JIGNA

VORA

Behind Bars in Byculla
My Days in Prison

PENGUIN BOOKS
 CONTENTS

Prologue

1. Entering Laal Gate

2. Barrack No. 2
3. Spider Woman
4. The Saffron Lady
5. First Encounter with the Police
6. Ruler of the Jail
7. Joining Mumbai Mirror
8. Usha Maa
9. Meeting a Stalwart: Jyotirmoy Dey
10. The Outsiders
11. The Rise and Fall
12. Jail’s Mandakini
13. Collateral Damage
14. The Killing of J. Dey
15. Dog Eat Dog
16. Days of Destruction
17. Caste Factor
18. Unlikely Saviour
19. Cheerleaders
20. The Birthday Gift
21. Cheats
22. My World War III
23. Return of Rajan
24. The Trial
25. Accused No. 11 Acquitted

Epilogue: The Mystery

Footnotes
4. The Saffron Lady
14. The Killing of J. Dey
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
 EBURY PRESS AND BLUE SALT
BEHIND BARS IN BYCULLA

Jigna Vora is a crime reporter who has worked at the Free Press Journal, Mid-
day, Mumbai Mirror and the Asian Age. She also practises healing, tarot card
reading and astrology. She is currently researching for and writing web series
and movies.
For my loving son, and my guru Satish Kaku
 Prologue

Friday, 11 May 2018

A resounding gunshot echoed through the corridors of Himanshu Roy’s home at

Suniti Apartments, Nariman Point, Mumbai. His wife and two domestic helpers
rushed inside his room. A pool of blood streamed around the fallen body of
Himanshu Roy, an officer of the coveted Indian Police Service from the batch of
1988. Moments before, he had placed the cold barrel of his licensed revolver in
his mouth and pulled the trigger. The bullet had entered through his mouth and
pierced through his skull. Roy’s driver, a constable with the Mumbai Police,
informed the Control Room about the incident. Authorities were quick to
respond. Sirens from ambulances and police jeeps converged towards Gen. J.
Bhosale Road, where Suniti Apartments stood tall against the Mumbai skyline.
Roy was rushed to Bombay Hospital. Doctors hurried to check on him, but the
wounds were the work of a man trained in the use of firearms. He had left
nothing to chance. Additional Director General of Police (Establishment)
Himanshu Roy, aged fifty-four, was declared dead at 1.47 p.m. His body was
taken to GT Hospital at Crawford Market for a post-mortem under tight security.
The hospital was metres away from the police commissioner’s office, the
premises of which had also housed top officers of Mumbai Police, including
Himanshu Roy. Tributes from fellow cops, politicians, top-notch lawyers and
media personnel began pouring in. The news flashed over TV channels and
flooded social media timelines. An entire city mourned the death of a super cop.
Roy had been fighting a prolonged battle with renal cancer. He had been
operated upon in the year 2000, but the cancer had returned with a vengeance
nearly sixteen years later and spread to his brain and his bones. This had
rendered him out of action for the past two years. His skin had darkened due to
chemotherapy. He had been reduced to a pale shadow of the imposing
personality that had once made criminals cower with fear. The bulky muscles
that often bulged in his shirts during press conferences and flexed on to the front
pages of newspapers had grown frail and weak. He had lost a lot of weight. A
white beard had covered his jawline.
But even in the depression of battling a fatal disease, the super cop gave no
warning that he had made up his mind. Or maybe he did. The evening before his
death, he took out time for what he was most obsessed about: a hard workout at
the gym. He was a devout follower of Lord Hanuman, the god of strength. A
photograph of Bajrangbali standing in all his glory had once adorned the wall of
Himanshu’s office at the Crime Branch. He would visit the Hanuman temple
near his office every Saturday. And on the day he killed himself, he had eaten a
good breakfast for the first time in several days. The man who loved eating
tandoori chicken asked his cook to prepare his favourite dish for lunch. These
could have been signs that he intended to continue his fight with the enemy that
had plagued his body.
Or maybe he wanted to relive some semblance of his best days before
breathing his last.
Perhaps it was the latter, because he later walked into his bedroom and wrote
the suicide note that was eventually found in a folder by investigators. The note
read that he was committing suicide due to the ‘frustration’ of his illness.
Investigators also believed that he had taken out his revolver from his locker a
day earlier. His note said, ‘No one is responsible for my suicide.’
As joint commissioner of police (Crime), Himanshu Roy had handled
extremely sensational cases like the Laila Khan murder, the Kohinoor Mill rape,
and a multi-crore diamond heist in Goregaon. He had also led the investigation
in the high-profile Indian Premier League betting scandal. But the murder of
crime journalist J. Dey in 2011 had put him in the media spotlight like no other
case. It was covered extensively in the media because one of their own had been
murdered in cold blood. The shootout was carried out by the hitmen of
underworld don Chhota Rajan. Ten men were arrested, and Rajan was also
charge-sheeted in the case. But in a bizarre twist to the entire episode, thirty-
seven-year-old Jigna Vora, a female journalist who was then deputy bureau chief
of the Asian Age, was taken into police custody for instigating the murder.
That journalist was I.
‘We have thirty-six damning transcripts of Jigna Vora and Chhota Rajan
plotting the murder of J. Dey,’ Roy had told a delegation of journalists who went
to meet him in the presence of then home minister R.R. Patil.
The case was heard over a period of nearly seven years. Lives were destroyed,
and families torn apart. My promising career was shattered to pieces, and could
never be put together again. On 2 May 2018, the Maharashtra Control of
Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) court convicted Chhota Rajan and eight other
accused in the case. But I was acquitted after seven long years, a part of which I
spent in prison.
This is my story.
 1
ENTERING LAAL GATE

9 December 2011

I stripped down to the last piece of cloth on my body. Two lady constables
flanked me inside a dingy room in the Byculla Jail. The room had no windows.
But the lack of ventilation did not suffocate me as much as the humiliation did.
The crassness with which the constables made me shed my clothes shook me to
the core. For the two women, barely in their thirties, it was routine. For me, even
the dim orange glare from the tiny bulb felt like a violation.
‘Take off your underwear,’ the stout constable said.
‘Please,’ I said with folded hands. ‘I am menstruating.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Make it quick!’
I pulled my underwear down to my ankles and stepped out of it. The constable
checked my undergarments for contraband. To my utter disbelief, she even
checked the sanitary pad I had worn without batting an eyelid.
‘Now,’ the stout constable said, ‘sit down and stand up. Five times.’
As a law graduate and a journalist, squatting, I knew, was a police drill, to
check contraband that one may be carrying in their private parts. My body
shivered, as I did what I was asked to. I squatted, five times, my vagina exposed,
blood dripping down my thighs. Once sure, they asked me to dress up and step
out of the room. I cleaned up and put my clothes back on. I picked up the plastic
bag in which I had carried a comb, toothpaste, toothbrush and a bar of Lux soap
that my lawyer Jayesh Vithlani had handed me when the cops dragged me out of
the courtroom to be taken to the jail.
When I stepped outside the dingy room, I was ordered to wait in the reception
area. The heightened ceiling had two fans rotating slowly, their blades covered
with thick dust. Even though it was December and the weather bearable, I felt
the sweat roll down my ribs. Two male constables with self-loading rifles stared
at me, from top to bottom. They exchanged a look that conveyed a voyeuristic
pleasure of knowing what I had just been through. Something rose inside my
throat, a scream perhaps; but whatever it was, I held it in and gazed at the dirty
floor. When I looked up again, the constables were still staring.
I covered myself with the woollen shawl that I had purchased from Sikkim,
where I had spent a blissful vacation only a few months ago.
A woman constable then led to me towards Laal Gate. True to its name, it was
a huge iron gate painted in red. To me, it carried a sense of foreboding that once
I crossed this gate, my life of freedom would be dictated by the rules of the jail.
As a reporter, I had filed stories of various accused, such as Sujata Nikhalje,
the wife of Chhota Rajan; Fahmeeda, a bomb blast accused; Maria Susairaj, an
accused in the sensational Neeraj Grover murder case; Jaya Chheda, accused of
murdering her husband. I had never thought that I would one day be following in
the footsteps of these women. Crossing that threshold changed my life for ever
—in ways that could never be undone. All the identities I had worked so hard to
build—a dutiful daughter to my parents, a loving mother to my son, a woman
journalist who fought to carve her space in the male-dominated bastion of crime
reporting—were reduced to a four-digit number in the annals of that government
prison. The undertrial number that jail officials assigned to me was 1193. I was
ordered to sit under a huge tree near the entrance. I rested my head against the
thick trunk as the constable completed her paperwork.
I had lived life on my own terms. I have never been concerned about others’
opinion about me. But as I sat there, one thought spun through my mind
constantly: What will people think of me?
Soon, I was taken to the jailer’s office. Aagya madam, as the jailer was
known, sat in her chair, while a woman, wearing a nightie, wailed beside her.
The jailer gave me a stern look as I passed through her room, which led to the
barracks. I was put in Circle Number 1. Due to logistics and security reasons, the
various complexes in a jail are called circles. There were six barracks in Circle 1
and two barracks in Circle 2. Byculla Jail comprised two circles for women.
Depending upon your crime, and later, your behaviour (if someone creates
nuisance or does not follow rules), inmates are shifted from Circle 1 to Circle 2.
The lady constables knew about my impending arrival. It was probably due to
the constant media coverage that my case had received. The inmates too seemed
to know who I was. I walked past a group of inmates, who sat in a semicircle.
My arrival deviated their attention.
‘Look,’ said one of them and elbowed the other. ‘The new whore has arrived.’
The barrack was like a dormitory, with stained walls and black limestone
flooring. The constables gave me a thin sleeping mat, an aluminium plate and a
mug. In that large room full of women and children, I was left to find my own
space. A plaque on the wall told me that the barrack had been built only nine
years ago. With very little ventilation and a filthy stench, it was dirtier than a
warehouse. There were nearly forty women in that room. Some looked
comfortable, singing songs and chit-chatting, or bonding by picking lice from
another’s head, while others just kept to themselves. There were infants howling
and children playing around the room. ‘Why are there kids here?’ I asked the
room, but no one bothered to answer me. I put down my head on my knees and
sat there, hoping it would all disappear when I looked up again. When I did, I
found a boy, barely five years old, staring at me.
‘Aunty, why are you crying?’
I sniffed.
‘Don’t worry, God will make everything right,’ he said and ran off.
I thought about my son. He is twelve years old. How would he react to all
this? What would he think of me? Would he believe that I had done something
wrong? The thoughts made me numb.
The undertrial inmates had their own way of allocating space to the other
inmates, depending on their reputation. Those at the lower rung of the barrack’s
social ladder received barely enough space to sleep. Relative luxury was
accorded to those who were higher in the hierarchy of power. One of the women
had pointed me towards a corner. ‘That is your area,’ she said. ‘Stay within your
limit.’
 At 5.30 p.m., dinner was served inside the barracks. On my aluminium plate, I
had two chapattis, dal and some vegetables. Strands of black hair floated in the
watery dal. I put the plate aside and wept again. Pangs of pain cramped my
stomach. I had hardly eaten since my arrest. I felt weak and exhausted, but I
could not bring myself to eat the food I had been served. An African undertrial,
who had been observing me from a distance, sensed my predicament.
‘You are the journalist, aren’t you?’ she said.
I nodded.
‘Did you commit the murder?’
‘No,’ I said, as if it meant anything. ‘No,’ I emphasized.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re a good person.’
I didn’t know how to respond.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.
I shook my head. She stared at me, reached inside her pockets and pulled out a
coarse piece of bread.
‘Eat,’ she said. ‘Eat it.’
I took the piece of bread from her hands. Soon she sensed a prison guard
approaching and rushed back to her place. Her kindness felt nice. But I just did
not have the appetite.
The barracks were locked down at 6 p.m., a procedure that was known as
bandi. Huge, black, iron locks were put on all doors at that time. Doors too were
made of iron rods, which allowed inmates to speak to those on the other side.
As I wiped the tears off my cheeks, a woman in her thirties, sitting diagonally
opposite, watched me intently. She wore a blue track pant and white T-shirt. Her
hair was tied in a neat bun, clasped with a black hair clip. A thick, red tilak ran
through the middle of her forehead. Pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses were
hung from the iron rods behind her. The most prominent one was that of
Goddess Kali, the destroyer of evil. The woman occupied three times the space
that the other inmates had. She summoned me to her temple-like corner and
introduced herself as Paromita Chakraborty.
‘Aren’t you Jigna Vora?’ she asked, in fluent English.
I shivered at the baritone of her voice and replied hesitantly, ‘Y-Y-Yes.’
Paromita stared right into my eyes, measuring me perhaps. ‘Don’t worry.
You’ll be fine.’
 I heaved a sigh of relief. She turned around and pulled out an open packet of
potato wafers.
‘Eat,’ she said.
I hesitated, but the intensity of her glare made me pick up one wafer and put it
in my mouth. The wafer crunched loudly under my teeth.
‘Tea?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Go back to your place.’
I did what I was told. At around 8.30 p.m., the inmates prepared to sleep, as
the television in the barrack wasn’t working. They bundled their extra clothes
into their dupattas to use as a pillow, and I copied them. I could hear the chatter,
most of them discussing their court hearings. I thought about my son and wept.
Another inmate slept next to me, close enough that if I didn’t turn over very
carefully in my sleep, I might land on top of her. She smelt much like the
mouldy barrack. I wondered if I would stink the same way if I had to spend more
days here. I yearned to relieve myself, but I resisted, not wanting to witness the
sight of a dirty toilet. I stood up and paced along the little space by the walls. An
inmate pulled her blanket off her face.
‘Go sleep, whore,’ she said. ‘Why are you disturbing all of us?’
I raised my little finger, indicating that I needed to use the bathroom. The
inmate contorted her face in irritation and pointed towards the toilet.
Finally giving up, I walked through the narrow passage, past blue drums that
stored water for daily use. Four Indian-style toilets, each of them equally dirty
and stained, awaited me. I held my breath and entered through a door that only
covered my torso once I planted my soles on the footrest. My head and the other
end of my body were completely exposed. I prayed for some privacy.
I returned to my place and lay down at my designated space. The lights, I
learnt, were never turned off. As a rule, they are switched on, twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week. As I lay there under the lights, I knew what having my
own space meant. To own a single bed in a small flat in suburban Mumbai. I
remembered the tantrums I would throw if my grandmother would accidentally
switch on the light while I was sleeping. Here, I couldn’t do a thing about it.
With the hard floor under my back, I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling
and thinking about my son.
 I had just fallen asleep when a sudden commotion woke me up. It was 5.30
a.m., time to wake up so that the jail officials could do a headcount. Each inmate
was paired with another accused of a similar crime and asked to sit in the centre
of the barrack. The gravity of the crime decided the order. Accused chain
snatchers, pickpockets, robbers and murderers—all sat in order. I sat alone. I was
the only one booked under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organized
Crime Act (MCOCA) that the government had formed to combat organized
crime and terrorism. I looked down as the inmates stared and chattered.
‘Is she a terrorist? Is she from the underworld?’
 2
BARRACK NO. 2

