Getting high on an encounter with a don -- Underworld tales more fascinating than political stuff

Getting high on an encounter with a don -- Underworld tales more fascinating than political stuff

By Deepak Parvatiyar

(This article was published in the October 2011 edition of Critique - A Review of Indian Journalism) 

Way back in 1993, I got a call in my newspaper office from someone posing to be from the customs department, complimenting me for refusing to accept the parceled gift from him. The voice on the other side of the phone was unfamiliar to me. “Aapke taraf yeh hamara dosti ka haath tha. Par hamein aapse yahi ummid thi. Aapko kabhi koi problem ho to hamein bataiyega. (We had extended our hand of friendship to you but we had the same expectation from you (that you won’t accept the gift). If you face any problem, please tell us)”.

Thereafter, when I went to the customs office to meet my sources, there were murmurs that Bhai had called me up. But Dawood was still not as big as he is now. I had been running a series on the Bombay blasts, exposing the official connivance and the lack of preparedness of the customs, navy and coast guard in tackling landings of smuggled consignments in coastal Maharashtra and how nothing had been done even while Dawood Ibrahim was adjudicated much before the blasts had occurred. A senior Customs officer in the Marine and Preventive Wing told me in his chamber that he had beaten up Dawood with belt in “this same room”. It turned out that the same officer had connived with the Don in the landing of the explosives for the Mumbai blasts of ’93 and was subsequently arrested under TADA.

It was then that someone had carried a parcel to me that I refused to accept. Not getting unduly bothered, I simply went ahead and continued with my series on the Mumbai blasts for the paper I then worked for – The Free Press Journal. I had no reason to believe that the call and the gift that I returned was from Bhai. But at the same time, the person – a lower-class- insignificant- looking young lad of my age (i.e. early twenties) who had carried the gift to me but never identified himself, was so impressed that he became my source and returned at least a couple of times to inform me about certain “landings”.

“I consider you my friend and wish you success. Please write about these landings,” he would say. His information proved to be correct because when I wrote about these landings, I got calls from the state Home Ministry in acknowledgment of my reports.

The beauty of journalism is that it offers you a chance to cultivate a wide range of sources. A good political reporter has his sources ranging from a grass root level political worker to the prime minister; a good business reporter has proxy to the business tycoons, trade unions as well as the industries/commerce ministers. Hence there is little surprise when a crime reporter boasts of hobnobbing with underworld dons, gang lords, mafias and even petty criminals with same ease as he talks of interacting with police commissioners and the home ministers. It’s all part of a reporter’s job.

I remember a well known editor saying that any political reporter worth his/her salt enjoys the ear of the prime minister. This makes me wonder what makes the day for a good crime reporter. Is that a meeting with the home minister or the police commissioner?  That’s his routine job. Like any other reporter in the trade, I have met police commissioners, home ministers and prime ministers.  But I find audience getting excited whenever I narrate my brief encounter with the legendary don Haji Mastan at a public function in Mumbai. This is despite the fact that Mastan had reformed and even set up his own political outfit by then. When I asked him why he wasn’t sharing the stage, he jokingly said: “Din ka function hai barkhurdaar (It’s a day function friend).”

Similarly, I am sure people would be more interested to know what the dreaded gangster Karim Lala told me about his waning clout in the crime world than the prime minister speaking about the afghan problem. “I now lead a retired life because the Afghans have returned to Afghanistan,” Lala had told me at his house at the Parsi Agyari lane in the notorious Grant Road. A matka den was still operating right across the lane.

These one-liners linger in your memory and your adrenaline rushes. Chances are that as a young cub reporter, you get swayed by the very idea of speaking to a Don – no matter if he is reformed!

People in the government are surely great ‘official’ sources.  There is no doubt that an interview on the crime scene, after the crime, with the home minister is much sought after. That access to intelligence inputs on criminals, terror groups allows a crime reporter put a price tag on his forehead. But believe me, the real kick is when you report the underworld! That’s the stuff that any crime thriller is made of. A call from the Bhai, and suddenly your peers start looking at you with awe. Overnight an aura of invincibility surrounds your persona. You yourself are perceived as part of the folklore. Overnight you feel that you have acquired a larger than life image!

