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COVER
STORY: GANG WARS
War
of the Dons
The bid
on the life of Chhota Rajan intensifies his war with the Dawood gang and
raises fears of a bloodbath in Mumbai
By Sheela
Raval in Bangkok and V. Shankar Aiyar
Filmmaker
Quentin Tarantino would have been proud. A dark alley on a moonlit night.
A secluded apartment block, Charan Court, at an upmarket diplomatic enclave
in the Soi 26, Sukhumvit area in Bangkok. It's past dinner time, 9.30
p.m. on Thursday, September 14, to be precise. Eight gunmen owing allegiance
to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, togged in jet black suits and patent
leathers, arrive at the gate, two of them, Thai nationals, carrying a
huge cake provide cultural colour and a facade for the others. The Thai
security guard barely lets them in only to be knocked out of his senses.
 |
| The
attackers had closely watched the movements of Chhota Rajan and Rohit
Verma (above) for several days before they moved in for the kill on
September 14 |
The gunmen
rush upstairs and ring the bell. A couple and a child are watching TV
in the living room. They peer through, the cake-bearing Thais lure the
doors open. The next minute, the gunmen enter the four bedroom apartment
whip out their 9 mm pistols and open fire. First to fall is Rohit Verma
or Michael D'Souza, as he was known in Bangkok. His wife Sangeeta rushes
in to save him and takes a bullet. Horrorstruck, maid Kamala slinks to
the kitchen door. The assailants' eyes dart around the house but the prey
they actually seek is nowhere to be seen. Pushing the Verma couple aside
they scour the apartment for him. Suddenly in the dark they see the silhouette
of a figure jumping off a bedroom balcony into a garden below. Blind volley
of shots follow the figure.
But this
wasn't Pulp Fiction. The prey escapes with one bullet in his abdomen
and another in his right thigh. Even as other residents of the quiet Sukhumvit
area wake up, the man stays put until he hears the failed gunmen leave.
Going back to the house, he finds Verma dead and the wife injured. He
moves to the bedroom and picks up the phone and dials. On the other end
his close aide Guru Satam hears a rasping voice whispers, "Mi Rajan
boltoi."
In the next
few minutes Chhota Rajan makes three more calls. The last to the Thai
Police. Minutes later, a posse arrives and takes charge. Rajan is wheeled
into the Samitivej Hospital's ICU for emergency surgery. Within hours,
the shots echo 2,923 km away in Delhi where officials at the Home Ministry
discuss the ramifications even as officers of the Crime Branch scramble
numbers to verify the news. The following evening, 3,004 km from Bangkok
the issue crops up again at a dinner meeting on Friday at Matoshri in
Bandra, suburban Mumbai, between Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and Union
Law Minister Arun Jaitley.
By Monday,
Rajan was declared out of danger and the Thai Police had arrested four
suspects. Of them, Mohammed Saleem, 33, and Sher Khan, 36, who admitted
to being the shooters in the attack (see box) were caught at the Robinson
departmental store in Bang Rak while Mohammed Yusuf, 45, was arrested
as he tried to evade the police on Sukhumvit Soi 5. Their Thai accomplice,
Chavalit a.k.a. Rafiq Aroonkiat, 51, was picked up from a flat in Intamara
Soi. Four others involved in the attack fled to Malaysia by a Singapore
Airlines flight the same night. But the legacy of the shoot-out continues
to dog the script. A script that was written over six years back when
Rajan walked out after the serial blasts in Mumbai masterminded by Dawood.
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