Mumbai’s forgotten encounter specialists eliminated organised crime

Mumbai in 1995 was overrun by the mafia who were indiscriminately killing anyone who refused to pay extortion money.…. Businessmen, Bollywood Badshahs, airline tycoons. 100 shoot outs in one year. One murder by the mafia every third or fourth day. Gulshan Kumar of T -series, Thakiyuddin Wahid of East-West Airlines, Builder Om Prakash Kukreja.

The Mumbai police tried all tricks in the book including getting draconian laws like TADA, POTA and MCOCA. The criminals managed to eventually get bail and moved to Dubai and other countries like Bangkok from where they pursued their activities and gained more notoriety.

It was then that a crack team of policemen from the crime branch stepped in. These policemen were excused from the grind of daily policing. They were dubbed encounter specialists as they “killed gangsters in an encounter”.

At least six of them were from the batch of 1983 who trained as police inspectors under the tutelage of IPS officer Arvind Inamdar who at the time helmed the Maharashtra Police Academy in Nasik. Vijay Salaskar, Pradeep Sharma, Praful Bhosale, Aslam Momin, Arun Borude and Ravindra Angre.

Between them and a few other notable and not-so notable cops, the killer cops are believed to have killed a combined 1000 bodies. They staked out the gangsters for days and months and didn’t let go until they brought him back in a body bag.

Mumbai’s resident gangster, Arun Gawli was so terrified of Salaskar that he would surround himself with an army of women from his hide-out at Dagdi chawl. Everytime Gawli peeped out from his hide-out he had a clear view of Salaskar who had pitched a police chowky bang opposite the gangster’s lair. At other times Gawli would hide in a warren of rooms, fervently hoping that Salaskar would never discover his whereabouts in case he came barging in.

Eventually of course the encounter specialists ran their course. And they didn’t come out smelling of roses. They had their fair share of t r o u b l e s o m e questions. Daya Nayak who had worked under Pradeep Sharma came under the radar and so did Pradeep Sharma. Sharma had to spent three and a half years behind bars for the Lakhan Bhaiya encounter until he got acquitted.

Life for the encounter specialists had its downside. Arun Borude from the class of 83 committed suicide by walking before a train in his native village in Ahmednagar after being accused in a serial rape case. There were others who were under the department’s scanner for owning disproportionate assets. Some of the officers still don’t know what hit them as they were cast off the pedestal in one go soon after the mafia disappeared.

At one point they hobnobbed with Amitabh Bachchan and high-society. Most of them have not reinvented themselves. Pradeep Sharma tried his hand in politics and is still hoping to make his mark.

Contrary to their popular image as violent, trigger happy men, most of them lived uneventful lives. Except for one who was a ladies man, most of these men came home to their families. Vijay Salaskarhardly spent any time at home but doted on his wife and daughter. Daya Nayak is a family man. Pradeep Sharma who was the inspiration for writer Vikram Chandra in Sacred Games, has a wife and two daughters. He is known to be very loyal and devoted to his wife. His wife has often said that she has never seen her husband angry or scream at anybody. Sharma himself has often said in interviews that he sleeps well at night after an “encounter” as he thinks that he has got rid of filth.

Were all of them filth? Were there some borderline cases? When Vijay Salaskar gunned down 18-year-old Imran Sheikh in 2007, there were a lot of unanswered questions. The boys’ parents who never recovered from the loss took Salaskar to court. Was Imran Sheikh a casualty of a war? Or was he just a number.