HOW THE MAFIA SHUT DOWN INDIAS FIRST AIRLINE As a cub reporter with the Indian Express in the mid nineties I was assigned to travel on the maiden flight of East West Airlines from Bangalore to Mumbai. The excitement was high because East West Airlines was the first scheduled private airline after the Government’s Open Skies Policy was announced in 1991. There was a heavy downpour when we landed in Mumbai, then Bombay, and the media team was stranded in the airport for quite some time as the organisers had apparently forgotten to arrange any transport. Finally, we managed to hunt down an East West executive who bundled us into a swank Mercedes Benz which was ferrying airhostesses home. Those days, unlike in today’s era of low cost flights, the job of an air hostess was much envied, but a Mercedes Benz to transport them was a bit far-fetched. Later we were to learn that such opulence was affordable as the airlines was allegedly funded by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, with his friend Thakiyudeen Wahid as the front. This was however denied by Wahid’s family. After an exhausting drive across Mumbai’s rain and traffic clogged roads, we reached the hotel where we were received by an East West representative who profusely apologised for the inconvenience. The vehicles which were sent to fetch us were stuck in the rain and hence could not reach the airport, he explained. We proceeded to our rooms to freshen up and by the time we returned to the lobby to join our host for dinner, he had disappeared, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Something did not seem fine, right from the word go. But uppermost in our minds was not the hospitality but a good copy to file when we returned to Bengaluru, then Bangalore. Though the next day we were scheduled to interact with Thakiyudeen Wahid, the managing director of the company, our hosts remained incommunicado. Finally, we managed to establish contact with Wahid’s office and literally force them to organise a press conference. The next day, they tried to wriggle out of the interaction saying we would get late for the flight, but we would have none of it and simply refused to return until we had a good story. Left with no option, Wahid was forced to meet us. Being a hot blooded journalist, I took on Wahid for the shoddy treatment meted to us, unmindful of the fact that he supposedly had the backing of one of India’s most powerful dons, Dawood Ibrahim. I gave him an earful, telling him how for a journalist a good report was more important than freebees. Wahid apologised sincerely and then addressed the media team. This was my first and last meeting with Wahid as he was gunned down by gangster Chota Rajan’s men in 1995, and the airline wound up the next year. For long, the question why Chota Rajan made Thakiyudeen Wahid a pawn in his fight against Dawood remained unanswered. Now, nearly 20 years after the incident the jigsaw puzzle falls into place as I read S. Hussain Zaidi’s brilliant book on the Mumbai mafia, Byculla to Bangkok. Though why Chota Rajan fell out with his onetime boss Dawood is a long story, the murder of Wahid had its genesis in the funding of a Ganesh pandal. During the Ganesh chaturthi festivities, the standing of a don in Mumbai is gauged by the grandeur of his pandal. A businessman from Chembur, Omprakash Kukreja would contribute Rs 50 lakh to Chota Rajan’s pandal every year. It was around this time that Rajan had eliminated one of Dawood’s trusted lieutenants Sautya, who was gunned down on a busy street of Dubai in broad day light. Angered by this audacity, Dawood hatched a plan to cut Rajan’s financial support and also bring him ignominy by spoiling his Ganesh celebrations. In September 1995, a month after Sautya’s killing, an AK-47 was used to gun down Kukreja in his office. The Mumbai police could never arrest the killers and the case was closed in November 1996. Rajan who knew that Kukreja was killed to weaken him financially, decided to retaliate in a similar fashion. In November 1995, just two months after Kukreja’s murder Chota Rajan’s men shot dead Thakiyudeen Wahid, in whose company Dawood was alleged to have invested heavily. With this, India’s first private airline too had to shut shop. Now, both Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Rajan have sworn to eliminate each other. Who will win this round? Only time will tell. --M. Gautham Machaiah gauthammachaiah.blogspot.in/2014/10/how-mafia-shut-indias-first-private.html
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 07:53:49 +0000
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