Abu Salem and Arun Gawli live life on their own terms in jail

Abu SalemA remote prison on the fringes of the city holds the only two crime lords Mumbai Police has collared: Abu Salem alias 'Captain' and Arun Gawli alias 'Daddy'. The star inmates share little in common except a lengthy criminal record and a mutual loathing of Dawood Ibrahim's Karachi-based crime syndicate. That could be the reason why deported gangster Salem, 44, and Mumbai's only resident don Gawli, 60, chat occasionally in the open spaces within the 20-foot-high walls of Taloja Jail. Gawli was shifted here in 2009, Salem a year later. Located off the Mumbai-Pune expressway, nearly 50 km from the city centre, the prison was inaugurated in 2008 in a distant rocky crop of hills. Since then, the long arm of Mumbai's real estate-a signature sprawl of 20-storey apartment blocks-has begun snaking towards the prison boundary.As the newest destination for the city's undertrials, Taloja Jail was meant to decongest the Arthur Road Jail in Byculla, bursting with over 2,100 prisoners, more than double its designated capacity. The jail, which takes its name from a village nearby, is still under construction and will accommodate 2,427 prisoners when it is completed in two years. For now, it has 867 inmates, including Somali pirates, Bangladeshi migrants, members of the Indian Mujahideen and Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) as well as eight accused in the September 2007 Malegaon blast case including Lt-Colonel Prasad Shrikant Purohit, 39. It has members of the Bharat Nepali, Ashwin Naik and Salem gangs. Salem and Gawli, however, are the stars.Click here to EnlargeA Maharashtra home department official says the state government always sends Dawood gang rivals to Taloja to avoid showdowns in Arthur Road Jail. However, the bifurcation has helped the gangsters virtually run their activities from behind bars. Arthur Road Jail is close to Dawood's den in Nagpada; it's easy for the gangsters' couriers to pass on his messages to the prisoners. Taloja Jail is close to Dawood's rival Chhota Rajan's stronghold, Navi Mumbai. Rajan's trusted aide D.K. Rao was sent here instead of Arthur Road Jail after his arrest in journalist Jyotirmoy Dey's murder case in 2011. However, the others arrested in the case, including prime accused Satish Kalia, a sharpshooter of the Rajan gang, are lodged in the Arthur Road Jail.Taloja Jail features double-storeyed 'anda' high-security cells-thus called for their circular shape. Each floor has 50 10x5 cells. Salem inhabits one of these. Former Taloja inmates such as Irfan Ali (pseudonym) recall meetings between Salem and Gawli as being hot on the jail grapevine. "Simply because there was little else to do. No satellite TV, no movies, everybody watched everyone else," says the property dealer from Thane who recently served a six-month term in a cheating case. "You get the idea how different the dons are from the way they dress," he says. Salem stills looks the way he did when he got off the flight that brought him back from Portugal in 2005: Impeccably dressed in jeans, T-shirt, white sneakers and, unusually for humid Mumbai, a dark velvet jacket. Gawli, the earthy don who is known to have never set foot outside India, sports white kurta pyjamas and his trademark Gandhi topi.Arun GawliBoth lord over tiny empires in prison. Salem has two gang members with him. Gawli, arrested within days of the March 2008 murder of Shiv Sena corporator Kamlesh Jamsandikar, has six gang members for company. Ali says Gawli is particular about his health, but with no major ailments warranting his shifting to a government hospital, he spends most of his time in one of the barracks doubling as a hospital, being 'treated' for minor ailments. He is guarded by his henchmen including Dinesh Narkar, a tall, well-built man, and spends most of his time smoking hashish smuggled into the prison by human couriers. Salem, on the other hand, smokes only imported Marlboros. He works out regularly in his cell and plays badminton, a court-granted privilege. He walks in the prison with a touch-me-not menace, ignoring the salutations of fellow inmates. He once snarled "Goli yahaan khayega ya bahar khayega? (Do you want to be shot inside or outside the prison?)" at a jail staffer who asked him to hurry up a meeting with his lawyer in the common meeting area.Yet it was an aluminum spoon that landed Salem in Taloja Jail. Gangster Mustafa Dossa slashed Salem's face with the improvised prison weapon in the Arthur Road Jail in July 2010. The man who prides himself on his movie-star looks briefly appeared with a bandaged face. The attack on Salem was not a stray one. Two criminals, John D'Souza and Azgar Ali Mehendi, were killed in the jail in 2006 and 2007 respectively. In September 2010, Salem's aide Mehendi Hassan, an accused in the