MUMBAI UNDERWORLD AND MIDDLEMEN

by -Vaidehi Sachin

 Hobnobbing with men in the riders of power is a falling common to all those who carry serious ambitions and have the will and dash to see it achieved doubly quick and preferably early in life. This habit has made and even marred the careers of all such who work within the fringes of power like journalists, lawyers, financiers, police officers, and even political touts.  Police officers in particular have always managed to get themselves off the hook or stalled some political big wig out to get them .Such games necessarily requires the co operation and even active connivance of not only those in political power but also their middlemen.

       Such middlemen often have turned out to be journalists who win the trust of these power centers , and act as brokers for their business, Journalists have the virtuous advantage of being able to get entry anywhere in the corridors of power mainly due to the importance of the mass media and its ability to transmit the sound bytes. Mention the camera and sound bytes and there may not be single politician of any hue able to resist the possible good repercussions of such a chance.

      It is this co operative spirit that has made the careers of many a journalist and his many patrons.  A sterling example of this game of ups and downs is perhaps the case of former journalist Ketan Tirodkar, once known to the fraternity of Mumbai scribes as an ace crime reporter. Ketan, to use a crime reporting phrase, struck pay dirt early in the game of life. A job in a bank meant access to several bits of crucial information to act upon or even possibly trade upon. The job acted as a catalyst to his plans to make it big in life on his own steam, long since having refuse to depend upon his reputed well to do family‘s resources.   

      Finding himself in a courier company he became an ace at extracting and even trading crucial bits of information sustained with uncomplicated evidence which could help his company rivals to steal a march over his own company.

      From there it was only a step away to journalism with the help of ambitious police officers who did not really have too many scruples about maintaining a sanctimonious way to the top of their careers.Among such officers were the encounter specialists who owed their long careers as sharp shooting cops to Tirodkar, who selectively picked their targets for them. Befriending don-turned-politician Arun Gawli who entrusted to him the job of helping build his party the Akhil Bhartiya Sena (ABS) along with his (Gawli ‘s ) trusted men Jitendra Dabholkar , Bhaskar Amdar, Vasant Gomne and Raju Philip , Thirodkar started decimating his benefactor by systematically setting up the latter’s men as targets for encounters .   That period, the mid –nineties, were choc a bloc with encounters , the Gawli gang in particular losing a large number of men to the recently celebrated late officer Vijay Salaskar ‘s team.    A large part of the repertoire of gangsters killed by Salaskar were significantly Gawli men , including his top aides  Sada Pawle , Vijay Tandel and Dilip Kulkarni which reduced the strength of the Dagdi  Chawl – based Gangster.    After Salaskar had systematically rid the scene off quite a few dreaded manes , the time was  ripe for the entry of motivated journalists and it was around this time that tirodkar had endeared himself to the Chotta Shakeel gang after his various ploys to get rid of Gawli men. He did not find himself alone there but had company in an other sharp – shooting cop, Daya Nayak, who had gained fame or notoriety as one would have it as man to be feared.

    Nayak’s associations with a school based in native Dakshin kannada had already come in for scrutiny when Tirodkar blew the whistle on him and exposed his dealing with Chota Shakeel and the course of history followed with Tirodkar in apparent moment of remorse at his own deeds and surrendered himself to the law, the custodians of which by then thought it apt to charge him with the stringent Maharashtra Control Of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA)           Having made a clean breast himself of all his past deeds and misdeeds and even now in the midst of facing the flak for it, Tirodkar does not require any public acknowledgement   but is a subject of this column only due to his proximity with the columnist who has closely observed his career in both its upward and downward swings.

        Tirodkar has paid for his self-confessed misdeeds the balance installments via his uncertain life, but he stands as an example to all aspiring young journalists or even less actively disposed young people of the route a human being can take to the top. What he has done can be called criminal but one must at the same time think of several officers like the one mentioned in this column. Almost all of them and even a long list of other Dirty Harrys not mentioned must be admitting in private that very often all that glistens and very brightly so is not pay dirt .   Of police officials it must be said that they too are every bit as media savvy and scheming natures to use their offices in an extra constitutional manner.