The Starter of Mumbai Underworld Abdul Karim Sher Khan aka Karim Lala Karim Lala (1911 - February 19, 2002), born as Abdul Karim Sher Khan in Kunar province of Afghanistan, was popularly known as the don of Mumbai in India. He is widely recognized as the founder and pioneer of the Indian mafia in the Mumbai area. He went to work in Mumbai’s docks in the early 1940s via Peshawar, but his rise to prominence, along with Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudaliar, is now part of Bollywood film lore. Karim Lala and his fellow mafia leaders were based in Mumbai. They were involved in smuggling jewelry, running gambling and liquor dens, extortion rackets and selling Hashish. Karim Lala was an ethnic Pashtun, he died on February 19, 2002, at the age of 90. Haji Mastan Mirza popularly known as Haji Mastan OR Bawa; was a Bombay (Mumbai) gangster and smuggler in the 1960s and 70s. He was born in the coastal town of Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. Mastan became the first celebrity gangster of the city, expanding his clout in the Indian film industry. As Mastans influence in Bollywood grew, he began to produce films. He was also known for his links with the legendary actor Dilip Kumar. During the Indian Emergency (1975 - 77) he was imprisoned. In prison he learned Hindi. Haji Mastan became a Muslim leader in 1984. He formed Dalit Muslim Surakhsha Maha Sangh in 1985-8, Which had Doulatram kawle as a corporator. Aslam Kiratpuri a well known journalist, gave him ideas how to speak in public meetings after which he became a good speaker. He died in Mumbai in 1994. Haji Mastan was a Tamilian who migrated to Mumbai from Madras at the age of 17, in 1955. In fact, Tamil was the only language that he could read comfortably. He imported daily issues of Tamil newspapers in his Bombay home. Haji Mastan at first started working on docks of Bombay as a Cooli (porter), later became so powerful as to become indispensable to the political leadership of Maharashtra. After joining politics he had a long list of fan followers. Haji Mastan planned his own foray into films with a project titled Mere Garib Nawaz and followed by other movies. He was a successful distributor and he excelled in cinema business. Deewar (1975 film) - a well recognized film in Hindi crime genre - is based on the life of Haji Mastan. The protagonist in the film, played by Amitabh Bachchan survives as long as he wears a plate with the number 786, dies at the hands of his honest brother. To give the role authenticity, Amitabh Bachchan reportedly met Haji Mastan to study his mannerisms. Contrary to the general belief, Haji Mastan Mirza was never an underworld don or even a goon for that matter. He was a smuggler and a shrewd man who rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty of his era. Be it Karim Lala or Varadarajan Mudaliar, Dilip Kumar or Shashi Kapoor, he had friends from the world of politics. To an extent, he was a simple man at home, with bare minimum needs and facilities. Though a notorious smuggler he was apprehended and jailed by agencies many time around.Though he possessed a huge mansion in a posh locality off Peddar Road, opposite Sophia College, he virtually lived his life in a small room built on the terrace of his bungalow. He worshipped the sea and had a clear view of the ocean from his terrace abode. But once out of his home, Haji Mastan was a man of style. Always clad in pure white designer wear, a pack of imported cigarettes in hand, Mastan used to travel in a chauffeur driven Mercedes-Benz, a status symbol in those days. He made millions through smuggling gold, silver and electronic goods and was once arrested and detained under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities (COFEPOSA) Act during Emergency. The Indian movie Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai is believed to be loosely based upon his life. Dawood Ibrahim (Urdu: داوود ابراهيم, born Sheikh Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar; December 26, 1955), also known as Dawood Ebrahim, and Sheikh Dawood Hassan, is the head of an organised crime and terror syndicate in South Asia, called the D-Company by South Asian media. Dawoods D-Company has been identified as a criminal-terrorism syndicate by the US Congress. Dawood is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for organised crime and counterfeiting, besides association with Al-Qaeda as identified in UN Security Council resolutions 1822 (2008) and 1267 (1999). He was No. 4 on the Forbes 2008 list of The Worlds 10 Most Wanted criminals, and no. 50 on the Forbes 2009 list of The Worlds Most Powerful People. Dawood Ibrahim is accused of heading a vast and sprawling illegal empire. After the 1993 Bombay bombings, which Ibrahim