On November 28, the Anti-Extortion Cell of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch arrested three men for allegedly plotting to kill a Mumbai-based businessman.
Two of them, the shooters, were arrested while they were about to barge into the businessman’s office in Jogeshwari to shoot him, while the third was arrested a few hours later for providing them with weapons and other equipment. Interrogation revealed that their orders had come from one Prashant Rao, an aide of fugitive gangster Ejaz Lakdawala. Rao has been running his boss’s gang and, it was revealed, he had made several calls from a mobile phone to the three accused, instructing them to kill the businessman because he had refused to pay Rs. 2 crore in extortion money to Lakdawala.
Rao, incidentally, is lodged in Nashik’s Central Jail awaiting trial and technically has restricted access not only to mobile phones but also to creature comforts and daily needs.
Reality, however, is far removed from the rule book. For the affluent and well-connected jailbird, incarceration can come with all mod-cons, including liquor, drugs and even visits to dance bars. Most importantly, he is allowed to stay in touch with his underlings with his own mobile phone.
Police officials, both serving and retired, say the first thing convicts from organised crime syndicates do behind bars is set up a system that allows them to get whatever they want.
The well-oiled supply chain includes family, fellow gang members, lawyers, and prison staff willing to help — for a price. With the prisons department being understaffed and underpaid, that last crucial link isn’t hard to set up. Retired Crime Branch officials say this was at its peak in the 90s, when gangs like Dawood Kaskar’s ‘D-company’ and the Chhota Rajan gang were the most active.
The Arthur Road Central Jail in Mumbai, which housed most accused from the gangs, was divided into camps, mirroring gang memberships. Ambadas Pote, retired Deputy Commissioner of Police, calls it the nalli nihari racket, a dish of slow-cooked meat along with the bone marrow. Chuckling, he explains: “Family members of inmates with gang-land connections, with due permission of the court, would send tiffin boxes containing nalli nihari to the prison. Unknown to the staff, a SIM card wrapped in plastic would be stuffed inside the bone, which the inmates would remove and use. Cell phones, on the other hand, would be smuggled inside by bribing prison staff.”
When the racket was discovered by the Crime Branch around 10 years ago, it led to raids in several prisons and suspension of prison staff. Needless to say, inmates quickly found new ways to get the SIM cards.
“Court appearances are a boon for inmates when it comes to smuggling in SIM cards,” says a senior Mumbai Police officer.
“In crowded courts it is easy for anyone to slip a SIM to an inmate, and they’re easy to conceal and very easy to get rid of if there is a surprise check by prisons officials. And it’s equally easy to get a new one.”
Though the present day gangs are pale shadows of the groups that ruled the city — with dons and leaders either dead, serving life sentences, in exile or retired — SIM cards are still one of the items most frequently smuggled into prisons because they need to be changed frequently to make it harder for law enforcement to detect their use. Upgraded jail infrastructure, including CCTV cameras and surprise checks by vigilance teams, seems to have done little to stop the smuggling racket.
Active and undetected
Three recent incidents highlight the ineffective preventive measures.
• In 2013, gangster Abu Salem was allegedly shot at by Devendra Jagtap, the main accused in the murder of Mumbai-based advocate Shahid Azmi. This was when both were prisoners inside a jail. Jagtap fired two shots before being overpowered by prison guards, and Salem sustained an injury to his right hand. The fact that a gun and ammunition had been smuggled in to Jagtap shook the Prisons Department, leading to a search and departmental inquiry.
• In May the same year, Mumbai-based builder Rajaram Manjaokar was shot at in Borivali. The Mumbai Crime Branch arrested three men. The three confessed that they were operating on orders from Yusuf “Bachkana” Kadri, a Chhota Rajan lieutenant, who had organised the attack because Manjaokar had refused to pay extortion money. Bachkana was, at the time, a prisoner in Hindalga Central Jail, Belgaum. He was subsequently transferred to a central jail in Bangalore and several Hindalga officials were suspended.
• Last year three mobile phones were found in Taloja Central Jail, in the cell of Ravi Mallesh Bora alias D.K. Rao, another Chhota Rajan aide. His call data records revealed that he had made over 500 calls from those numbers in six months, a large chunk of them to international numbers. Rajan, who had been arrested a month earlier, had been on the run during this period and Rao is suspected to have kept in touch with him through these calls.
Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) Bhushan Upadhyay accepts that inmates getting access to cellular phones and running their gangs from inside jails is a reality despite efforts to prevent them. “We keep conduct regular surprise checks in central central jails to look for any such activities,” he said.
“Whenever such a case comes to light in our checks or through other channels, we take strict and immediate action against any prison staff who are found to be involved.”