Everyone wanted to know Jigna Vora. In that pity-worthy barrack, I had

achieved sudden fame. The women were curious about me, each one of them
asking blatant questions one after another. ‘Are you a member of the Chhota
Rajan gang?’ ‘You work for the underworld, no?’ ‘Did you commit the murder?’
I ignored all their questions. They were more like accusations. Most of them
talked to me and looked at me with the certainty that I was a murderer. Some
were unsure if I had committed the crime. But I stuck to my lawyer’s advice that
I should not indulge in unnecessary conversations. He had warned me that cops
and crooks both have informers inside the jail.
Barrack No. 2 in Circle 1, where I was placed, was reserved for old women, or
those with kids or severe medical conditions. After the morning headcount, I
wondered if I would be able to take a bath. I asked a thin woman in her fifties,
Samaira Bibi, who had slept next to me, about the bathing area. She pointed to
the same dingy toilet I had used the previous night.
‘Can I get some hot water?’ I asked.
‘Half a bucket of warm water is allowed for the kids,’ she said. ‘Adults don’t
get it easily.’
Another inmate told me that a bucket of hot water was reserved only for the
big sharks.
I queued up outside the toilet, waiting for my turn. Other inmates tied their
dupattas above the doors of the toilets to cover the upper half of their bodies. In
that reeking toilet, I followed the other inmates and knotted my dupatta over the
two rusty nails on the walls before bathing.
After bathing, some of the inmates settled down to read the newspaper.
Marathi newspapers were provided in all the barracks. Most inmates had read
about my case over the past ten days. They continued to prod me in the hope of
learning more details. Suddenly, from amidst the chaos around me, Paromita
Chakraborty, the tilak-wearing woman who had offered me chips, pulled me
away. It seemed like she was trying to protect me.
I couldn’t help but ask her, ‘Why is everybody so eager to speak with me?’
‘You’re all over the papers,’ Paromita said.
‘So?’
‘They think you’re influential. Being close to a powerful inmate like you can
earn them some leniency from the cops.’
We were interrupted by the call for breakfast. One of the inmates, Usha Maa,
was the warden of the barracks and wore a yellow sari as a mark of
identification. She was serving a life sentence for scheming with her lover to
murder her husband. She was in charge of distributing food to the inmates and
acted as an intermediary between the undertrial inmates and the cops. Everyone
queued up for breakfast. The food was distributed with strict rationing. I was
about to line up too, but Paromita stopped me. Tania, a young Bangladeshi
undertrial who did odd jobs for Paromita, got a plateful of the poha and a mug of
tea for her, and me. I picked the rice flakes with my hands, but they were coarse
and dry. The tea was thin, more water than milk. Tasteless, but I somehow
managed to gulp it down without throwing up. I saw a lot of food being wasted.
‘Who cooks here?’ I asked Paromita.
‘The men cook the food,’ she said. ‘Women are not allowed inside the kitchen.
The jail authorities say women steal a lot of food items for personal
consumption.’
A young girl, about two years of age, playfully tugged at my rust-coloured
kurta. I ruffled her curly hair. Her mother came around and introduced herself as
Nazia. She had been accused in a kidnapping case and had been in jail for the
past four months. I also learnt that Samaira Bibi had been jailed for abetting her
daughter-in-law’s suicide. Her husband and son had also been imprisoned at the
Arthur Road Jail in the same case, but her husband had died of medical
complications in the prison itself. The authorities informed Samaira Bibi only
three days after the death had occurred, by dragging her to the morgue. She
appeared to be a religious woman who always had a prayer on her lips.
Paromita asked if I was aware that Chhota Rajan’s wife Sujata Nikhalje had
also been lodged in the same jail. I didn’t know what to say. As a reporter, I had
worked on many stories about Sujata’s arrest in an extortion case. She had led a
hunger strike inside the jail to highlight the bad conditions. I had written a story
about the strike too. It felt strange, a twist of fate, that long after Sujata had been
released, I had landed up in the same jail.
Lunch was served early at 10.30 a.m., brought in the same huge aluminium
containers. Tania brought me a plate filled with rotis, rice, dal and brinjal curry. I
picked a roti between my fingers, and it was at least five times thicker than the
thin chapatis I was used to eating from my Gujarati grandmother’s kitchen. I
could see worms inside the brinjal, and so I only ate a few morsels of rice. Later,
I washed my plate in the toilet and was on the way back to my barrack when a
woman in her twenties, holding an infant in her arms, called out to me. Her baby
boy’s stomach was bloated and the boy would just not stop crying.
‘Didi?’ she asked. ‘Did you eat?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Do you need anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Let me know if I can help in any way,’ she said.
I nodded and walked away. Samaira Bibi told me that the woman’s name was
Sangeeta. She was a ragpicker and had been jailed for some petty crime.
‘Don’t speak to that woman,’ Samaira Bibi said.
‘Why?’
‘She is sick. Diseased.’
‘What happened to her?’
Samaira Bibi spoke after a long pause, uttering the word with much caution:
‘AIDS.’
I felt sorry for Sangeeta. Other inmates would not even talk to her for the fear
of contracting the virus. Even though I was away from Sangeeta, I could still
hear her baby crying.
 There was a bandi in the barracks from 12 noon to 3 p.m. Some inmates slept,
while some watched Doordarshan on the small television that was mounted on
the wall. Inmates discussed their love for serials like Ramayan and Mahabharat.
The mothers breastfed their infants. The inmates stuck to their groups.
Pickpockets had their own group, same as the robbers.
Much like life outside, social divisions inside Byculla Jail arose out of
occupation. On the boards outside, the jail declared itself as a ‘rehabilitation
centre’, but each group was holed up in a corner, recruiting more personnel in
their gangs and marking their territories for future operations. More than
rehabilitation, the centre seemed to offer an opportunity for the criminals to grow
their existing groups.
Around 1.30 p.m., a lady constable called out my name.
‘Someone is here to meet you,’ she said. ‘In the mulaqaat room.’
‘How do I go there?’
‘Follow me,’ she said.
I stood up hurriedly and followed her to the judicial area. I wondered who my
visitor would be and I hoped that he or she had come with some good news.
On the way, the jailer, Pushpa Kadam, happened to notice me and cast a long
look at my attire.
‘Stop!’ she said.
I froze.
She turned to the constable. ‘Why is Jigna not wearing a dupatta?’
‘Sorry, madam,’ the constable said.
‘Ensure it never happens again,’ Pushpa said before walking away.
The constable chided me for not knowing the rules I had never been told
about. A dupatta was compulsory for every inmate leaving the barracks. She
warned that I would not be allowed to meet my visitors if I did not wear a
dupatta. I promised to keep it handy in the future. Then, she let me into the
mulaqaat room where I was surprised to find my estranged father waiting for me.
The scent of alcohol was evident on his breath.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked.
‘To meet you,’ he said. ‘I was worried.’
‘You found the time to meet me after two weeks?’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘You won’t be getting out anytime soon.’
 ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘What are you saying?’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I meant, I have no money really.’
‘So, what do you want me to do?’
‘Give me some money. I can come to visit you every day.’ He paused. ‘You
are my daughter. You’ll give me the money, right?’
I choked as if a stone had been forced down my throat. ‘I don’t have any
money.’
I could not stand the sight of his face for a minute longer. I stormed out of the
room and rushed back to my barrack. My father’s alcoholism had destroyed my
childhood and my family. The man who once drove a Mercedes Benz in Dubai
had never cared to save a dime for his family. His lifestyle and alcohol had taken
all his glory away. And at a time when I needed a few words of comfort, there he
was, unashamedly asking for money. I shuddered with anger. Tears rolled down
my eyes as I sat in the corner of the barrack. My father had always cared about
his bottle, but never his daughter.
 3
SPIDER WOMAN