allegedly organized and financed, he became Indias most wanted man.According to the United States, Ibrahim maintains close links with al-Qaidas Osama bin Laden. As a consequence, the United States declared Dawood Ibrahim a global terrorist in 2003 and pursued the matter before the United Nations in an attempt to freeze his assets around the world and crack down on his operations. The Bush administration has since imposed several sanctions on Ibrahim and his associates. Indian and Russian intelligence agencies have pointed out Ibrahims possible involvement in several other terror attacks, including the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Pakistan denies any knowledge of his existence. Indian intelligence agencies, such as Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), believe that some of his addresses include House No. 37, 30th street, DHA, Karachi and White House, Near Saudi Mosque, Clifton, Karachi, Pakistan, and is provided protection by Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). The issue of extradition of Dawood Ibrahim is one of the major hurdles in the frosty relations between India and Pakistan. Dawood Ibrahim, the son of a police constable Ibrahim Kaskar, was born in Mumka village in Ratnagiri in the Indian state of Maharashtra on December 26, 1955. He was brought up in Dongri, a poor area of Central Bombay with a large but not exclusively Muslim population. He is of Konkani descent. Nothing is known about his educational qualifications. With his friends and brothers, he would go down to the bustling Crawford Market and scam gullible bargain hunters. His first trick was to offer a customer an expensive foreign watch, recalled a member of his youthful gang. After taking the money, he would vanish, while the customer would be discovering that Dawood had switched the watch for a stone or some such worthless object during the wrapping(Glenny 127). A natural leader, by his late teens Ibrahim had created D-Company (his own gang). He was charged with murder as a result of his audacious bid to destroy the near monopoly enjoyed in the underworld by the competing Lala clan. D-Company emerged victorious after an intense period of bloodshed, but Ibrahim was forced to flee his beloved Bombay, and by all accounts he has never overcome his melancholy at leaving. He is said to have begun his real criminal career in Bombay working for the Karim Lala gang (which later became his own gangs rival) exploiting the rapid expansion in the Bombay (now Mumbai) textiles industry to his advantage, though another version says that he began his criminal career working as a career for smuggler Haji Mastan. In either case, he eventually split from both of them and started his own gang, D-Company. He soon moved his residence to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where he has business interests alongside India. Dawood initially started out as a mechanic on the streets of Bombay. However, because of the low pay he turned to crime full-time, as a smuggler. A version also suggests that he also worked as a rickshaw puller in Azamgarh (also underworld Don Abu Salems birthplace). He became one of Bombays gangsters, with Karim Lala and Varadarajan Mudaliar as his seniors, but superseded all in a span of just five years—between 1983 and 1988. He became so powerful that even the aged don Karim Lala had to go all the way to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to sign a truce with him. When asked, late Amarjit Singh Samra, the former Mumbai Commissioner of Police, said this about Dawoods spectacular rise: In 10 years, this ordinary-looking son of a police head constable had become, virtually, omnipresent in any crime. Dawoods elevation to the status of The Don was made by the late Ramabhai Naik, who in 1986 gunned down supari-king Karim Lalas nephew, the dreaded Samad Khan (who ruled the underworld till then), and paved the way for Dawood Ibrahim to become the undisputed don of the Bombay underworld. (Ironically, Rama Naik was killed in an encounter with Nagpada police PSI Rajan Katdhare in 1988, allegedly at the behest and tip-off from Dawood Ibrahim only. Another version suggests that Dawood used a Kashmiri woman, Nassem, to lure Samad Khan to an old building and then got him killed by his own gang comprising of Chhota Rajan, Sanjay Ruggad, Dilip Bhuva and Sunil Sawant alias Sautya, thereby elevating Dawood to the position of the Don of Bombay. (D (film) is largely based on Don Dawoods rise in the above mentioned circumstances.) Thereafter, he shifted his base to Dubai (UAE) in 1986 and established chains of businesses in partnership with local Sheikhs. He rubbed shoulders with kings and princes of the Gulf emirates and acquired more power, which at later stages saved him from being extradited to India. However, on the flipside, there is also much evidence that the Indian government has always tried to attribute Dawood Ibrahims crimes to his links in Pakistan which have yet to be verified. Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje alias Chotta Rajan is the boss of a major crime syndicate based in India. He is a former key aide and lieutenant of Dawood Ibrahim. Starting as a petty thief and bootlegger working for Rajan Nair, also known as Bada Rajan (Big Rajan). Chotta Rajan took over the reins of Bada Rajans gang after Bada Rajans murder. Later, he was affiliated with and operated at the behest of Dawood in Mumbai and eventually fled India to Dubai in 1988. He is wanted for many criminal cases that include extortion, murder, smuggling, drug trafficking and film finance. His brother is said to produce films financed by Rajan. He is also wanted in 17 murder cases and several more attempted murders. He parted ways with Dawood Ibrahim after the latters involvement in the 1993 terrorist attack on innocent civilians in Mumbai suburban trains. Chotta Rajan and Dawood Ibrahim are now considered be arch-rivals, with a long and bloody feud between their respective crime syndicates. This middle-class Chembur lad began by peddling cinema tickets in black in the 1980s. Then he met mentor Bada Rajan. Once Bada Rajan was killed, Nikalje received the throne and the title—Chhota Rajan. For a short period, Dawood Ibrahim, Rajan and Arun Gawli worked together. Then Gawli’s elder brother Papa Gawli was bumped off over a drug deal and a rift formed. Rajan went to Dubai—his family is still here apart from his wife and two daughters—in 1989 to attend the wedding of Noora, Dawood’s brother. He never returned. With the serial blasts flinging a spanner into the works, Dawood and Rajan fell out. There were even reports that he tipped off the Research and Analysis Wing about Dawood’s network. The Dawood-Rajan party was over, the messy end coming in September 2000, with Shakeel’s attack on Rajan in his Bangkok hotel room. Rajan parted ways with Dawood Ibrahim, after the Mumbai bomb blast, blaming him for anti Hindu and anti national acts. It is speculated that religious differences between the two - Rajan is a Dalit Hindu and Dawood, a Muslim - contributed to the split. The break up between him and Ibrahim supposedly took place after Dawoods involvement in the 1993 bomb blast came into the spotlight and Dawood became the most wanted man in India. After the split, Rajan formed his own gang. Reports of bloody shootouts between Rajan and Dawoods hoodlums have been common since the split. In 1994, Rajan lured one of Dawoods favorites - the flamboyantly charming, yet dreaded young Pathan narco-terrorist Phillu Khan alias Bakhtiyar Ahmed Khan- to a hotel room in Bangkok, where he was tortured to death having being betrayed by his closest aide and sidekick Mangesh Mangya Pawar. Both Phillu and Mangya were involved in the 1993 blasts as Police had filed cases on 15 March 1993 against a 26-year-old Hindu (Mangesh Pawar) and a 30-year-old Muslim (Piloo Khan) alleging their involvement in the blasts. In September 2000, Dawood tracked down Rajan in Bangkok. Sharad Shetty, one of the Hindus in Dawood organisation post the Mumbai bombings, used his links with Mumbai based hotelier Vinod Shetty to track down Rajan in Bangkok, Dawoods aide Chotta Shakeel then led the hit. Posing as pizza delivery men they gunned down trusted Rajan hitman Rohit Varma and his wife. However their aim of killing Rajan failed, with Rajan making a dare-devil escape through the hotels roof and fire-escape. He then recovered in the hospital and slipped away to evade capture. Dawood Ibrahim confirmed the attack on telephone to rediff, saying Rajan tried to escape by jumping out of the window of the first-floor room where he was attacked. He, however, broke his back in the fall and was taken to hospital, the don said. This failed assassination attempt proved costly for Dawood. Chotta Rajans associates tracked down and shot dead Vinod Shetty in 2001 in Mumbai, as well as Sunil Soans - another Dawood associate. Both Vinod and Sunil had provided information to Dawoods associates of Rajans whereabouts. While the killings of Vinod Shetty and Sunil Soans did not significantly disrupt D-Company, on January 19, 2003, Chotta Rajans associates then gunned down Sharad Shetty - Dawoods chief finance manager and money-laundering agent - at the India Club in Dubai. This brazen killing was an emblematic of the shift of power between Dawood and Rajan. Not only was the execution in a very public setting, it was at a location that Dawood considered his operational backyard. Intelligence reports have suggested that Sharad Shettys