Pradeep Jain murder case, was attacked in Arthur Road Jail by two undertrials. In January this year, a murder accused, Akram Khan, was beaten to death by another inmate.It is not known what sparked the argument, but Dossa and Salem were instantly separated: Salem to Taloja and Dossa, deported from Dubai in 2003 for his involvement in the 1993 Mumbai blasts, to the humbler Thane prison. Police officials believe the argument was a set-up, meant to move the two high-profile gangsters away from the blinding glare of India's most famous prisoner: Ajmal Amir Kasab. Ever since the sole surviving gunman of the November 26, 2008, Mumbai attack arrived, the colonial prison has been under heightened scrutiny and security, stifling the gang bosses' lifestyle. While Gawli is known to pay for services within the prison-his gang is still active in central Mumbai-Salem has stridently refused to pay the estimated Rs 1 lakh per month for special privileges, including meals from outside twice a day. A lawyer who knows Gawli well reveals that the gangster has informants everywhere in and outside the jail premises. "Be it a vada pav vendor or a tea stall proprietor, everyone is loyal to Gawli," he says.Jail is the safest place for gangsters to run their syndicate, says a well-known criminal lawyer who has handled several high-profile gangsters. Their modus operandi is very simple. A gang member deliberately commits a crime and refuses bail. Eventually, he is lodged in the same jail where his master is. He takes instructions and contacts from his boss, secures bail in two or three days, comes out of the jail and executes the supari (contract) he has taken. "Salem and Gawli have also adopted the same tactic. That is why their operations are in full swing from behind bars," the lawyer says."Salem has only two cases pending against him in the Delhi High Court. He will be free soon, in two or three years," predicts his former lawyer Ashok Saraogi. "He has time on his side," he says. Salem discontinued Saraogi's services in 2008 following differences. Salem wanted to contest the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections by floating his own party. He suspected that Saraogi was serving his own political ambitions in his client's name. Saraogi, however, refutes the charge. "Salem could not contest the election because he was not a voter in the state. His name was removed from the voting list soon after he fled Mumbai."A school dropout, Salem hawked electronics at a departmental store in Andheri, Mumbai, in the 1990s and began work as a courier for the Dawood gang before parting ways in 1998 after a turf war with another Dawood lieutenant, Chhota Shakeel. Salem has spent an estimated Rs 40 lakh in legal fees in the past few years. He has generated the cash through hawala transactions for some influential politicians. "When he was deported in 2005, Salem entered into a pact with one of the leading investigative agencies in India. The agency agreed not to give him third-degree treatment in the jail in lieu of his destroying evidence against the politicians' hawala rackets," a senior officer told india today. The "friends and well wishers" are still bearing the expenses of his legal case."Gawli is safest in prison," says Billu, a police informant in his early 30s. "Understand his psyche. This is a gangster petrified of death. He once refused to step out of a police van during a drive of over 200 km from Pune's Yerwada Jail to Mumbai because he feared he would be shot in an encounter. In October 2004, when he was contesting an election from Chinchpokli as an independent, Gawli had refused to cast his own vote fearing senior police inspector Vijay Salaskar posted outside his home would kill him in an encounter. Gawli is known to stay alert in Taloja. He stands with his back to the wall when his cell is being cleaned. Having spent over two decades in prison, he knows the four walls are not safe."State Home Minister R.R. Patil had admitted in the Legislative Council in March that there was inadequate security in the state's prisons. "The jails in the state are over populated. Some jails are very old and need to be repaired," he said.With curbs on police recruitment, the demand for higher security is unlikely to be met anytime soon. In effect, the crime lords will continue to rule in prison till they are freed.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 30, 1999 00:00 IST--- ENDS ---

Download App

Get 37% off on an annual Print +Digital subscription of India Today Magazine

Abu Salem and Arun Gawli live life on their own terms in jail

Creature comforts. Aides by their side. Away from the glare of Mumbai, Abu Salem and Arun Gawli live life on their own terms in jail.

PUBLICATIONS

TELEVISION

EVENTS

RADIO

GAMING

USEFUL LINKS

PRINTING

WELFARE

DISTRIBUTION

SYNDICATIONS

WEBSITES

EDUCATION