One morning, there was a huge commotion. A dark, short woman, clad in white
shorts and a T-shirt, had climbed up several feet along the walls of the barracks
with the help of the pipes. A lack of judgement or a slight slip in balance would
mean she would fall to her death. But it seemed like Sapna Pereira had the
dexterity of a trapeze artist. She continued to scale higher while we craned our
necks to see what exactly she was up to. A repeat offender at the Byculla Jail,
Sapna was a pickpocket from Mumbai’s Juhu area. Her climbing stunts too were
not new. This is why some of the old-timers in the barracks turned a blind eye
towards Sapna’s antics. Some of the concerned inmates rushed to alert the
warden Usha Maa and other jail authorities.
‘Sapna!’ she called out. ‘Come down!’
‘No!’ Sapna shouted from atop. ‘No way!’
‘Why?’ Usha Maa said. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Because these behenchod cops don’t take me to court.’
Sapna had been angry with the policemen. On several occasions when her
case could have come up for hearing, the cops did not take her along. The court
dates were a chance to step out of the stuffy barracks and breathe some fresh air.
Each one of us in the jail awaited them. But the cops from the local arms unit of
the Mumbai Police who were entrusted with the responsibility of accompanying
the inmates from jail to court and back were least bothered. Working in the local
arms unit was nothing but a punishment posting for these police officials.
Seething in their own frustration, the cops were least interested in coordinating
with jail authorities for court dates. This left many like Sapna angered. But her
way of venting was different from others.
‘Sapna,’ Usha Maa shouted again. ‘You’ll hurt yourself. Please come down.’
‘These police-wallahs never show up for my court visit,’ Sapna said. ‘They do
it on purpose.’
‘No, Sapna. It is not like that!’
‘These fuckers don’t want me to get bail!’ Sapna screamed. ‘They want me to
rot in here for ever!’
She climbed higher and reached a ledge and balanced herself. There was just
enough space for one person to stand, but she seemed at home. And then, the
unimaginable happened. She slid her shorts down her legs, and took off her T-
shirt. She stood up there, completely naked. More cops arrived on the scene,
including Constable Waseema Shaikh, who had been a part of the strip search
conducted on me. The cops were angry, but they kept pleading with Sapna to
climb down. Sapna hurled abuses at them. Only when the cops assured her that
they would take all steps to ensure her next court visit would not be missed,
Sapna decided that it was time for her to give up. She came down the pipes, as
easily as she had made her way up. The reconciliatory tone of the cops vanished
as soon as she landed on the ground, but they did not take any further action
because it was close to noon, and about time for the bandi. The flushing red look
on the faces of the cops conveyed that, soon enough, they would teach Sapna a
lesson she would not forget.
That afternoon, Sapna came up to me in the barracks and introduced herself.
She was still wearing the same white shorts and T-shirt. I noticed that she had
very short hair and a flat nose. As we sat with our backs against the walls, she
spoke in typical Mumbaiya slang.
‘Oye, item, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You will get out of jail soon.’
I nodded. A constable was standing at a distance, and she happened to look
our way. The cops always kept a tab on what went on inside the barracks. It was
essential to controlling the place.
‘Never fear these motherfuckers,’ Sapna said and pointed her eyes in the
constable’s direction. ‘They can’t do nothing to us.’
I nodded again.
 ‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in and out of this jail for the last ten years.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘How is your son?’
‘My family is taking care of him.’
‘I have a daughter too,’ she said. ‘People call me a thief. But the poor girl has
lost her vision. I need the money to get her operated.’
I felt sorry for the woman, but I was in a grave situation myself. ‘What about
your bail?’
‘I don’t have money for that either,’ she said. ‘And these gaandus don’t take
me to the court for my hearings. They’ve detained me for the last six months.
How am I supposed to get out?’
‘I understand.’
‘I hope Jaya Maa comes back soon,’ Sapna said. ‘She has promised to help me
with the bail bond.’
Then, she abruptly stood up and left. I noticed she never referred to the cops
without adding an expletive, and she had extreme contempt for any form of
authority.
Sapna and her antics were not news to me. As a journalist, I had read stories
about her. The woman had once worked in the office of a politician in Mumbai.
Her husband, Issac, a native of Karnataka, had died in a road accident. Sapna
was left alone to take care of her teenage daughter who was visually challenged.
She claimed to have taken her daughter to a hospital in New Delhi more than
forty times, but the doctors suggested that she could probably be cured only in
the United States. Sapna soon began saving money to make a trip to the US
someday.
Once, Sapna had been to Mangaluru to check the status of an old robbery
case. When she got back to her hotel room, she found cash worth Rs 47,000 and
gold worth Rs 1.5 lakh missing from her luggage along with her and her
daughter’s passports. An angry Sapna did not know what to do. To grab
attention, she climbed up on a mobile tower. The drama that went on for hours
was widely reported by the media. While the police had recovered the cash and
gold from the accused hotel staff, they could not find the passports as the
accused had set them afire.
Paromita warned me against speaking with Sapna.
 ‘Why?’ I asked.
‘She’s a nuisance. The incident you witnessed in the morning happens all the
time when she is here.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes,’ Paromita said. ‘And she will ask you for money.’
I decided to keep my distance from Sapna. In the evening, the cops called
Sapna outside the barracks on the pretext of some work, and took her to an
isolated room. Inside Barrack No. 2, I heard her screams, and wished that the
cops would stop beating her. After the cops had extracted their revenge for the
trouble she had put them through, Sapna limped her way back to Barrack No. 5.
Her face was swollen, and she was wailing like a child now. The beating seemed
to have crushed her morale, but Paromita was sure that Sapna would be back to
her ways sooner than anyone could imagine.
Over the next few days, Sapna made a lot of effort to draw me into
conversation. But I stuck to my lawyer’s advice and responded in as few words
as possible. The inmates always judged each other, and they always had an
opinion whether or not an undertrial had committed the crime she had been
accused of. I learnt from Sapna that most inmates thought I had committed the
crime. But I couldn’t care less.
The constable, Waseema Shaikh, was unusually cordial with me thereafter.
She also warned me that any form of friendship with Sapna would only land me
in more trouble. The terror of Sapna Pereira was such that even judges were
embarrassed by her antics and would make all attempts to ensure she did not
land up in their courts. After what Waseema had put me through during the strip
search, I was surprised that she was being so friendly with me.
Once Sapna excitedly walked up to me and began narrating an incident. On a
late night in 2007, Sapna had worn a short red skirt, high boots and make-up.
Then she had made her way to Juhu, which was her preferred area of operation.
She had stood at the signal near Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s
bungalow, and waved her thumb suggestively at passing cars, a sign that she
needed to hitch a ride. Several luxury cars passed by, and then a white
ambassador stopped. She rushed towards the car. The tinted windows lowered,
and a bald man in his fifties, sitting on the rear seat, popped his head out.
‘Need a lift?’ he asked.
 She cast a flirtatious glance at the bald man. ‘Yes.’
‘Get inside,’ the man said, grinning.
She ran to the other side and hopped into the car. The driver put the car into
gear. As the car drove on, Sapna moved promiscuously close to the bald man. He
put his hand on her thigh. She smiled. Encouraged, he moved his hand higher to
her waist. She moved closer to him. The man leaned into her, put his hand on her
breast and squeezed. Sapna screamed at the top of her lungs and the car
screeched to a halt in the middle of the road.
‘Bastard!’ Sapna shouted. ‘Are you trying to rape me?’
The man raised his hands in the air. ‘No, no.’
Sapna raised her voice. ‘Oh yes, you are! You saw a helpless woman on the
road, and you tried to rape her!’
‘Please,’ the man said. ‘Please don’t raise your voice.’
Though it was late at night, there was a considerable crowd on the road as
Juhu is usually crowded at that time. Sapna could see heads turn in the car’s
direction.
‘I will scream now,’ Sapna said. ‘Your lecherous act will be all over the
newspapers!’
‘Don’t do this.’ The man clasped his hands tightly. ‘I’ll give you anything you
want.’
‘Hmm.’ Sapna lowered her voice.
‘What do you have in your wallet? Show me.’
‘Three-and-a-half thousand.’ The man pulled a brown wallet out of the back
pocket of his trousers and opened it wide. ‘Take it, take it.’
Sapna collected the money, and her gaze fell on the man’s wrist. He promptly
gave her the wristwatch too.
‘Good,’ Sapna said as she rolled the watch down her hands. She leaned into
the man and ran her fingers over the chain he was wearing around his neck.
‘Gold?’
‘Yes, yes,’ the man said.
He pulled the chain off and handed it over. Sapna collected the loot and
stepped out of the car. The driver sped off like he had seen a ghost. Sapna
laughed on her way back to the Juhu signal, waiting for another scapegoat to
drive her way. About three months after that incident, the police arrested her in a
pickpocketing case. She was produced at the Andheri Metropolitan Court and
led into the courtroom. As her name was announced in the court, she looked up
at the judge and realized it was the same bald man she had looted! The judge’s
face turned white when the reality dawned upon him. Sapna cast a knowing
glance at the judge, a warning that she would reveal the incident in the court.
Hurriedly, the judge signed her bail order and let her go!
Back in the jail, I laughed loud until my ribs hurt. Sapna insisted that she was
a thief, and a blackmailer, but not a prostitute. She had also tried reforming her
life, but in spite of all her attempts, she could not get a respectable job. She stole,
but only to survive and save for her daughter’s treatment. That was all she knew
to do for a living.
In April 2012, Sapna was released on bail. Two years later, in 2014, when I
was glancing through the newspapers, I read another article in the paper about
her. She had climbed up an advertising hoarding in Byculla and caused complete
chaos for four hours. It was only after police and fire brigade officials gave her
the assurance that the government would help her with her daughter’s eye
operation that she came down. And then I thought about how she had climbed up
the wall in the barracks in jail and created the ruckus.
 4
THE SAFFRON LADY