death was a crippling blow to D-Company, since much financial and monetary information of the crime syndicate operations managed by Sharad Shetty was never fully recovered by Dawood. While the Indian government has no overt links to Rajan, the Intelligence Bureau, Indias internal intelligence agency is suspected of having passed information they collected of Dawoods operations to Chotta Rajan when theyve found so to be convenient to weaken Dawood. Chotta Rajan claims himself to be a staunch Indian nationalist Maya Dolas was born to Vithobha and Ratnaprabha Dolas. He was one of their six children. Dolas joined the Dawood Ibrahim gang in 1980s and rose quickly through the ranks in the outfit. He ran several successful extortion rackets for the Indian National Congress criminal - politician Ashok Joshis gang at Kanjur village, which was also affiliated with the Dawood Ibrahims gang, D-Company. By 1989 however, he had fallen out from the Ashok Joshi gang, and on 17 September 1989, Maya led a retaliation against the Joshi gang, in which five people were killed. It seems that at some point Maya Dolas had become too successful, and he along with some others, primarily Hindu gangsters, fell out with Dawood Ibrahim subsequently... n an interview, gangster and don Chhota Rajan (for whom Maya Dolas worked) mentioned: I was in Dubai when Dawood Ibrahim planned the operation as part of his campaign to cut me down to size. He had eliminated several of my boys and Maya Dolas (who was gunned down in the Lokhandwala shootout) was one of them, he claimed. He said one Samir Shah, who worked for D Company had done the ground level co-ordination for the operation. Maya Dolas had expressed his willingness to surrender, but the police insisted on eliminating him, Rajan added. The Lokhandwala Complex is an upper end middle-class housing area in Andheri Lokhandwala Swati A wing Flat no 002 and 003, Mumbai, where Shiv Sena criminal-politician Gopal Rajwani had purchased a flat for mega-mobster Dawood Ibrahim. In 1991, Dawood henchmen Maya Dolas and Dilip Buwa, along with four others, were in this apartment when they were surrounded by the Mumbai Police led by Aftab Ahmed Khan; it was later alleged that Khan had been tipped off by Dawood who wanted the police to kill them. The ensuing four hour shootout, much of it publicised live on news channels, made Maya Dolas famous, and the police officer Khan a household name. After the encounter, it was alleged that the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) which had participated in the encounter had made off with Rs. 70 lakh (Rs. 7 million) cash which was with Maya Dolas. A number of inquiries conducted by the Mumbai police failed to turn up any concrete evidence. Mayas mother Ratnaprabha had moved court to ban the movie Shootout at Lokhandwala stating that the movie presents her son falsely. For example, the movie shows that Maya had killed his abusive father at age nine, whereas his father outlived Maya and died only in 1997. She also claimed that he was an ITI passout (Trained industrial technician). Taking note of the fact that the movie also portrays Ratnaprabha as encouraging the criminal tendencies in her son, the suit wanted the producer to re-do the film. Chhota Rajan also objected to the film, saying that it grossly distorts the facts. In response, A A Khan, the cop who led up front the team which gunned down Maya Dolas, rubbished Rajans claim, saying that the operation was videographed and it was conducted in full view of the public. The directors claim that the movie is highly fictionalised, although it uses the real names, and the movie opens with an apology to the real characters. A Mumbai sessions court refused to stay the film release based on the case in May 2007. Ejaz Lakdawala is one of the most wanted gangsters from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. In May 2003, he was rumored to have been killed when Dawoods gang-members, also known as D-Company, angered by his allegiance to Chota Rajan, opened fire at him in a crowded market in Bangkok. However, he survived and moved to Canada. In May 2004, he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Ottawa, Canada following an Interpol red corner notice for him. He is involved in more than 20 cases of extortion, attempt to murder and rioting. Ali Budesh Image Not Availabe Ali Baba Budesh is a notorious Indian extortionist and underworld don of the Indian Mafia, based in Bahrain. He is believed to have fled to Bahrain in the late eighties. Most of the details of Budeshs early life and background are vague. Born of an Indian mother and Arab father, he made his entrance into the Mumbai underworld as a petty pickpocket and a street ruffian. The police in Vikhroli, a north-eastern suburb