Cover Story: Crime; The Sleazy World of Romesh Sharma

He captured properties worth Rs 500 crore, stole a helicopter, was Dawood's point man. He personifies Delhi's ugly underbelly.

For six months Neeraj Kumar, the DIG responsible for monitoring the activities of the D-Company, was an intensely frustrated man. Twiddling the keyboard of his laptop computer at the CBI offices in Delhi, he would routinely go over his voluminous file on the activities of the infamous Dubai and Karachi-based don who masterminded the serial blasts in Mumbai five years ago. There was much of Dawood Ibrahim's activities that were known. The authorities were aware of D-Company operatives like Abu Salem, Chhota Shakeel, and even renegades like Irfan Goga and Babloo Shrivastava. Yet, there was a crucial element missing: the D-Company's activities in Delhi.

Not that the authorities were clueless. Last year, a police officer managed to get copies of some old telephone bills of the Dubai phone of Chhota Shakeel. The numbers dialled on November 22, 1996 included three calls to two south Delhi numbers. They were traced to a house in the posh Mayfair Garden belonging to one Romesh Sharma, a flamboyant property dealer with political links and a police record.

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police was entrusted the job of eavesdropping. Its endeavours produced mixed results. There were indeed calls from Dubai, but Sharma greeted them with a terse instruction to "call on the other line". One day he was less circumspect. "Call me on triple one," he told his Dubai caller.

That was the lead the police was waiting for. For two months, the Crime Branch scoured the records of mobile phone operators and finally homed in on Sharma's elusive cell number. This time, the tapping produced explosive results. There were routine calls from Dawood's brother Anees and business calls from the dreaded Abu Salem. Angry over the murder of Mirza Dilshad Beg, a minister in Nepal who had close links with the D-Company, Salem wanted revenge on Babloo Shrivastava. He told Sharma to be ready for a big operation as his chhokra log (boys) were reaching Delhi to eliminate Shrivastava when he was being produced in court. No need, retorted Sharma. "I will dispose of Babloo in a fake encounter in Uttar Pradesh."

By then, the CBI imagined it had enough evidence to nail Sharma. Some patient work had revealed handsome details of his background, property dealings and political activities. Yet, there was a snag. Apart from the telephone recordings, there was nothing contemporary about the charges against Sharma. To really go for him, the authorities wanted a plausible pretext. The break came six months later.

Ramesh Malik was an aircraft engineer working in Malaysia. He owned a house in south Delhi's Chiragh Enclave which he rented out to his cousin, a company executive. In May, Malik returned to India and asked his cousin to vacate. The cousin refused and relations between the two soured. In August, Malik received a phone call from Sharma, a person he had never met before. Sharma informed the bewildered Malik that he was no longer the owner of the house and that the property had been sold and the payment made. Sharma's tone was menacing and an angry Malik slammed the phone. A few days later, Malik received another call. This time the caller identified himself as Abu Salem. He told Malik to forget about the property if he knew what was good for him and to settle the matter with Sharma. "In case you don't know who I am, just ask your local thana," said the caller. He gave Malik a Dubai number to confirm his identity. "I will ring in three days."

A petrified Malik contacted a senior civil servant friend who, in turn, informed Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police Amod Kanth whose interest in Sharma had been aroused following a kidnapping-linked shooting incident in Kailash Colony on September 21. Together, they sought the help of D-Company expert Kumar. After a meeting with Police Commissioner V.N. Singh, it was decided to mount a coordinated operation against Sharma.

This involved two things. First, recording Salem's renewed threat to Malik and, second, reviving the curious case of a stolen helicopter. The second story began in March 1996 when H. Suresh Rao of the Pushpak Aviation Private Ltd in Mumbai was contracted by Sharma for the hiring of a three-seater Bell-47 G-5 helicopter for electioneering in Phulpur, Uttar Pradesh. Sharma told Rao that the Election Commission's stringent rules on expenditure meant it would be difficult to pay the steep rental charges upfront. He therefore suggested that Rao sign a backdated agreement for the sale of the helicopter to him for Rs 30 lakh. After the election, the agreement would be torn up.

Sharma forfeited his deposit in Phulpur. For Rao, the outcome was worse: he forfeited his helicopter. Sharma cited the "sale document" as proof of his ownership and secured a fresh registration number VT-EAP from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Rao filed an fir but there was no police follow-up. An exasperated and frightened Rao wrote off his losses and returned quietly to Mumbai.

It took Kumar's persuasive powers to make Rao take a renewed interest in his lost helicopter. In the second week of October, he filed another fir in Delhi's Hauz Khas police station. Then on October 20, observed discreetly by the police, Rao walked into Sharma's Mayfair Garden house and demanded his helicopter back. An infuriated Sharma started beating him up. When Rao tried to flee, he was dragged back into the house, bundled into a car and taken to one of Sharma's offices in Regal Building in Connaught Place. There he was being forced to put his signature on some blank papers when the police rushed in. Simultaneously, another police party raided the Mayfair Garden house.

