M. Gautham
Machaiah
As a cub reporter with the Indian
Express in the mid nineties I was assigned to travel on the maiden flight of
East West Airlines from Bangalore to Mumbai. The excitement was high because East
West Airlines was the first scheduled private airline after the Government’s
Open Skies Policy was announced in 1991.
There was a heavy downpour when
we landed in Mumbai, then Bombay, and the media team was stranded in the airport
for quite some time as the organisers had apparently forgotten to arrange any
transport. Finally, we managed to hunt down an East West executive who bundled
us into a swank Mercedes Benz which was ferrying airhostesses home.
Those days, unlike in today’s era
of low cost flights, the job of an air hostess was much envied, but a Mercedes
Benz to transport them was a bit far-fetched. Later we were to learn that such opulence
was affordable as the airlines was allegedly funded by underworld don Dawood
Ibrahim, with his friend Thakiyudeen Wahid as the front. This was however
denied by Wahid’s family.
After an exhausting drive across
Mumbai’s rain and traffic clogged roads, we reached the hotel where we were
received by an East West representative who profusely apologised for the
inconvenience. The vehicles which were sent to fetch us were stuck in the rain
and hence could not reach the airport, he explained.
We proceeded to our rooms to
freshen up and by the time we returned to the lobby to join our host for
dinner, he had disappeared, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Something did not
seem fine, right from the word go. But uppermost in our minds was not the
hospitality but a good copy to file when we returned to Bengaluru, then Bangalore.
Though the next day we were scheduled
to interact with Thakiyudeen Wahid, the managing director of the company, our
hosts remained incommunicado. Finally, we managed to establish contact with Wahid’s
office and literally force them to organise a press conference. The next day,
they tried to wriggle out of the interaction saying we would get late for the
flight, but we would have none of it and simply refused to return until we had
a good story.
Left with no option, Wahid was
forced to meet us. Being a hot blooded journalist, I took on Wahid for the
shoddy treatment meted to us, unmindful of the fact that he supposedly had the
backing of one of India’s most powerful dons, Dawood Ibrahim. I gave him an
earful, telling him how for a journalist a good report was more important than freebees.
Wahid apologised sincerely and then addressed the media team.
This was my first and last meeting
with Wahid as he was gunned down by gangster Chota Rajan’s men in 1995, and the
airline wound up the next year. For long, the question why Chota Rajan made Thakiyudeen
Wahid a pawn in his fight against Dawood remained unanswered.
Now, nearly 20 years after the
incident the jigsaw puzzle falls into place as I read S. Hussain Zaidi’s
brilliant book on the Mumbai mafia, Byculla
to Bangkok. Though why Chota Rajan fell out with his onetime boss Dawood is
a long story, the murder of Wahid had its genesis in the funding of a Ganesh
pandal.
During the Ganesh chaturthi
festivities, the standing of a don in Mumbai is gauged by the grandeur of his
pandal. A businessman from Chembur, Omprakash Kukreja would contribute Rs 50
lakh to Chota Rajan’s pandal every year. It was around this time that Rajan had
eliminated one of Dawood’s trusted lieutenants Sautya, who was gunned down on a
busy street of Dubai in broad day light.
Angered by this audacity, Dawood
hatched a plan to cut Rajan’s financial support and also bring him ignominy by
spoiling his Ganesh celebrations. In September 1995, a month after Sautya’s
killing, an AK-47 was used to gun down Kukreja in his office. The Mumbai police
could never arrest the killers and the case was closed in November 1996.
Rajan who knew that Kukreja was
killed to weaken him financially, decided to retaliate in a similar fashion. In
November 1995, just two months after Kukreja’s murder Chota Rajan’s men shot
dead Thakiyudeen Wahid, in whose company Dawood was
alleged to have invested heavily. With this, India’s first private airline too
had to shut shop.
Now, both Dawood Ibrahim and
Chota Rajan have sworn to eliminate each other. Who will win this round? Only
time will tell.
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