14 centrespread centrespread 15 NOVEMBER 01-07, 2015 KARIM LALA NOVEMBER 01-07, 2015 KARIM LALA HAJI MASTAN Mastan Haider Mirza was the fl ashiest of the trio and is remembered to DIRTY HARRYS Born Abdul Karim Sher Khan in a Pashtun family in this day, thanks to Amitabh Bachchan’s character in Deewaar and much Afghanistan, Lala came to Mumbai in the 1930s and started later, Ajay Devgn’s character in Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, both of In the 1990s, it was not just gang- off by settling disputes by marshalling a gang of fellow which were based on him. Mastan came to Mumbai with his father in sters who were making news; cops Pathans. He then ran gambling dens and also ventured into 1934 when he was eight years old. Ten years later, he started working dealing with them were also often in smuggling gold, silver and electronics. He also ran drug and as a coolie at the docks and started smuggling watches, gold bars and the limelight, particularly protection rackets. Considered to be the fi rst don of his transistors. He then ventured into illicit liquor and his fortune kept rising, Pradeep Sharma and Daya Nayak, kind in the city, he worked in tandem with Haji Mastan and symbolised by, among other things, a home in the tony Malabar Hill. He is whose names are synonymous Varadarajan Mudaliar, the trio that controlled the Mumbai believed to owe his rise partly to his relationship with Lala and Mudaliar, with the term ‘encounter specialist’. underworld till the 1970s. Lala’s infl uence started waning the three of whom controlled different parts of the city. Mastan’s downfall Nayak, who joined the police force after his nephew Samad Khan was killed in 1985 by Dawood began with his arrest during the Emergency in the 1970s. He died in 1994 in 1995, was suspended in 2006 Ibrahim as retribution for Lala ordering the killing of Ibrahim’s CHHOTA SHAKEEL following allegations that he had older brother Shabir Kaskar. Lala, who was the inspiration for links with Chhota Shakeel and that Pran’s character in Zanjeer, died in Mumbai in 2002, aged 90 VARADARAJAN MUDALIAR he had accepted money from gang- ARUN GAWLI sters. The Supreme Court quashed those charges in 2010, leading to his Before Arun Gulab Ahir alias Arun Gawli became involved in reinstatement, but he was again sus- criminal activities, he was in his family business of supplying VARADARAJAN MUDALIAR pended this year. Sharma, whose ca- HAJI milk in and around Dagdi chawl at Byculla in central Mumbai. reer began as a sub-inspector MASTAN In the 1980s, he joined gangster Rama Naik and offered Mudaliar who inspired the Kamal Haasan fi lm Nayakan, came at Mahim in 1984, protection to Dawood Ibrahim’s consignments. He later fell to Mumbai from the coastal town of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu has not been free out with Ibrahim over the latter’s killing of Naik by the police. and began his life there as a porter, and soon started stealing of controversy Gawli fl oated his own political party and became an MLA, dock cargo with Mastan’s help. He then started selling hooch either. In 2013, he but his run came into an end with the murder of a Shiv Sena and became an extrajudicial leader of sorts of the poor was cleared by a corporator in 2007. Gawli was convicted of the crime in 2012 Tamils at Matunga, Dharavi and Sion-Koliwada. Following a Mumbai court and is serving a life sentence crackdown on his gang by the government, Mudaliar moved ARUN of the charges to Chennai in the mid-1980s and passed away there in 1988 GAWLI of killing ABU SALEM Ram Narayan Gupta, an al- DAWOOD IBRAHIM leged aide of Chhota Rajan, ABU SALEM The most notorious of Mumbai’s gangsters, Dawood in a ‘fake Ibrahim grew up watching his father, a police constable, encounter’ in Originally from Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh, CHHOTA being ill-treated by Haji Mastan. He eventually dwarfed 2006, but his Salem worked as a cab driver in Delhi and then moved RAJAN DAWOOD IBRAHIM Mastan in infl uence and became the most feared of the acquittal has been to Mumbai, where he operated a telephone booth city’s dons, initially by eliminating members of Karim challenged in the at Andheri and was involved in petty crimes. In the Lala’s gang with the support of the police. His stock Bombay High Court 1980s he came in contact with Dawood Ibrahim’s in the underworld rose with his extortion racket and brother Anees and became a gun-runner for the gang. hawala business. He allegedly masterminded the 1993 He is accused of being involved in the 1993 blasts serial blasts in Mumbai, which was chronicled in in Mumbai and became infamous for terrorising S Hussain Zaidi’s Black Friday, a book adapted into a Bollywood with threats to fi lmmakers like Subhash fi lm by Anurag Kashyap. D Ghai and Rajiv Rai. He is believed to be behind the killing of music baron Gulshan Kumar. He fell out with Ibrahim fl ed to Dubai in 1984 and is believed to reside Ibrahim in 1998 and was arrested in Lisbon in 2002 in Pakistan, with the backing of the Inter-Services FILMS along with his actress-girlfriend Monica Bedi and Intelligence (ISI). He was named the fourth most INSPIRED BY extradited to India in 2005. He was convicted earlier wanted fugitive in the world by Forbes in 2011 THE MUMBAI this year of the 1995 murder of builder Pradeep Jain UNDERWORLD Company The arrest of gangster Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, better known as Chhota Rajan, by the Interpol in Bali, Indonesia, on October 26 marks a key moment in the history of organised crime in Mumbai, which was at its peak in the 1980s and 1990s. A ticket tout at a cinema at Chembur in the 1970s, Nikalje moved on to petty crimes, and was associated with Rajan Nair, also known as Bada Rajan. When Bada Rajan was killed by a rival, Rajan sought revenge and it was after executing Bada Rajan’s killer that Nikalje earned the moniker ‘Chhota Rajan’. The city’s mafi a, with more than its share of colourful, larger-than-life fi gures, has been depicted many times over in books and fi lms, the Satya veracity of some of which, however, has been suspect. ET Magazine takes you through some of the dramatis personae on both sides of the law: Source: From Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia, My Name is Abu :: G Seetharaman Salem, BBC and other media reports.