Godfathers of Crime: Face-To-Face With India's Most Wanted by Sheela Raval

Author:Sheela Raval [Raval, Sheela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Non-Fiction, Organised Crime, True Crime
ISBN: 9789350099766
Google: x2LuCgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 9350099764
Publisher: Hachette India
Published: 2015-09-11T23:00:00+00:00

We finished recording the interview at around 2.30 p.m. and Mirchi asked us to lunch with his family and the others who were present. He recommended Qadri’s nihari, and said we must taste it. The barrister praised Mirchi’s culinary skills as well. According to him, Mirchi was not only a gourmand but also a good chef, and it was his nose for good food that had contributed to the success of his hotels.

After lunch, we wanted some candid shots of Mirchi, so we asked him to walk in his garden with me. Though he agreed, Asif insisted we could not record any further. We took some shots as Mirchi walked around his backyard holding his granddaughter’s hands. He kept repeating that he wanted to go back home to Mumbai. He could not imagine going to an Indian jail at the age of 63, he said, and wondered aloud whether at that age his body would be able to withstand the harsh life in prison. His advocate Keshwani had already warned him that his return would not be as smooth and easy as he seemed to think it would be as he would have to face the law in India. He shared some more juicy tidbits about the crime world and its Indian connections, after which we packed up and left for our hotel.

Over the next two days, Asif called on us daily. The evening before we left for India, he once again invited us for dinner at an Indian restaurant with his family. Mirchi didn’t join us this time, but while chatting with his wife Heena I learnt some more about their lives – about Mirchi’s interest in Bollywood and her brother Akbar Asif’s plans to revive Mughal-e-Azam in colour. I later found out about Akbar Asif’s alleged proximity to the Dawood Ibrahim family and the common link with the Memons.

After we aired the interview on 16 November 2011, Mirchi called us. He sounded overwhelmed. A former CBI director had emphasized on our show that if Mirchi wanted to surrender before a court in India, as he had told us in the interview, this should have been pursued by the agency. We, as a channel, conveyed it to the agency bosses then. Ironically, the rhetoric of the agency to bring back India’s most-wanted criminals and terrorist fugitives to face justice didn’t stand in Mirchi’s case. He began cooperating with Indian agencies, and his leads helped the Intelligence Bureau bust a counterfeit nexus before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2012, but no mention was made of his return to India.

After the interview, Mirchi periodically checked in on me to see if there was any progress. Six months later, he had an open-heart surgery and got Asif to tell me about it. I had by this time given up on his case and his return to India. I think he knew it as well. Yet, he was hoping against hope. Perhaps he had seen his own end, or maybe he had fallen out with his mentors.

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