On 28 September 2008, two bombs ripped apart a tiny locality in Malegaon,

where a large part of the population was Muslim. The same day, another bomb
exploded in Gujarat’s Modasa town. More than half a dozen people were killed
and hundreds severely injured, even as the investigators said that they were low-
intensity bombs. The probe into the Malegaon blasts made a surprising and
controversial revelation—involvement of the Hindu right wing. The term
‘saffron terror’ was coined, and used widely. For a country where terrorists were
always Muslims, the accusation of Hindus being bombers was hard to swallow.
Interestingly, at the helm of the investigation was Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS)
chief Hemant Karkare, a Hindu.1
The story about Hindu right wing’s involvement was first reported by the
Indian Express. It was a big miss for crime reporters like me working in other
papers. From the very next day, I began tracking the story, following as many
leads as possible. The ATS had made several arrests in the case, and one of the
accused was Pragya Singh Thakur, a sadhvi (lady monk).2 The sadhvi added
more spectacle to the already dramatic terror probe. The investigators had found
that the explosive was fitted in a motorcycle bearing the licence number MH15
P4572, which they claimed belonged to the sadhvi.
Always clad in a saffron robe, Pragya, who was picked up from a village near
Surat, had taken sanyas in the 2006 Kumbh Mela at Allahabad. In the early
1990s, she had been an active leader of the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad
(ABVP). In her college days, she was known to fearlessly ride motorcycles and
beat up men who harassed women on the roads.
As I followed the story, my interest in Pragya grew with every passing day,
pushing me to prod my sources in the police and the ATS to tell more about her.
Fate brought me face to face with her at Byculla Jail.
Pragya was in the high-security cell, to the right of Barrack No. 2, where I was
lodged. Hers was a solitary cell, with an attached toilet and bathroom. Her
neighbour in the next solitary cell was Fahmeeda Ansari, who was facing death
penalty in the 2003 case of twin bomb blasts at the Gateway of India and Zaveri
Bazaar. Her case was pending for appeal in the high court, for which she had
been shifted from Pune’s Yerwada Jail to Mumbai.
Pragya was off limits to other inmates for her own protection. A woman police
constable guarded her cell attentively round the clock. After the inmates were
locked up in the barracks post-bandi, I would observe, through the gaps between
the iron rods, the constable accompanying the sanyasin for a walk within the jail
compound in the evening. I had noticed that Pragya was in pain and needed
support while she took her evening strolls. It was rumoured that she had been
subjected to severe torture by the ATS, which had led to the deterioration of her
physical condition. At the same time, she was also a matter of national debate
and political importance. The jail officials undoubtedly had to take utmost care
that nothing untoward happened to her. For extra caution, no inmate could even
utter a word to Pragya, unless she initiated the conversation. Though she was in
solitary confinement, inmates could talk with her through the iron rods. Because
of her solitary confinement, she was not allowed to come out during non-bandi
hours or mingle with other inmates.
By the last week of December 2011, around Christmas, I had shifted from the
corner of the barrack and closer to the door. The acute stuffiness of the corner
had worsened my asthma. The door allowed some ventilation, and also gave me
a clear view of the cell where Pragya was lodged. One morning, around 10 a.m.,
Pragya, who was standing outside her cell, happened to notice me. She smiled
and gestured with her hands for me to come over. I went closer to her and for the
first time met the woman in the saffron robe. Her hair was cropped to a length
above her neck, and a red tilak lined her forehead. She spoke polished, scholarly
Hindi.
 ‘People told me you’re here,’ she said. ‘I have been waiting to talk to you.’
‘Me too.’
She pulled out the Hindi edition of the Navbharat Times, and pointed her
finger to a headline. ‘Have you read this?’
I shook my head. I had developed an intense phobia of the newspapers. As a
journalist, I always took pride in seeing my name in the bylines of the stories I
had broken. If a few days passed without my byline on exclusive stories, I would
feel restless. But now, I feared seeing the newspapers with reports about my
case. The mere mention of my name in articles would give me jitters. The media
had already branded me as a criminal. Most of what was printed against me was
malicious libel. The character assassination from people who were once my
fellows made things worse for me.
They wrote about how I liked visiting spas or eating momos, as if that was a
crime. They wrote about love affairs I never knew existed. They wrote about
fortunes I never knew I owned.
Sadhvi Pragya told me that the article was about a witness recording a
statement under Section 164 of the Cr.PC (Criminal Procedure Code) against
me. Such a statement recorded in the presence of a magistrate holds weight even
if the witness turns hostile at a later stage of the trial, unlike a statement recorded
under Section 161, which is recorded in the presence of only the police and is
not admissible as evidence in the court. The article claimed that the case against
me was now watertight. But I feigned indifference even as my heart beat faster
due to what Pragya had told me.
‘People write a lot of things,’ I said. ‘Not all of it may be true.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You wrote articles about me too. But do you really know
what the truth is?’
I stood still, at a loss for words. All this time, I had written about her based on
what I had heard, read or investigated. Now, I was on the receiving end from the
media, and the most absurd reports were being written about me. I had begun to
believe in the innocence of anyone in the jail who claimed to have been framed
in the crimes they were accused of. Pragya seemed to sense the unease on my
face.
‘I know you haven’t committed the crime,’ she said. ‘These bad times will
pass.’
 I just nodded and looked through the gaps into her room. It was remarkably
clean and well maintained. Some of her clothes had been hung to dry over the
clothes line in the passage. Her belongings were neatly organized. The
bathrooms inside the cell had no doors. There was a tubelight in the room, and
an earthen pot for storing drinking water. She also had a bed to sleep in, because
she was suffering from severe back pain. There was also a murti of Lord
Krishna, in his childhood avatar. She told me she did puja every day. Looking at
the idol, I remembered how my grandmother too used to pray to Lord Krishna.
‘All of this has been allowed by the court,’ she said, referring to the
concessions that were made available to her. ‘And don’t worry. Lord Krishna
will guide you out of these troubled waters.’
The woman whom I had written against extensively was praying for my
safety. I had reported every minute detail on her case, because I had a source in
the team that was investigating the Malegaon blasts. Yet, she hadn’t taken it
personally. I thanked her for the prayers.
In many ways, this interaction planted the first seeds of spirituality in my
heart, which I have pursued even after my release from jail. I felt a kind of
solidarity towards Pragya. Our destinies had indeed intertwined because there
was another common denominator between us—ATS chief Hemant Karkare,
who was killed in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.

It was Wednesday, 26 November 2008, when Karkare called Megha Prasad, a

reporter with Times Now, and me, to the ATS office at Nagpada. I had only
known Karkare since the first press conference the ATS had conducted about the
Malegaon blasts, and this was my third meeting with him. We made it just in
time for the appointment at 4 p.m. Karkare was dressed in a sky-blue shirt and
blue trousers. He did not operate with the flair of some of his other outspoken
colleagues. He went about his business in a silent and effective manner. The
alleged involvement of the right wing in the cases he was investigating had put
him under considerable political pressure. Pragya had also levelled charges of
extreme torture against the ATS, which had begun a political controversy.
Karkare ordered for three cups of tea as soon as we sat down.
 ‘Sir,’ Megha said. ‘Any new developments in the Malegaon investigations that
can be shared with the media?’
‘Why are you asking me?’ he laughed. ‘Jigna should know better. I have been
following Jigna’s reports. She knows what has been going on in the investigation
room. I wonder who in the ATS is providing her with such minute details.’
I smiled. ‘The information seems to find its way to me, sir.’
He smiled in response—a way of telling me it was okay.
‘But, sir,’ I said, ‘I haven’t done a big story in the last two days. My editor is
pushing me to get one.’
‘Well, give my regards to Mr Zaidi,’ he said. ‘But Malegaon is a political
landmine. I can’t divulge more.’
As we finished drinking the tea, precisely at 4.35 p.m., he received a call from
the office of R.R. Patil, the then home minister of Maharashtra. Karkare
informed us that he would have to leave for the Mantralaya immediately to meet
the home minister.
‘But, sir,’ I said. ‘When can we get something to write about?’
‘Meet me this Friday.’ He smiled as he stood up. ‘You’ll get some big news to
break.’
He accompanied us out of his office and walked with us to the exit. He got
into the back seat of his official car and was driven away. I wondered about the
big news he wanted to speak about, but my thoughts were broken by Megha’s
voice.
‘Jigna,’ she said. ‘A new officer has joined as the additional commissioner,
south region. Should we go and introduce ourselves?’
‘Who is he?’
‘Himanshu Roy,’ she said. ‘Earlier, he was posted as the commissioner of
police, Nashik.’
‘Not today,’ I said. ‘I have to report back to office.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s meet Mr Roy another day.’
Later in the day, I returned to the Asian Age office in Todi Industrial Estate at
Lower Parel, and quickly filed my story for the day. I had to catch up with a
friend for dinner at the Orchid Hotel in Andheri East. As I was getting ready to
leave after discussing the next day’s plan and some developments on the
Malegaon story with Zaidi sir, a series of messages about a shoot-out at Leopold
Café in Colaba came in.
‘Don’t leave till we know what’s going on,’ Zaidi sir said. ‘It could be a gang
war.’ Soon, reports started coming in about the shoot-out at the Taj Mahal Hotel,
at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), and other places. What transpired
later was the biggest terrorist strike on Mumbai. A well-planned effort to take the
city hostage.
I can never forget the chaos, the news alerts and the images that flashed on the
television. One of them was of Karkare putting on a bulletproof vest and
headgear to counter the terrorists who had entered the state-run Cama and
Albless Hospital, a few metres away from the CST.
At around 1 a.m., I received a call from a trusted source. He was the one who
had been providing me nuggets of information from the Malegaon blast probe.
‘Madam, Hemant Karkare sir is no more.’
‘What?’ I shrieked.
‘Sahab was shot dead by the terrorists.’
Only a few hours ago, I had been sitting in Mr Karkare’s cabin and sipping tea
with him. And now, he had been martyred while fulfilling his duties. All of it
came rushing back to me—his quiet manner, his sky-blue shirt, his promise
about a big story. I rushed to Zaidi sir’s cabin and broke the news, leaving him in
shock. I also called Megha about Karkare’s death.
‘What are you saying?’ she said, unable to believe her ears.
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice choking. ‘Where are you?’
‘I am covering the attack near Metro Junction. We just received some
information about terrorists shooting at the cops. The terrorists are now driving
towards Chowpatty.’
As reporters, we often keep our emotions in control even as we deal with
traumatic topics. But news of Karkare’s death had brought tears to my eyes.
I sobbed. Karkare had been inside a Toyota Qualis with other police officers
and constables when the terrorists had attacked them. The terrorists then took the
police vehicle and fled the spot.
‘Are you sure about his death?’ Megha asked. ‘Should I break it on
television?’
‘Yes,’ I said, still crying. ‘The news is confirmed.’
 And then I watched the news being played out on TV. Hemant Karkare had
died protecting his nation in a small lane only a few metres away from the Crime
Branch office. Two other officers, ACP Ashok Kamte and Senior Inspector Vijay
Salaskar, had also been killed. The man who had arrested several alleged right-
wing extremists was no more, and the big story he wanted to break had also been
laid to rest with him.

Paromita spared no chance to boast about her considerable influence with the
Intelligence Bureau (IB). She claimed to know that I had been framed in this
case, and that I was going to be released soon. I had no clue if there was any
truth in her words, but it disturbed me enough to discuss these things with my
lawyer. As usual, he advised me to trust no one.
One night, as I was preparing to go to sleep, Paromita asked me about my
interactions with Pragya.
‘I think she is innocent,’ I said.
‘She told you that?’ Paromita laughed. ‘Quite a manipulator she is!’
‘Why’d you say that?’
‘Because she confessed about her involvement to me.’
I gasped. ‘What?’
I had no clue who was speaking the truth. I was unsure why Paromita always
kept a close eye on who was getting friendly with me. Perhaps, it was because
Pragya was locked in a power struggle with the other powerful inmate in Byculla
Jail—Jaya Chheda—and Paromita had chosen to side with Jaya. I did not want
to be a part of these games.
‘Jiggy,’ Paromita said. ‘Will you seek revenge against those who have
wronged you?’
‘Never thought about it,’ I said and returned to my space. I turned over and
tried to sleep.
After Paromita’s warning, I kept away from Pragya as much as I could. The
sadhvi called for me quite a few times, but I would excuse myself on some
pretext or the other. Pragya had a court order that allowed her home-made food.
She once sent across a portion of undhiyu, a popular Gujarati delicacy, for me,
but I politely sent it back to her. A few days later, around 2.30 a.m., I woke up to
the sounds of utensils clanging loudly inside the jail. Pragya was smashing her
aluminium plate on the wall and creating a ruckus. The jail authorities arrived
and made sure the situation was handled. The next morning, a group of women
who had been arrested from Nagpur for alleged Naxal links began a hunger
strike to protest against the quality of food in the jail. It turned out that the
clanging of utensils had been a signal from Pragya to those women to begin the
strike. The food remained the same however. But I learnt that Pragya would
constantly work to keep jail authorities on their toes.
Every Friday, the jail superintendent would visit all the barracks. It was an
important event and the barracks had to be cleaned by us on Thursdays so that
the superintendent would be pleased. We scrubbed the floor with Ariel detergent.
The superintendent would ask the inmates if they were facing any problems in
the jail. But everyone kept mum because no corrective action was ever taken for
any complaint or request. Moreover, the constables inside the jail would take it
as a personal insult if an inmate complained, and they would make that inmate’s
life all the more miserable. The superintendent would always speak very politely
to me.
Pragya, like everyone else, kept mum too. For her, initiating the strike was the
way to make a point. She made it a point to celebrate all Hindu festivals. In
March 2012, on the occasion of Holi, she brought her Lord Krishna idol outside
her cell and performed an elaborate puja in the barrack. She also arranged for
small sachets of gulal, and all the inmates celebrated Holi with her. That day, she
tied a sacred thread around my wrist and put a pendant with an inscription of
‘Om’ around my neck. Even though I had kept my distance from her, I had no
urge to stop her from tying the thread. She said she had performed a special
prayer for my release, and for her prayers to be answered, it was important for
me to keep the thread on my wrist until I was out of jail.
About a month later, Pragya was shifted to a Madhya Pradesh jail. Strangely,
when I myself left the jail, the sacred thread she had given me came loose on my
wrist, on its own.
 5
FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE POLICE

