often changed his location several times in a day.

  Once the ATS learned that he was hiding in Palghar and left for the spot. Maya and his men somehow found out and left from Palghar a short while after they had reached. They came back to Mumbai and the ATS followed his trail to Lokhandwala Complex in the suburb of Andheri in northwest Mumbai.

  For the next two days, an ATS team kept round-the-clock surveillance on an under-construction building in the Swati Apartment building complex, owned by builder Gopal Rajwani, following a tip-off that Maya was holed up there. Even as the police were winding up their surveillance, putting it down to faulty intelligence, they got another tip-off saying that he was very much in Lokhandwala, but in a different building in the complex. Deshmukh, Zunjarrao Gharal and M. A. Qavi sped to the building and were soon joined by the entire ATS, including A. A. Khan, Iqbal Sheikh Pramod Rane and Raja Mandge.

  Swati Apartment stood in the northwest corner of the Apna Ghar complex and had two wings. The ATS’ information was that Maya was holed up in flat number five in the A wing of the building. The first confirmation of Maya’s presence in the building was in the form of a white Maruti Esteem, a vehicle that Buwa was known to drive.

  The ATS team stopped a short discreet distance away from the building and Qavi sketched out a rough map of the area after a short recce. The police had observed that the flat was the only one that had two exits: one which opened onto the compound and another near a staircase. While Qavi, Gharal and Deshmukh headed to the exit that opened onto the compound, Rane Mandge and Sheikh went to the other exit. The men only paused to distribute bulletproof vests among themselves. On realizing that there were only five vests, Sheikh said he didn’t want one. Gharal too said he wouldn’t take one. The team suited up and headed to their respective positions.

  Sheikh, who was leading his team, reached the door to the flat and waited for the signal from Qavi, who, it was decided, would make the first move. Even as Sheikh was listening to an exchange of dialogues between two characters of the Amitabh Bachchan starrer Akela that was drifting out through the door, he heard his signal in the form of sudden gunfire. The operation was on.

  Qavi, who had stormed in through the other door with Gharal and Deshmukh on his heels, came face-to-face with Buwa, who was sprawled out on a chair, his revolver next to him. In his trademark style, Buwa, without uttering a word, without so much as snarling at the intruders, made his move. The revolver seemed to suddenly appear in his hand as if by magic and started spewing out bullets in flashes of fire. As the policemen were in plainclothes, Buwa wasn’t even sure if they were cops or rival gangsters. All he cared about was that they had kicked down his door, had guns in their hands and those guns were pointed at him.

  Gharal, who was not wearing a bulletproof vest, was hit in the chest, while Qavi took a bullet in the arm. Bleeding heavily, Qavi, with Deshmukh’s help, dragged Gharal out of the flat while simultaneously pumping bullets at Buwa, who was still firing with no expression on his face.

  The furious policemen regrouped outside the building and got on their wireless sets. Within minutes, the message was conveyed to the entire Mumbai police force. They had been attacked. Two of their own were seriously injured. Payback had to be swift and unforgiving. Even as Gharal was being rushed to the hospital, policemen from all over the city were going for their armories before rushing out to their vehicles so that they could all converge on the battlefield that was the Lokhandwala complex.

  The P-gang versus the D-gang

  The police force is the most political and conflict-ridden department in the country but whenever they are under attack by outsiders they stand united against the onslaught. There are many such instances—they showed exemplary team spirit during the 26/11 attacks, and they displayed the same solidarity in November ’91. It was not just Khan’s men standing against Maya Dolas and the gang now. It was now the entire police force; the P-gang against the D-gang.

  Amidst all the chaos, Qavi managed to convey one thing clearly. He had seen Dolas inside the flat. A full three months after his audacious escape from the Mazgaon court, Maya was to come face-to-face with the police in the Swati building.

  The police took their positions in the building compound, every gun pointed at flat number five of the A Wing. At the helm of the army stood Khan, shirt open down the front, pistol tucked into the front of his waistband, loudspeaker in hand. Khan later told a television channel that, while his open shirt front served to add to his Dirty Harry image and became part of the legend, the real reason behind it was that his shirt buttons would not close easily over his bulletproof vest, and fastening his buttons was the last thing on his mind at the time.

  Through the loudspeaker, Khan called out to Maya and his men, and told them that they had one chance to surrender. Minutes later, Buwa and another man emerged from one of the two exits and ran for his Esteem. Ducking low, he opened fire at the policemen while trying to reach his car. Scores of guns boomed out in near-perfect unison in response as the policemen returned fire from so many sides that Buwa and his companion were dead before they hit the ground. They never made it beyond a few meters from the door.

  Khan and his team then turned their attention to Maya. Local residents had informed the police that the two wings of the Swati building were connected by a terrace. A team was sent up to the terrace through the B Wing so that they could access the A wing. Apparently the gangsters had had the same idea. Even as the police team advanced down the floors in the A wing, Gopal Pujari and Raju Nadkarni, two of Maya’s men, came running up the stairs hoping to use the terrace to get away. The police opened fire without hesitating. Nadkarni went down in a hail of lead on the second floor stairs. The furious policemen didn’t even pause as they stepped over his body, followed Pujari to the first floor, and shot him down.

  Outside, Khan continued his warnings to Maya, telling him that there was no escape and that surrender was his only option. As Nadkarni and Pujari went down, Maya and Anil Pawar emerged from the flat. In full view of the policemen, who were just waiting for the duo to start something, the two gangsters raised the AK-47 assault rifles in their hands. Before they could even align their weapons to fire them, hundreds of bullets went through their bodies. Their blood began flowing in all directions through the scores of holes in their bodies almost as soon as they crashed down to the ground. The police slowly advanced, Khan in the lead, and surrounded Maya. They all watched, guns ready, as the life ebbed out of him.

  ‘Maya was injured, he was bleeding, he was weak. But he still died the same way he lived, with a snarl on his face and a curse on his lips,’ Deshmukh recounted.