For Sharma, the arrest and the enormous media publicity surrounding the case signalled the end. He has been implicated in 13 different cases involving extortion, cheating, kidnapping, possessing illegal arms and even violating the Wildlife Act. To prevent him from securing bail, tampering with evidence and threatening witnesses, he has been detained under the National Security Act. For a couple of days, loyalists of Sharma's own political party -- All India Bharatiya Congress Party (AIBCP) -- staged noisy demonstrations outside the magistrate's court. But as the revelations of his seamy career started trickling out, they abandoned the fight.

Notables who had obliged Sharma a week ago now disclaimed any knowledge of him. "Neither do I know him nor does he know me," said Sadhu Yadav, brother-in-law of former Bihar chief minister Laloo Prasad Yadav. It's a different matter that Sharma came perilously close to becoming a Rajya Sabha member on a Rashtriya Janata Dal ticket earlier this year. It's also a coincidence that Sharma's bookings at Hotel Maurya in Patna for July 14 last year and June 4 this year were made by the chief minister's private secretary and that the first calls he made after checking in were to the chief minister's residence.

Was he really a general secretary of the Sanjay Vichar Manch?" asked Union Minister for Social Welfare Maneka Gandhi, a patron of Sharma in the early '80s before they fell out. "Sharma was not at all connected with the Congress Kisan Cell," said Congress MP Sushil Kumar Shinde who was party general secretary in 1987 when Sharma was the secretary of the front organisation. "I did not know him personally," insisted former minister of state for home Subodh Kant Sahay who accorded Sharma Y-category security in December 1990. On its part, the Desabhakta Society of former chief election commissioner and anti-corruption crusader T.N. Seshan quietly removed most of its belongings from its offices in W-157 Greater Kailash II, part-owned by Sharma. "We are planning to shift because of the high rent," said society Secretary Ram Krishna. He, however, admitted that they were not paying any rent as such.

The most touching disclaimer was from former minister of state for home Chintamani Panigrahi. He had written on his official letterhead to the authorities in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi on March 3, 1988, claiming "some forces want to eliminate Shri Sharma and thus put a stop to mass contact programme enunciated by ... Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and being put to practice by Shri Sharma". "I have never heard of him," he told india today, "I was not even the home minister in 1988. How can I recommend security for anyone?"

For a man whose name -- Ramchandra Mishra, Rajendra Sharma or Romesh Sharma -- and age are in doubt, Sharma has succeeded in triggering a panic in the establishment. For the boy from Ugrasenpur in Allahabad district of Uttar Pradesh who barely eked out an existence in the bylanes of Delhi's Sadar Bazar in the early '70s, it was a rags-to-riches-to-jail story like in the films. Equipped with a diploma in refrigeration from St John's College, Mumbai, the restless and fiercely ambitious Sharma always knew the importance of two things: godfathers and connections. He first learnt the tricks of survival and prosperity from Vardaraja Mudaliar, one of Mumbai's underworld dons in the '70s. "Varda bhai had blind faith in me and I was like his adopted son," boasted Sharma to the police.

From his godfather he also learnt the tricks of the property trade. Bereft of the first requirement to play the lucrative real estate market -- capital -- Sharma chose another route: muscle and fraud. In a city where impossible tenancy laws had driven landlords to the wall, he first tried his hand at being an eviction agent. However, he was not content with turnkey projects. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, Sharma understood squatters' rights. He would undertake a job on behalf of an anxious landlord but instead of returning the vacated property, he would simply take it over. Then he would either coerce the owner to "sell" the captured property or simply forge documents bribing his way through the lower bureaucracy. "I have purchased and sold more than a hundred properties in Mumbai. Most of them were either disputed or owned by a weak person," Sharma has confessed.

Sharma's Real Estate Dossier

Romesh Sharma at his opulent Mayfair Garden Residence (Right).

In the true traditions of a robber baron, he simply walked into houses and refused to leave.

NEW DELHI
1. C-30 Mayfair Garden (grabbed from Laxman Das Jivnani of Mumbai).
2. Basement of C-28 Mayfair Garden (grabbed from Ajay Nayyar, an NRI).
3. S-41 Panchsheel Park (grabbed from Pammi Singh after posing as a prospective tenet).
4. C-31 Hauz Khas (Dawood Ibrahim's sister-in-law stayed here in 1994).
5. B-526 New Friends Colony (After grabbing this house, Sharma sold it to Mohan Meakins).
6. C-235 Sainik Farms.
7. 12/19 Sarswati Vihar (grabbed from a widow).
8. Jai Mata Di farmhouse, Chhatarpur.
9. 64A Regal Building, Connaught Place(grabbed from Sanjay Sabharwal after renting it for political party office).
10. B-121 Sarvodya Enclave (first floor registered in the name of Kunjam Buddhiraja, one of Sharma's girlfriends).

HARYANA
1. A 200-acre farmhouse in Faridabad.

MUMBAI
1. R-371, Jai Mata Kutir, Gandhigram Road, Juhu.
2. Sant Sadan, Bungalow No. 10, Union Bank, Pali Hills, Bandra.
3. Plot at Survey No. 507 behind Sun-n-Sand Hotel, Royal Turner Road, Juhu.
4. Flat No. 307, Sundar Mahal, Next to Ambassador Hotel, Church Gate.