May 2004

I rushed down the busy streets of Ghatkopar with my neighbour to head for the
Pant Nagar police station. Onlookers stared at me as if a mad woman had
escaped from a mental asylum. My dishevelled hair flew all over my face. Sweat
dripped down my neck. I was wearing a salwar kameez, but in the panic, I had
forgotten to drape a dupatta. I had never visited a police station before and had to
ask my neighbours for assistance. The uncle who lived next door was kind
enough to help.
A week before, while I was at my husband’s home in Gujarat, I had packed
my bags and informed my in-laws that I was going on a vacation to my mother’s
place in Mumbai along with my son. He was four years old then, and his nursery
school was closed for the summer vacations. I held him close during the lonely
train journey back home. When I arrived in Mumbai, I told my grandfather that I
had no intention to go back to live with my husband. My grandfather informed
my mother-in-law over a phone call.
A few days later, my mother-in-law came down to my maternal home in
Ghatkopar, accompanied by my sister-in-law, who lived in Mumbai. Our
families met in the living room, and my in-laws seemed accommodating of my
decision to separate. I was on friendly terms with my sister-in-law. She was
emotionally attached to my son as well. So, when she asked if she could take my
son downstairs for a walk, I saw no reason to deny her request. After twenty
minutes, she sent word that she wanted to take him to her place in Wadala for
two days. Again, I didn’t see why she couldn’t. In fact, I packed my son’s
clothes, and his favourite toy—a tiny yellow plastic autorickshaw—and kissed
him goodbye.
But as soon as my in-laws left, I wondered if I had made a huge mistake.
What if they used my son as a tool to pressurize me back into the marriage?
What if they refused to give me custody of him? I was unsure if the divorce
would be mutual or if it would turn ugly. Panicking with these terrible thoughts,
I decided to approach the Mumbai Police. A complaint would maintain a record
of the events that had occurred.
At the Pant Nagar police station, we approached the reception desk and asked
about the procedure to file a complaint. A weary cop looked up from the police
register and pointed towards a desk. The policeman at the desk asked what the
complaint was about. I narrated the incident.
‘Madam,’ the cop said, ‘if you allowed your sister-in-law to take the kid, we
can’t file a complaint. You can register a non-cognizable (NC) case.’
I agreed.
‘But why do you not want to go back to your husband?’ he asked.
‘My husband is an alcoholic,’ I said. ‘He drinks at least one bottle every day.
Then, he turns into a monster.’
‘Where is your husband?’
‘In Bharuch.’
‘How can he drink, then?’ the cop said in a deadpan manner. ‘Not possible.
Gujarat is under prohibition.’
‘Ask anyone in Bharuch. The entire city knows how much he drinks.’
I married my husband on 4 December 1998. It was an arranged marriage. I
had completed studying law from Ruparel College, and my parents thought it
was the perfect time for me to settle down. I gave up an internship with a reputed
law firm and married the man my parents had chosen for me. I was told my
husband was an engineer and ran a printing press in Gujarat. But after we
returned from a honeymoon in Kerala, I found his mark sheet in the cupboard
while unpacking the suitcases. He had failed in the tenth standard. I felt cheated,
but was convinced by my family to uphold the sanctity of my marital vows.
What if my husband had lied? I was still supposed to treat him like a
parameshwar.
Soon, my husband started restricting my interactions with my family. I wasn’t
allowed to meet my mother. My father had given them a brand new Indica car,
on an agreement that my husband would make the car available for my father
whenever he would visit India on a vacation from his workplace in Dubai. I
never saw what the Indica looked like on the inside because my husband never
allowed me to sit in it.
My father would call from Dubai every Thursday to check on me. In those
days, the landline telephones would chime a longer ring than usual for ISD calls.
As soon as my husband would hear that long ring, he would throw the handset at
my face and say, ‘Tere baap ka phone aaya hai.’ Those rings evoked such fear
inside me that I would mute the ringer around the time my father would usually
call. I even forbade my mother to call me while my husband was at home. My
husband and in-laws sold all of the 100 tola of gold I had received from my
parents and relatives as gifts within the first three months of my marriage.
I was not allowed to go out of the house alone or socialize—my sister-in-law
or mother-in-law would always accompany me. This ploy ensured I would not
reveal my troubled married life to others in the community. I was confined to the
house and did all the work in the kitchen. I was nothing more than a maid in that
house. I wasn’t even allowed to read English newspapers.
Very early into the marriage, I conceived for the first time. Walking out of the
marriage was all the more improbable now. In September 1999, I gave birth to a
very beautiful baby girl, whom we named Sanjana. The girl was only thirty days
old when a terrible fever engulfed her. Her stomach bloated inordinately. We
rushed her to a hospital in Bharuch but the lack of good medical facilities forced
us to shift the baby to a better hospital in Surat. The girl was in a lot of pain, and
the medical treatment left puncture wounds all over her body. Despite our best
efforts, she succumbed on 19 October. The cause of death was said to be
septicaemia.
I thought this terrible incident would change my husband, but his alcoholism
continued unabated. He would drink when his business suffered losses. He
would drink in times of happiness, on festivals like Diwali. I started fearing all
festivals because my husband would call a horde of friends and I would have to
cook dinner for all the men as they enjoyed their drinks and snacks. My husband
did not even realize how many of his drunk friends leered at me.
In December 1999, my father-in-law was diagnosed with last-stage cancer. He
would often climb the stairs to the first floor, and knock on my bedroom in the
middle of the night and request to be taken to the bathroom. I did all I could for
him because he was the only one who treated me well. He often counselled my
husband to stop misbehaving with me. He was the father figure I had missed
growing up. But he passed away on 9 February 2000, and I lost the only person I
cared for in that house. We cremated him in Nasik.
A few months later, I conceived again. My blood group is A–, and my
husband was AB+. My mother-in-law was convinced that the ‘negativity’ of my
blood group had caused my daughter’s death. My husband seemed to agree with
his mother and taunted me endlessly. They subjected me to such mental trauma
that I started to believe this would turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
What if my second child met the same fate as my first? I did not want to put
another child, and even myself, through such physical and mental pain again. I
decided to undergo a thorough medical examination in Mumbai. My husband
accompanied me. The test reports from a maternity home near my place in
Ghatkopar proved that there was nothing wrong with my blood type, and I had
even been given Rh injections. The doctor said that my baby daughter had most
likely contracted an external infection. I convinced my husband to get tested too.
His medical reports suggested that the survival of a girl child between us would
be extremely precarious on account of a chromosomal abnormality in him. I was
just four weeks pregnant. Sex determination had legal ramifications. The doctor
suggested that medical treatment could help in this situation.
In the fifth month of my pregnancy, I developed severe pain in my stomach.
My cervix was under pressure from the baby’s weight, and I had to be
immediately hospitalized. I spent many days in the hospital, and after I was
discharged I was recommended complete bed rest. This was not possible at my
in-laws’ place as I was as good as a maid there. My mother-in-law decided to
send me back to my maternal home. Not out of concern or love, but to ensure
that they would not have to take the fall should something go wrong again. If I
was with my parents, any unfortunate incident would be solely my
responsibility.
 But with the blessings of Lord Krishna, I gave birth to a healthy boy in August
2000.
I hoped that a son would make my husband happy and improve my equation
with my in-laws. But my hopes were dashed soon. Things only got worse, and I
continued to endure, now for the sake of my child. The following year, my
husband got so drunk on Holi that he urinated on our bed thinking it was the
toilet.
As my son began learning his first words, he also picked up the abuses my
husband hurled at me with regular abandon. When he was four, I scolded him
one day for misbehaving. His expression completely matched his father’s when
he said, ‘Chal nikal ja ghar se!’ Tears flowed down my cheeks. It wasn’t his
fault that he was living in such an environment. But if this continued, he would
grow up to be like his father and treat other women the same way I was being
treated now. I couldn’t let that happen. We had to leave. I packed our bags and
walked out of an irreparable marriage, for good.
The policeman at Pant Nagar police station showed little emotion as he heard
my tale, and took down the NC report. The entire process took two harrowing
hours and I returned home. The next day, my sister-in-law called and listened to
my concerns. Her fiancé called me from Australia and tried to tell me that my
son could have a good future in Australia. I was furious and demanded that I
wanted my son back home in the next hour. My sister-in-law eventually dropped
off my son at my building. She did not come up to my door.
My divorce was settled mutually. I did not ask for any alimony. My husband
promised he would return 100 tolas of gold in reasonable time. That never
happened.
Slowly, I started picking up the shattered pieces of my life and also arranged
my son’s admission to a school. A law internship for me was out of the question.
My earlier stint with a law firm had not paid enough to sustain a thirty-one-year-
old single mother and her child.
I researched a few career options and settled on the media. I joined a one-year
evening diploma course at Somaiya College, which was close to my home. I
made sure my son went to school in the morning, and in the evening, while he
would play with his friends, and his grandparents would look after him, I would
attend college. Velly Thevar, my faculty at Somaiya, was a well-known crime
reporter working for the Times of India. Her lectures sparked my interest in
crime reporting and I began to idolize her. She often said that the Free Press
Journal (FPJ) was the best place to start a career in journalism.
As a result, I started reading the Free Press Journal. In a matter of days, I saw
an advertisement in the paper that they needed trainee reporters. Mr Singh
interviewed me at the FPJ office in Nariman Point. The sprawling view of the
city from his cabin enthralled me. The editor asked me to join from 19
November 2005, at a salary of Rs 3,000 per month. Lack of any experience
meant I couldn’t be a crime reporter yet. So, they assigned me to court reporting.
My first assignment was to cover gangster Abu Salem’s case at the TADA
court situated inside Arthur Road Jail. Ujjwal Nikam, the public prosecutor,
opened his statement with a Sanskrit shloka to demand custody of Abu Salem. I
noted the measured movements of his hands, the command of his voice and the
choice of words, and covered it all in an article that made it to the front page of
the Free Press Journal. It was my first byline too, a term I was unaware of until
then. Ujjwal Nikam personally called to congratulate me on a well-written
report.
I would travel in the second-class compartment in the local trains, pursue
leads at the sessions court, file my stories, and rush back home to be with my
son. My course at Somaiya College suffered, but for good performance at work,
my salary at FPJ was increased to Rs 5,000 in the following month. In ten
months, my salary touched Rs 7,500. Things were finally beginning to look up.
 6
RULER OF THE JAIL

