MURDER CATCHES UPWITH MU
Conviction in five- year- old contract killing is the end of the road for the man who once terrorised the city
On the evening of March 2, 2007, Shiv Sena municipal councillor Kamlakar Jamsandekar, 47, was resting at his home in Saki Naka, suburban Andheri. The popular politician always kept the doors of his ground- floor chawl open. Four men drove up on two motorbikes. One walked in and shot the startled Jamsandekar in the head, point- blank. On August 27, the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act ( MCOCA) court at Kala Ghoda pronounced former MLA and underworld don Arun Gawli, 60, guilty of the murder. The court ruled that the murder was committed at Gawli’s behest. The punishment will be pronounced on August 31. It was Gawli’s first conviction in 25 cases spread over 25 years. The law had finally caught up with Mumbai’s only resident don.
Dawood Ibrahim’s crime syndicate is based in Karachi; Chhota Rajan operates out of Southeast Asia. For nearly 25 years, Gawli was ensconced behind the fortress- like 15- foot- high walls and iron gates of his den, Dagdi chawl. The tight knot of buildings over three acres in a working class Byculla neighbourhood in central Mumbai was his bastion. When “Daddy”, as his followers called him, held court, unemployed youngsters, small- time politicians and the dispossessed gathered with pleas for personal favours.
For all of them, the 5’ 5” don with a slight build and trademark moustache projected a fearless Robin Hood image; in reality he took care to hide the dread of arrest, or worse, death in an encounter. He had several hideouts in Dagdi chawl. “In the 1990s, I combed the chawl with over a thousand police- men but failed to trace him, the hideouts were so well- protected,” says an officer. “There were hiding places in walls and cupboards. There was even a cavity in Gawli’s bed for him to hide. He was so paranoid, he even killed the carpenter who built it.”
Gawli’s descent into the underworld began in the 1970s, when he drifted from his community’s traditional milk- selling business. The Class XI dropout from City High School in Thakurdwar, Girgaum, worked for Rama Naik’s gang in the 1980s, protecting Dawood’s consignments of smuggled electronics goods. He forced the underworld to take note of him when, in 1986, he eliminated gangsters Parasnath Pandey, Shridhar Shetty and Cobra gang- leader Shashi Rasam. He fell out with Dawood when the latter first murdered his mentor Naik, and then killed his brother Bappa in 1990. The fight was over a plot that Dawood coveted. Gawli’s shooter Shailesh Haldankar gunned down Dawood’s brother- in- law Ibrahim Parkar at his Nagpada bastion in 1992, a sensational shootout that marked the beginning of the gang wars of the 1990s.
Ever ready to inject communal overtones into any situation, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray projected Gawli as a Hindu don against Dawood’s Muslim gang. “If you have Dawood, we have Gawli,” he told a rally in Dadar, after the 1992- 93 riots, when Gawli joined Shiv Sena in organising maha aratis on the streets of Mumbai. Gawli’s dalliance with the Sena ended when he had Thackeray’s aide Jayant Jadhav, and Ramesh More, a Sena MLA, killed
IN THE 1990S, GAWLI BOASTED OF NEARLY 1,000 SHARPSHOOTERS. A BATTERY OF LAWYERS WAS ALWAYS ON CALL TO BAIL THEM OUT IF NEEDED.
in 1996, apparently because he was being ignored by Thackeray. Jadhav’s killers even called Gawli on their mobiles for him to hear the shots. The BJPSena government retaliated, destroying his gang in ‘ encounters’. In 1999, Gawli floated a political party, the Akhil Bharatiya Sena, and was elected to the Assembly from Chinchpokli in 2004.
Gawli was arrested eight times. Considered a threat to law and order, he was externed from Mumbai to Pune in 1998. Each time, he got away for lack of evidence. His shooters intimidated witnesses. At one point in the 1990s, Gawli boasted of a team of nearly 1,000 sharpshooters. A battery of lawyers was always on call to bail them out if needed.
Ironically, it was his trusted aides who implicated him in Jamsandekar’s murder. Shrikrishna Gurav, himself not involved in the action, gave vital information and Sandeep Gangan turned approver. With their help, Mumbai Police was able to establish that two builders— Sahebrao Bhintade and Bala Surve, Jamsandekar’s rival realtors— paid Gawli Rs 30 lakh to have the councillor killed in a land dispute.
Gawli’s involvement was exposed after a crime branch team led by then joint commissioner Rakesh Maria and deputy commissioner Deven Bharti arrested Gurav in 2008. In 2008, the shooters, Ashok Jaiswal and Narendra Giri, recorded a confession testifying to Gawli’s role, and he was arrested. First lodged in Arthur Road Jail, he was shifted to Thane’s Taloja Jail in 2010.
Gawli’s councillor daughter Geeta, who has inherited his political mantle, will challenge the conviction in Bombay High Court. “Justice has not been done,” she says, which sounds a trifle odd. On August 28, hundreds gathered in Gawli’s support outside Dagdi chawl and the MCOCA court. As he emerged from the courtroom, Gawli smiled and waved at his supporters before stepping into the police van that took him back to Taloja Jail. He may have to stay there for a long time.