There was a time in the early nineties, when it became a fashion for some of the crime reporters in Mumbai to quote their “sources from the underworld”. That was a period when Mumbai grappled with problems of gang wars, bomb blasts and riots, and the Bollywood-underworld nexus was a hot topic for coffee-table discussions. The thrill of offering crime stories on a glamorous Bollywood platter could not escape the fancy of some of the most celebrated crime reporters of the day. These made a senior columnist (If memory serves, MV Kamath) raise this issue in one of his columns. He wondered who these “sources from the underworld” were and wasn’t it proper in the national interest to interrogate these crime reporters who were privy to some of the most sensational information that they so conceitedly attributed to their sources in the underworld. Kamath’s argument was that if these sources indulged in criminal activities, then why should their identities be protected by the reporter? A line should be drawn between  the national interest and established journalistic ethics where journalists protect their sources till they are specifically asked to reveal their identities by a court of law. (There are instances where a journalist has preferred to be penalized instead of disclosing the identity of his/her source).

The practice of quoting the underworld sources gradually stopped but was enough an indicator of what a crime reporter gets high on.

Crime reporters often take pride in prefixing their name with ‘crime reporter’.  I had many friends into crime reporting who wouldn’t attend any call without giving a full description of their job profile before speaking out their name. Being a crime reporter gave them a sense of masculinity. As Voltaire said, “Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes”, the crime reporters truly considered themselves to be the chroniclers of historical events! Afterall, a Gabbar Singh in reel life or a Haji Mastan in real life is dreaded yet venerated for their guts, daredevilry and anti-(chocolate) hero image. “Dhishum Dhishum” is what a child learns faster than the alphabets. Hence, a Dawood Ibrahim is a bigger legend than a GR Khairnar.

But what is the risk involved in reporting crime? When I started my career in journalism, it was a fresher who was usually asked to cover crime. The logic was simple that your mistakes can be covered up as no criminal will come forward to refute those mistakes. What one was really expected to do was to call up the police control room every hour to be informed on the crime scene in the city and then churn out stories from the police press releases. If you are good and earn the trust of the police officer, chances are he will call you up for an exclusive story of any raid or encounter. Then you land up doing follow up stories. I remember some goons walking up to the newspaper office, informing they would be capturing some booths during the municipal elections and wanted us to depute reporters to cover the event. During the Mumbai riots, the police commissioner once called me up to ask how we were getting information that no one else had. My answer was simple: We trust the people in distress and believe their story than wait for the FIRs on the basis of our reports. Soon the police was filing FIRs based on our reports. There was an element of risk involved of getting misguided by the vested elements but then, in such an extra-ordinary situation of riot, you were expected to take calculated risks.

So the question arises that why would a criminal want to eliminate a reporter? Here I recall meeting the dreaded gangster Bhura Munjha – the brother-in-law of ‘Godmother’ Santokhben Jadeja of Porbandar. He claimed the film ‘Agnipath’ was inspired by his own life story. He had already served a life sentence but was still very much involved in organized crime in and around Porbandar. He was contesting the assembly election that he eventually won. But after our meeting, he very categorically told me and my two colleagues: ‘I know you are meeting the SP (Superintendent of Police) in the morning. Tell him that my heart says he is a good man but my head refuses to believe this.”

Bhura’s rival in the Porbandar underworld, Ikku Gagan, who was subsequently killed in an encounter, appeared so courteous that he even sent his men with food for my wife to the hotel we were staying. I had never known that he had all information about me before I reached him. Like Bhura, he too was contesting the elections that he eventually lost.

I also had an encounter with some goons who had come to collect hafta from a school in Patna. They claimed they were Pappu Yadav’s henchmen. After some days, I met Pappu at the chamber of a union minister in the Parliament house. He was a member of parliament then. He was there sitting silently throughout my interaction with the minister. The arrogance of a don was conspicuously missing. Few months later he was arrested and sent to Tihar jail.

Each of these criminals was a ruthless operator. What I noticed was that each of them was trying to project the humane side of his personality. While the mysterious Bhai offered his help, Mastan displayed his wit. Lala wanted the world know his clout over the fellow Afghans for whom he was an undisputed leader. Bhura came across as a person who was victimized and who only “dispensed justice to others” while Ikku wanted to project himself as someone who cared for his community. They all had political ambition. But their self-righteous way was a big impediment.  They all had a prize on their heads. But as a reporter I never felt threatened by any of them. They all had their own area of operation and they never liked any intrusion in their territory. I knew I was safe till I didn’t become a partner in their crime. At the same time, they very much knew about a crime reporter’s proximity to the police. Yet, even the most dreaded of criminals aspired for a good press. However, the murder of (crime reporter) J Dey now starts a disturbing trend. The earlier we know the reason, the better for journalism.   

e.o.m.