I counted each day spent in jail. Days had turned into months and it caused
turmoil within me. In the first two months, Paromita protected me from a lot of
trouble. She stood up if someone tried to misbehave. She warned me in case
someone tried to hoodwink me. She was always there. The other inmates always
discussed Paromita’s sexual preferences, but it didn’t bother me.
It was mid-January when Paromita and I were chatting over a tasteless plate of
poha in the morning when she first mentioned Jaya Chheda.
‘Jaya Maa is coming back from the hospital,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard of her.’
‘Oh yes. Of course, I have,’ I replied.
Jaya Chheda was the ex-wife of Suresh Bhagat, Mumbai’s matka king who
had a thriving 3,000-crore-rupee business. Jaya, known for her aggression, and
her son Hitesh were being tried for murdering Bhagat in an orchestrated road
accident. A speeding truck had rammed straight into his SUV, mowing it down to
pieces, and all the occupants had died. It was proved in court to be a well-
thought-out plan to gain control over the vast gambling business that Bhagat had
inherited from his father and grown.
‘Jaya Maa is very powerful,’ Paromita said. ‘Not a leaf moves inside Byculla
Jail without her consent.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is away, on a vacation at the Saifee Hospital.’
‘Vacation?’
 ‘What else do you call a long stay at an air-conditioned room in a private
hospital?’
Jaya had always been on the heavier side. Before being imprisoned at the
Byculla Jail in 2008, she had undergone a bariatric surgery, called sleeve
gastrectomy. The procedure involved surgical removal of a part of her stomach
to reduce its size. The weight loss surgery ensured that she ate only a little, but it
came with the risk of food leaking out of the tube. If she ate a type and amount
of food that was not permitted, it would cause severe complications. Jaya used
this to her benefit and she would hop from one hospital to another while she was
at the Byculla Jail.
Paromita commanded a lot of authority in the jail. But she spoke of Jaya with
the reverence of a demigod, and this unnerved me. As a reporter I had a history
with Jaya, which I made Paromita aware of. During my stint in Mid-Day in
2008, I was approached by a lawyer who worked for well-known advocate
Harshad Ponda. The lawyer asked me if I was interested in a good story.
‘About what?’ I asked him.
‘Our client, Suresh Bhagat, fears that his ex-wife is hatching a conspiracy for
his murder,’ the lawyer said. ‘He recently wrote to the Mumbai Police seeking
protection.’
‘How can I help?’
‘The police are hatching eggs over his application,’ the lawyer said. ‘Bhagat
plans to file an application in the Bombay High Court.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘A story in the newspapers will help his cause?’
The lawyer nodded. From his black robe, he pulled out a white envelope. It
contained a copy of the application to be filed in the court. Inside, there was also
a photograph of an overweight woman in a swimming pool, in the arms of a
bare-chested man.
‘Who is this woman?’ I asked.
‘Jaya Chheda, the ex-wife of my client,’ the lawyer said. ‘They divorced four
years ago.’
‘And the man?’
‘He is Suhas Roge,’ the lawyer said. ‘Apparently, in a relationship with Jaya
Chheda. He is playing his part in the conspiracy.’ Roge was a member of the
gang of Arun Gawli. Gawli, just about 5 ft 2 in tall, was an underworld
Maharashtrian gangster-turned-politician who used to operate his gang from his
home in Dagdi Chawl on Saat Rasta in Byculla. Gawli had created his own place
in the underworld by running extortion rackets and trade unions, among other
things.
‘Okay.’ I folded the envelope into my purse. ‘I’ll think it over.’
When I returned home that day, I put the envelope into one of the cabinets
above my writing desk, where I stored many important documents. I didn’t
pursue the story as it looked like it would be pushing Bhagat’s agenda. Bhagat
himself was no saint, and I had no way of making sure he was speaking the truth.
Even if I had his court application, I had an inkling that there could be some
agenda behind it. So, I left the story on the back burner.
In March 2008, I joined the Asian Age. On 13 June 2008, about six months
after my meeting with the lawyer, Bhagat died in a ghastly road accident on the
Alibaug–Pen road. He was returning after attending a hearing in Alibaug court in
a 1997 narcotics case. As his Scorpio jeep reached the Dharamtar Bridge, it had
a head-on collision with a truck. All seven occupants of the SUV, including
Bhagat, died in the fatal collision. The lawyer who had met me died too.
As soon as I heard the news of Bhagat’s death, I ran to my editor Hussain
Zaidi’s cabin to tell him about my meeting with the lawyer. I was suspicious
about Bhagat’s sudden death and told Zaidi sir that there could be more behind
the accident. He advised me to keep the document and the photograph handy in
case the investigation developed some new angle. He also asked me to confirm
the identity of the man who was in the photograph with Jaya Chheda.
I went home and found the envelope between two stapled stacks of papers.
My next task was to confirm Roge’s identity. The next day I carried the
photograph to the office of Rakesh Maria, who was then the joint commissioner,
Crime Branch, and explained the purpose of my visit. The tall, lean man who
had broken hardened criminals with his clinical interrogations leaned forward in
his chair, resting his elbows on the centre of his desk. He balanced the frame of
his spectacles perfectly along the bridge of his nose and considered the audacity
of my request.
I placed the photograph on his desk. ‘Is this Suhas Roge?’
He cast a cursory glance at the photograph and looked away. For a moment,
his face gave away nothing. Then he stared at me in his ice-cool demeanour, and
leaned back into his chair, and paused in a measured manner before he nodded
his head, only once. That was all the assurance I needed, and I called Zaidi sir on
the way back to the office to confirm that the man in the photograph was Roge
indeed. There were already murmurs about investigators considering the angle of
foul play in Bhagat’s death. I extracted more from my sources in the Crime
Branch and it turned out that they were already probing Roge’s role in the
accident along with Jaya Chheda.
The same week, we ran a front-page exclusive story about the Crime Branch’s
suspicion and Bhagat’s fear of a life threat that the cops had not taken seriously.
With my story, we ran the exclusive photograph of Jaya and Roge posing
together happily in the pool. A few weeks after I broke the story, the police
arrested eight people for Bhagat’s murder, including Jaya, her son Hitesh and her
alleged lover Roge.
I told Paromita about the story I had written on Jaya in great detail. Despite
my lawyer’s reservations about sharing stories about my past with other inmates,
I had grown close to Paromita and had begun to trust her a little, though I
couldn’t trust her wholeheartedly. When she heard about my history with Jaya, a
worried expression descended upon her face.
‘Will Jaya remember I wrote a front-page article against her?’ I asked.
‘Jaya Maa never forgives,’ Paromita said. ‘And she never forgets.’
‘What should I do then?’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll set things right.’
I mentally steeled myself. I worried until I realized I had nothing more to lose.
What more could she put me through? That thought gave me a sense of
fearlessness, but I didn’t relay this to Paromita.
One monotonous night at the end of January 2012, I had grown bored of
watching Doordarshan and retired to my space around 9.30 p.m., preparing to
sleep. I had a clear view of the entrance, and in the dim light, I saw Jaya walking
down the veranda wearing a crisp, peach-coloured dress. She had lost weight due
to the bariatric surgery, but she was unmistakably recognizable from the swagger
in her stride. She was a short woman in her fifties, but not a single strand of
white was visible in her dyed black hair. She crossed over to Barrack No. 1,
which was a common barrack reserved for inmates who arrived in jail after the
evening headcount so that they could be repatriated to their assigned barracks in
the morning. In a world where others used their clothes as makeshift pillows,
Jaya had the privilege of using a thick mattress, a fluffy cotton pillow and even a
quilt; all of which had been moved to Barrack No. 1 for her impending arrival.
The way she looked around it seemed like she was the queen of the jail.
The next morning, after breakfast, a large group of women queued up outside
Barrack No. 1. Hardened inmates bowed at Jaya’s feet as if she was the high
priestess of a holy land. Usha Maa, the warden who had been jailed for scheming
with her lover to kill her husband, made a special visit from Barrack No. 5 to pay
her respects. Paromita grabbed my arm and asked me to come along to greet
Jaya Maa. Politely, I excused myself and assured her that I would go when the
time was right. Paromita seemed to understand. From a safe distance, I saw her
bow down to Jaya Maa. Paromita hugged her tight, and she reciprocated, a little
too closely I thought.
Over the next few days, many of the people under trial, including Tania,
stopped talking to me, especially when Jaya was around. A few months before
my arrest, Tania had given birth to a daughter in jail, whom the inmates had
named Duggu. After Jaya came back from the hospital, Tania would get very
uncomfortable if I got anywhere close to the child. One day, when Jaya was out
on a court visit, I asked Tania about the change in her demeanour. She sought my
forgiveness but made it clear that inside Byculla Jail, upsetting Jaya Maa was a
cardinal sin she couldn’t afford to commit. The court was hearing Jaya’s case on
a regular basis, but I remained wary of the days she did not have a court visit
scheduled. I made conscious efforts to avoid ‘her’ areas. It was my way of
staying out of trouble.
Jaya was a shrewd manipulator. Because of her weight loss surgery, she could
barely eat. She had managed to get a court order issued that allowed her delivery
of home-cooked food, three times a day. Edible food was a rarity inside Byculla
Jail, but Jaya received multi-tiered tiffin boxes every single day, filled with hot
chapatis, basmati rice, dal tadka, various types of curries, pickle and salad. Clean
drinking water was a scarce commodity, but Jaya could arrange bottles of Bisleri
and cans of fruit juice. She could even arrange pizza from Domino’s if she
pleased. Like the ruler of her fiefdom, she distributed her food to the less
privileged undertrials and won over the undying loyalty of many hungry women.
Eventually, Paromita again asked me to pay my obeisance to Jaya Maa. She
assured me that Jaya would not harm me. Running out of time and excuses, I
played along.
When I approached her, Jaya showed no upfront signs of hostility and offered
me a bowl of aam ras laced with saffron. I had grown up in a Gujarati household
where mango pulp was a staple for breakfast during the mango season. Tempted,
I reached for the pulp, but realized my mistake and pulled back. Jaya coaxed me
with a smile, and I gave in. I scooped up a spoonful, and it was the finest
Alphonso pulp I had tasted in my life—in Byculla Jail of all places. Jaya smiled
with the calmness of a god, as if she had bestowed a favour and turned a sceptic
into a believer.
‘Mahale arrested you?’ she asked, in her Kutch dialect.
‘Yes.’
‘I can get you out in no time.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘First, we’ll get them to drop the MCOCA charges.’
I tried to appear impressed, answering in Gujarati and humouring her
brouhaha. Senior Inspector Ramesh Mahale was also responsible for Jaya’s
arrest, and all her talk of being able to get me out was nothing but a cock and
bull story. If that were true, why was she still in jail? But ticking off Jaya would
be the wrong move inside the walls of Byculla Jail. I tactfully displayed my
acceptance of her superiority by making her feel she ruled the place, and she
appeared pleased by the end of our conversation.

Two days later, a huge commotion broke out inside the barracks. Inmates banged
their aluminium mugs on the walls, screaming and shouting. They refused to
queue up for breakfast. I asked Paromita what the fuss was all about.
‘The inmates are going on a hunger strike,’ she said.
‘Hunger strike? Why?’
‘To protest against the strip search.’
‘Huh?’
Paromita whispered into my ear. ‘Jaya Maa was strip-searched when she
returned from a court visit. She has instigated them.’
‘Should I join?’ I asked, with no intention of doing so.
 ‘No,’ she said. ‘Stay away.’
The jailer arrived and quoted the rules and the manuals of the strip search
procedure. The inmates protested with all their might, but the strike fizzled out
by the evening. The rest of the day, I kept to my corner and chanted the
Hanuman Chalisa, a practice I had been following for a while. Clearly, Jaya
thought she could get away with anything.
Around the same time, my lawyer obtained an order from the court for getting
home-cooked food delivered to me, but only one tiffin box a day was granted.
My cousin would deliver it to jail in the morning. With no refrigeration, the food
would become inedible by afternoon. After opting for home-cooked food, I was
also no longer eligible for my portion of the food served in jail. Paromita would
share her dinner with me, but I could not bear the guilt of eating from her plate
and feeding myself. So, I started going hungry to bed.
Also, as much as my family loved me, travelling daily from Ghatkopar to
Byculla was no easy arrangement for people who had jobs and businesses to
attend to, and bills to pay. I asked my lawyer to put in an application in court for
cancelling the home food order. The judge was aghast that an undertrial wanted
to eat the food served in jail, but the order was finally rescinded. I had three
square meals to eat again.
The African undertrials, with an enormous amount of strength, acted like
hired guns for Jaya. Jaya would often use the Africans to send across a message
to other inmates and warn them off from acting against her. Jaya would never
directly say anything to an inmate, but she liked to show her strength through the
Africans. They had turned into mercenaries, all for the want of good food. Jaya
could not bear it if any other inmate was revered. She still held a grudge against
me for writing those stories against her, and especially for publishing her photo
along with Roge. So, there was no way I could be in her good books. Behind that
angelic smile on her round face, she was a master strategist, who could get what
she wanted without getting her hands dirty. Inside the prison walls, there existed
only one mantra for survival: J for Jail, J for Jaya.
 7
JOINING MUMBAI MIRROR