of the city, had registered a case of assault against him. While living in the slums near the Pankheshah Baba shrine at Vikhroli, Budesh came into contact with some of Dawood Ibrahims gang members who were on the run from the police, and sought shelter in the labyrinthine slums of the Vikhroli Parksite area. Budesh was rewarded for his initial assistance of these men, when he was sent to Dubai and met Dawood Ibrahim, the infamous head of the D-Company and Indias most wanted fugitive. Budesh later split from the D-Company, together with other key aides of Dawood Ibrahim such as Pakistani smuggler Shoaib Khan, Irfan Goga, and Ijaz Pathan, and formed his own separate gang with its headquarters in Bahrain. He allied himself with some of Dawood Ibrahims enemies and went on to lead them against him. These included Vasai, a feared gangster from Virar, Subhash Singh Thakur, who is currently lodged in New Delhis Tihar Central Prison. Another former Ibrahim aide, Dilawar Khan, became Budeshs right hand man. This alliance caused some major upsets to Ibrahims declining empire He also began informing on members of the D-Company to law enforcement. The detention of Dawood Ibrahims brother, Anees Ibrahim at the Bahrain International Airport at Muharraq in 1996 is believed to have been due to a tip-off from Budesh. Dawood spent over Rs 5 lakh for his brothers release. Similarly, the month-long incarceration of Abu Salem, another key underworld figure at the UAEs Al-Rafa detention centre was attributed to Budesh. Budesh also began informing on other Indian NRI gangsters such as Chhota Shakeel, Noora Ibrahim, etc, forcing them to flee the UAE for Pakistan, where they are believed to have made their base of operations in Karachi. In spite of the falling out with his former mentor, Budeshs policy in his extortion rackets closely follow Dawood Ibrahims modus ope*****. His targets include builders, diamond merchants and figures within the Bollywood film industry. His demands from builders include an annual fee or a few flats in their projects. From diamond merchants, he seeks deposits in numbered accounts in Swiss banks. However, the biggest contributors to his extortion racket have always been the Bollywood film figures.[1] Those who usually refuse to pay the extortion money or hafta as it is called in the Mumbai underworld jargon, are dealt with in a severe manner. For instance, when Natwarlal Desai, a local Mumbai based builder refused to pay the hafta being demanded by Budeshs gang, he was later shot dead on August 18, 1997 at Nariman Point by the Budesh gang members. Those businessmen who were reluctant to pay the hafta to Budeshs enforcers, paid up with alacrity after the Desai killing. After this incident, no other killing by the Budesh gang was reported for a long time. On April, 1998, Keith Rodrigues, the 23 year old chief steward at the Copper Chimney restaurant at Saki Naka, was shot dead by Ali Budeshs gunmen. The murder was done as a warning to the restaurants owner, Satish Bansal, who had been dodging Budeshs demand for Rs 5 lakh for months. Some leading Bollywood film producers also became victims of Budeshs extortion tactics. He made threatening calls to Rakesh Roshan, Mukesh Bhatt and Boney Kapoor, and demanded up to Douw khokha (Rs 2 crore) from each of them. The Tips Cassette Company owner, Ramesh Taurani, was also being extorted for the same amount. On January 21, 2000, Rakesh Roshan was shot at by two Budesh gang members near his office on Tilak Road at Santacruz West. The assailants fired two bullets at him, one of which hit him on the left arm while the other grazed his chest. As the director fell to the ground, the assailants fled the scene.[5] The assailants were later identified as Sunil Vithal Gaikwad and Sachin Kamble. The attack on Roshan was not undertaken with the intent to kill, but to signal that the Shiv Sena could no longer protect its clients. Roshan had stonewalled demands from Budesh for a percentage of the profits from the overseas sale of the Hindi blockbuster, Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai. Budesh claimed responsibility for the hand-grenade attack near a hotel in Dahisar, a western suburb of Bombay on June, 1998. In the incident, some gangsters, when challenged, hurled the grenade at the police. In the blast and the subsequent police firing, two policemen and three gangsters were killed and several others were injured. However, Budeshs claim was dismissed by the Mumbai police.The following year, Tirupati Kotian and Austin Carvalho, two members of the Ali Budesh gang were shot dead in an encounter with the Mumbai police at Kandivli.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 06:06:33 +0000
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