After ten months in the Free Press Journal, I started looking for another job. A
colleague in FPJ had moved to Mumbai Mirror, and he asked if I was interested
in joining the newspaper as a court reporter.
Mumbai Mirror had launched with a bang. On 29 May 2005, a day before its
first issue was published, actor Abhishek Bachchan and the then chief minister
Vilasrao Deshmukh had launched the compact newspaper at the Gateway of
India in an elaborate ceremony. The fireworks, laser shows and lighting unveiled
the red-and-black Mumbai Mirror logo in the south Mumbai sky. The tabloid’s
launch also marked the city’s most aggressive print rivalry. Mid-Day was already
popular in the tabloid space and there were two new broadsheets coming up
—Daily News and Analysis (DNA) and a Mumbai edition of Hindustan Times.
There was a sudden spurt in journalism jobs. It was a good time to be in
journalism as reporters were poached at almost 80–100 per cent salary hikes by
rival newspapers. Mumbai Mirror’s editor, Meenal Baghel, too was poached
from Mid-Day, along with many other reporters.
I quickly sent in my résumé and was called for an interview. The visit to the
Times of India building at Fort, opposite CST, was like a dream come true. A
journalist reveres that building as much as a cricketer reveres the Lord’s cricket
ground at London. The Mumbai Mirror office was on the fourth floor. C.
Unnikrishnan, the city editor of Mumbai Mirror, conducted the first round of
interview. A few days later, I was called for a second round. I sat in front of
Meenal Baghel, who interviewed me inside her carpeted cabin with wooden
interiors. I had less than a year of experience in journalism. Meenal asked if I
would be able to deliver ‘page-one’ stories—sensational, front-page, exclusive
stories that became the talking point of the day was Mumbai Mirror’s USP. An
exclusive for Mumbai Mirror meant that the story should not be in any other
newspaper, not even in the Times of India.
‘But Mumbai Mirror and Times of India are part of the same group?’ I asked.
Meenal reiterated her stance on exclusivity and asked me to expect a call from
HR. Over the next few days, I waited anxiously for the phone to ring. When I
did get the call, I could not believe my ears when the HR offered me a salary of
Rs 16,000 a month. That was about twice of what I was making in FPJ. I filled
up forms for a new bank account and was sent for a medical check-up near the
Breach Candy Hospital. I joined Mumbai Mirror just around the time when the
tabloid celebrated its first anniversary. On my first day, the office was abuzz with
gossip from the anniversary party. Coming from a conservative family, it was
new for me to see female reporters smoking openly in the smoking bays. I could
barely walk to the coffee vending machine in the corner of the office with
confidence. FPJ was a small, informal set-up of five to six reporters. Though
one of the best places to learn, it hadn’t prepared me to mingle in a large
corporate office. Mumbai Mirror had a much bigger team. There were a city
team, crime team, features team, and a battery of news editors and designers. I
was excited as well as intimidated.
I had stumbled upon a good story while serving my notice period at FPJ. I had
decided to work on it after joining the Mumbai Mirror. I wanted to deliver a
page-one story as early as possible. The story was about a man named Arif
Lakdawala, who owned a petrol pump near Pydhonie. Lakdawala was wanted as
a witness at the Sara Sahara trial. Iqbal Kaskar, the brother of fugitive don
Dawood Ibrahim, was an accused in this case. The court was summoning
Lakdawala for deposition. But he was seemingly untraceable as per records,
even though he was very much in the city. I discussed the story with Meenal and
she thought it was a page one. But she wouldn’t accept the story unless I had a
photograph of Lakdawala.
‘How do I get his photograph?’ I asked Meenal. ‘I have never visited the
shady areas around Dongri all my life.’
 ‘No photograph, no story,’ Meenal said. ‘Take a photographer along. Get a
good picture.’
I sighed. I found the address of the petrol pump from the court documents. By
late evening, I reached the place along with the photographer. I asked the
photographer to keep a safe distance from the petrol pump and click the photo at
the first opportunity. ‘Call for help if I don’t come back in fifteen minutes,’ I
said, and walked to the petrol pump.
Though situated in the midst of a bustling area, the petrol pump was dark and
seedy. Three men were sitting on plastic chairs, discussing something in low
voices.
‘Is Arif Bhai here?’ I asked.
They looked up at me suspiciously. I gulped before one of them eventually
replied that bhaijaan would arrive in fifteen minutes. I waited. Across the street,
the photographer was trying to blend into the crowd. I called him up and spoke
in a low whisper. ‘Arif will be here soon. Click the photograph at the first
opportunity.’
Arif Lakdawala arrived wearing a cream-coloured pathani suit. He was tall, in
his mid-forties, and sported a moustache. My heart thudded loud as I walked up
to him and introduced myself as a reporter from Mumbai Mirror, though I did
not reveal I was doing a story on him. ‘Why are you not showing up in court
despite multiple summons?’ I asked.
He appeared amused, and from the corner of my eye, I saw the photographer
clicking a few shots. Lakdawala did not bother answering me. Before I could get
into trouble, I ended the conversation and rushed out as fast as I could without
turning around to look at him. Back at the office, Meenal okayed the photograph.
It was my third day in Mumbai Mirror, and I had delivered a page-one story.
Next morning, my phone didn’t stop ringing. Television reporters wanted to
follow up on the story and wanted more details. At the office, Unnikrishnan
congratulated me for the fabulous start. Meenal too appreciated the good work. I
was on cloud nine. It was then that I met Hussain Zaidi for the first time. He was
heading the crime team at Mumbai Mirror.
‘Oh, so you are Jigna Vora?’ he said with a sarcastic smile on his face.
Perhaps, the veteran in him had sensed that I might be driving recklessly in the
fast lane. ‘The Arif Lakdawala story is creating a lot of ripples.’
 The next day, Iqbal Mamdani, a reporter with India TV, called me. ‘Do you
have a death wish?’ he asked.
When I asked for a clarification, he informed me that Arif had called him and
threatened to file a defamation case against me and my organization. I got jittery.
I would even make sure to check no one was following me during my daily
commute. But the fear wore off after a few days.
The sessions court at Kala Ghoda, opposite Jehangir Art Gallery—where,
ironically, my trial would be held years later—was my assigned beat. I would
take a train from Ghatkopar to CST, and then take a bus to the sessions court.
The court campus had an old building, and a new building with five floors.
There were fifty-eight courtrooms in the entire complex. Mumbai Mirror had
taught me to look at the peculiar details in stories, be it a new story being
reported for the first time or an ongoing development that could have an edgy,
unusual angle to it. Within the next few days, I wrote a story on the various
tricks that the prosecution employed to prolong trials. The judges would merely
impose fines ranging from Rs 20 to Rs 200. The story had a very catchy
headline: ‘Tareekh pe tareekh’.
After spending 4–5 hours every day in the court premises, I would return to
the Times of India building around 4 p.m. Gradually, I started interacting with
many accused and known criminals in the court. For me, the line between court
reporting and crime reporting slowly began to blur. One day I found out that
Iqbal Kaskar had made an application in court to get his meals from home
because the potatoes served in jail resulted in an allergic reaction, which led to
itching. This would not be a worthy story in the minds of many, but for a tabloid,
Dawood’s brother feeling itchy due to the potatoes served in jail was a fun story
that made it to page one.
In 1993, I covered the bomb blast trials meticulously. Once, Yakub Memon
shouted in court that the CBI had failed to adhere to the terms under which the
Memon family had agreed to return to India. This apparently included a pact that
women would not be punished. Yakub’s wife had been acquitted, but Rubina
Memon, his sister-in-law, was convicted because a car used in the bombings had
been registered in her name. Yakub wanted to point out that his sister-in-law was
unaware that her husband had purchased a car in her name. Subsequently,
Suleiman Memon, Rubina’s husband and Yakub’s brother, was acquitted. I
reported all the developments in this case.
In 2007, I met Sanjay Dutt several times during his trial. He spoke to me in
fluent Gujarati. ‘You speak Gujarati better than I do,’ I would tell him. Once, he
winked and replied that he had had to impress a Gujarati co-star early in his
career. Learning her language seemed the best way to go about it. Dutt wore the
same pair of stylish shoes for most of the trial. The reporter in me was curious if
they’d make a story. Like a fool, I asked him where he had purchased the shoes
from.
‘Bangkok,’ he replied.
I could not resist asking him, ‘How much?’
He rattled off an absurdly high figure, and I nearly fainted. He would always
chew tiny mints and offer me some. I took a liking to the strong flavour.
‘Where do you get this mint?’ I asked.
‘Abroad, mostly,’ he said. ‘But you can get them in Bandra. I’ll arrange for
you?’ I thanked him and decided to find them myself. I scoured Bandra for three
days until I found the mints in an imported chocolate shop near a popular eatery.
Sanju Baba was funny at times. He once joked that he used Bacardi for
mouthwash. I still remember the day of his judgment. I was in court when O.P.
Chatwal, who was then a superintendent of police with the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI), received a call and attended to it away from the public
glare. He returned and whispered something in Ujjwal Nikam’s ear. Nikam, the
public prosecutor, toned down considerably while demanding the quantum of
punishment to be given to Sanjay Dutt. And that was my story. Who was
Chatwal’s mystery caller? Sanjay was shivering and sweating during that
hearing. He pleaded with the judge to be able to speak with his daughter once.
The image of such a towering personality under so much stress remains
entrenched in my memory to this day.
Another story that I cannot forget and will probably haunt me for ever is of
Chhota Rajan’s wife, Sujata Nikhalje. In December 2005, Sujata was arrested for
extortion threats against a builder under the dreaded MCOCA. It was my first
underworld story, and revealed the transcript of a conversation between Chhota
Rajan and his wife where the don was missing his youngest daughter.
 Once, my colleague Yogesh Sadhwani called early morning to give me a tip.
A taxi driver had filed a complaint at Shivaji Park police station that three
suspicious people, including a woman, had booked his taxi and conducted a
recce of prominent spots like Haji Ali, Nariman Point and Shivaji Park. From
their whispers, he feared that they were planning a terrorist attack. Now, the
police were patrolling these areas day and night to prevent any untoward
incident.
‘See if you can find anything more,’ Yogesh said and hung up.
I got in touch with a trusted source who confirmed that the news was true. My
source called me to Haji Ali if I wanted more details. The source had sketches of
the three suspected terrorists that the police had come up with based on the taxi
driver’s descriptions. The person requested that I not quote him in the story. I
agreed and switched on the Bluetooth on my Nokia phone to exchange the
sketches, with the waves lashing behind us. Next morning, I walked all the way
to Ghatkopar railway station to check the first print of my newspaper at 4 a.m.
The sketches were on the front page.
K.L. Prasad, then joint commissioner, law and order, flew into a rage. He had
reportedly dressed down his boys, who he claimed had betrayed him and caused
a security threat. The police called a press conference and referred to my story,
which was then used by every television channel and newspaper in the city. I did
not attend the press conference because I was worried. Even my source had no
idea that the photographs would create such a storm.
I also distinctly remember reporting on the serial killer whom everyone was
calling Beer Man. He left bottles of beer next to dead bodies after murdering
them on the streets as his ‘signature’. During that time, it happened that one
night Meenal, our editor, was going hammer and tongs at all of us because there
was no page-one story for the next morning’s edition. I hadn’t told her that I had
been following up on a lead all day, because I was unsure if it would materialize.
Unit One of the Crime Branch had conducted a kind of psychoanalysis and
predicted the area in which the Beer Man would strike next. Around 9.30 p.m.,
my source called to inform that he was near the TOI building. I rushed
downstairs to meet him, and he handed over the report that the police had come
up with. There was no photograph to accompany this story, so one of our visual
designers produced a well-drawn map. The story made it to the front page. Over
the next few days, the Beer Man struck where the police had predicted.
I had become a regular page-one reporter despite covering the court beat. I
must have delivered more than forty big stories in a year. From Abu Salem’s
biryani feast in jail to Pramod Mahajan’s murder, a female judge’s request to get
Z-category security to inspect the Sara Sahara premises and the likely
deportation of twelve criminals associated with Dawood and Chhota Shakeel, I
worked hard to get big stories.
But when the annual appraisal came, I got a monthly increment of merely Rs
2,000. So I put in my papers. Meenal offered me a higher designation, but she
was bound by the corporate slabs when it came to the monetary aspect.
I had an offer from the Press Trust of India, the country’s largest news agency,
which I brazenly used to bargain for a better offer from Mid-Day.
Meenal dissuaded me from joining Mid-Day. ‘You’ll never get the limelight
that you’re getting here,’ she said. Mid-Day had offered me the position of a
senior correspondent at a salary of Rs 35,000. How could I say no? And as luck
would have it, I had a lead to a big story about encounter specialist Pradeep
Sharma. I decided to keep the story in my bank and use it at the start of my stint
with Mid-Day.
 8
USHA MAA

From the corner of my eye, I saw Usha Maa, the warden, drying her waist-length
hair. This plump and fair woman in her mid-fifties was a native of Uttar Pradesh.
She was the only convict in Byculla Jail. All others were undertrials. She had
draped the thin, yellow saree provided by the jail authorities quite low down on
her waist. Her white blouse fit tightly over her arms. She must have been quite
beautiful in her prime. She noticed I was looking, and started telling me how the
hair was falling because of the jail water. I told her I was losing a lot of hair too.
‘Get two bottles of Sesa Oil,’ she said. ‘That’ll help.’
‘Why two?’ I asked.
‘One for you,’ she said. ‘And one for me.’
I had no intention of getting into her bad books by not agreeing to her demand
for a bottle of oil. A few days later, my cousin brought two bottles of Sesa Oil
during the visiting hour. Usha Maa looked visibly happy. The oil did help stem
my hairfall a bit too.
‘Why were you arrested?’ I asked Usha Maa.
She responded with a bizarre theory. Apparently, she lived in Juhu and was a
regular visitor to the temple that was patronized by music baron Gulshan Kumar.
She claimed to be a witness of Gulshan Kumar’s murder near the temple and
said she could identify the killers, who were allegedly Abu Salem’s men. She
said her husband worked for a rival gang and was murdered in a separate
incident, but the police had implicated her in her husband’s murder case due to
his inter-gang rivalry with Salem’s gang. None of it made sense. It sounded like
a made-up story, but she said it all in such a convincing manner that it made me
wonder if there was any truth to it.
Paromita had a different take on Usha Maa’s case. According to her version,
Usha Maa’s husband owned a dairy farm near Jogeshwari. The man had
happened to catch his wife with her lover in the haystacks of the cowshed. The
husband was then found murdered, and this had led to Usha Maa’s arrest and
conviction.
As the warden, Usha Maa would order all inmates to clean the barracks, the
toilet and the bathrooms on Thursdays to impress the superintendent the next
day. Her voice could shake the walls of the jail. Influential prisoners like Jaya
Chheda were exempt from such work. All inmates had to purchase one sachet of
Surf washing powder with their own money for the cleaning. This was an
unwritten rule. Due to the fascination that most of the prisoners had with me, I
had acquired a celebrity-like status. So, I was never pushed for this task, but I
wanted to kill time so badly that I happily volunteered for it every week. The
two hours of washing and cleaning would keep me busy. The inmates would also
have a little bit of fun by throwing bubbles of soap at each other and slipping on
the surfaces. We would all be laughing until Usha Maa’s thunderous voice would
boom across the walls of the jail.
‘Ae randis!’ she would scream. ‘Get back to work!’
I wonder if Usha Maa knew anybody’s name inside the jail because she
addressed everybody with different words that ended up translating into
‘prostitute’. The first time she had seen me, she had used the same phrase for
me. But after she came to know more about me, her salutations changed. Once, I
asked her why she addressed every woman that way. She rationalized that she’d
been put through the same thing, and she was only passing it on as a tradition.
Though I never agreed with her use of foul language, I could understand her
frustration. More than seventeen years in prison could turn a woman’s heart into
stone.
Byculla wasn’t even a women’s prison back when Usha Maa was arrested.
She was first sent to Arthur Road Jail and subsequently to other jails in the state
over the seventeen years of her incarceration. A life sentence is generally
fourteen years in prison, but even after completing this term, the convict’s
release papers are sent to various departments in the government, which can
easily add a few more years to the process if the convict does not have the legal
and family support to keep the files moving. Usha Maa’s in-laws had already
turned against her due to the nature of the case. She had two sons who rarely
visited her. In fact, I never saw anyone come to meet her in the nine months I
spent in jail. But Usha Maa was still hopeful of securing a release, like so many
others. Jaya Chheda also raised Usha Maa’s hopes by promising her legal and
financial support. In her life as a prisoner, Usha Maa had seen so many prisoners
secure bail, or be released, but she was still languishing. She would thus vent her
frustration on the inmates.
Usha Maa was the link between the authorities and the inmates. I had more
easy access to the authorities on account of my profession and education, but
those lower down the order—beggars, robbers, drug peddlers, etc.—did not have
this privilege. The solutions to their problems were determined by their personal
equations with Usha Maa, and so they obeyed every command she issued.
Usha Maa also supervised the distribution of food. Fatima and other inmates
would do the actual distribution. People would line up on the porch with
aluminium plates in their hands and collect their food under her watchful eyes.
Anyone who helped Usha Maa with money or brought snacks for her from the
canteen was a ‘good woman’ in her books, and Usha Maa praised them. I did not
see anyone in Usha Maa’s family ever send her a money order. The better-off
inmates like Sujata Nikhalje or Jaya Chheda would buy biscuits and other items
for Usha Maa and then extract favours in return. Usha Maa would also get other
streetwise inmates like Fatima to smuggle packets of Manikchand gutkha into
jail. Once, Usha Maa asked me to get a packet of henna to dye her hair on the
way back from court. I was apprehensive because the constables wouldn’t allow
such items inside the jail.
‘Don’t worry,’ Usha Maa said. ‘You’ll face no trouble getting it inside. I will
talk to our randi constables,’ said Usha Maa.
Usha Maa would regale others with her stories when she was in the mood for
a conversation. In one such incident, a few years ago, a prostitute was arrested
by the police and brought to Byculla Jail. Overnight, news of the prostitute’s
beauty spread like a wildfire. Next morning, Usha Maa visited Barrack No. 1 to
take a look at the new prisoner. She was surprised to find that the prostitute was
a eunuch wearing a yellow-coloured micro-mini! All the women were flustered
and worried about their privacy because the new inmate was not the same gender
as they were. Usha Maa raised this concern with the superintendent, but there
was no immediate clarity in the manuals or procedures for handling such
instances. Usha Maa suggested that the new inmate be kept in solitary
confinement, and the superintendent agreed. Usha Maa then imitated the
eunuch’s gait and walked around the barrack. She exaggerated the walk to make
all of us laugh. Moments like these made me forget my incarceration, even if for
a split second.
Usha Maa also remembered interacting with Yakub Memon’s wife, who,
according to her, was a beautiful woman who spent all her time praying. She was
full of such stories, and would spend whole afternoons regaling us with them
sometimes. Having spent twelve years in Yerwada Jail, she had also gained a
good understanding of the law. She would often speak to me in Jaya Chheda’s
absence. She was close to Jaya Chheda, who had warned her not to speak to me.
Usha Maa managed a nice balancing act when it came to me, though she was
harsh on the other inmates. Her best advice for me was to keep my focus on
prayers and God, and stay out of the murky jail politics.
 9
MEETING A STALWART: JYOTIRMOY DEY

I was utterly confident that the lead I had on Pradeep Sharma was a page-one
story. My sources had confirmed that Sharma was under the scanner for his role
in the Lakhan Bhaiya encounter. Ramnarayan Gupta, alias Lakhan Bhaiya, was
eliminated by Sharma’s team in an allegedly fake encounter in 2006 that had
taken place at the Nana Nani Park in Versova. This park was supposed to be a
place for senior citizens to enjoy a breath of fresh air and the shoot-out had
disrupted its serenity. The police commissioner’s office at Crawford Market was
known as the ‘Compound’ in crime-reporting circles, and I often visited high-
ranking officers there. I asked one of the very senior, decorated officers for a
quote on my lead, but he merely raised an eyebrow in surprise.
‘Who told you about this?’ he asked.
‘My sources from the court,’ I said. ‘Is the news true?’
He nodded. ‘The case is at an early stage. Wait for the right time to break it.’
I decided to hold on to Pradeep Sharma’s story for the moment. Fifteen days
later, I joined Mid-Day with high aspirations. Mumbai Mirror was giving Mid-
Day a run for its money. I was riding a wave of confidence over my performance
at Mumbai Mirror, where I had contributed a minimum of two front-page stories
every week. Meenal, who was known to be a strict taskmaster, did play a role is
pushing all the reporters, including me, to dig out the best stories. Mid-Day, I
thought, would be a cakewalk because according to industry sources, the work
pressure was lesser than that at Mumbai Mirror and there was no push to deliver
page-one scoops.
I began working on a story related to Iqbal Kaskar, who was threatening the
residents of a building in his area to empty the premises. Since this story had an
underworld link, it again required me to visit the Compound and meet the same
high-ranking officer whom I was pursuing for the Pradeep Sharma story. My
frequency of visiting the Compound increased. Deepak Lokhande, the bureau
chief at Mid-Day and my boss, felt that the Iqbal Kaskar story could go into the
Sunday edition, which was managed by a separate Sunday team. I filed the
Kaskar story, thinking that his association with Dawood Ibrahim would propel
the story to page one. But I was deflated to find that the story was published as a
feature in the middle pages. On inquiring around the office, I was told that ‘story
mein masala nahi tha’ (there was no spice in the story). Further digging revealed
that the story had not pleased the resident editor, Shishir Joshi.
Mid-Day had a culture of multiple bosses. There was no pressure in the
newsroom. At Mumbai Mirror, Meenal would fling papers in the air and shake
up the entire office at 10 p.m. if page one wasn’t up to the mark. That kind of
pressure often left even seasoned reporters in tears. At first, I enjoyed the low
amount of stress at Mid-Day, but as time passed, it put me in an unwanted
comfort zone. I began missing the vibe of Mumbai Mirror.
I would file exclusive stories every day, but Deepak would say they were not
‘Mid-Day-type’. But there was no guidance or lead from the Mid-Day editors on
what exactly they wanted in the paper. There was no push from Deepak. We had
to list our stories weekly, on Monday mornings. Each reporter updated Deepak
on the stories they would chase over the next six days. At Mumbai Mirror, we
would list stories every day. And there was always a risk of the story being
rejected by Meenal at the last moment. By the time the edit meeting at Mumbai
Mirror concluded around 6 p.m., only three to four stories remained on the list
while the others would be struck off. Mid-Day, on the other hand, used whatever
the reporter had to offer. At times, I would internally question their editorial
decision on front-page stories. I had started to get an inkling that my stories were
not being considered on the front-page spot deliberately.
My equation with Prasad Patil at Mid-Day was very cold. He had an
experience in court reporting, and I believed that he looked at me as competition.
At times, I felt he was responsible for killing my stories. The mere sight of him
would make me turn red in anger. During that time, a new reporter with no
earlier experience was assigned to cover the high court. I was covering the
sessions court as a special correspondent. The new reporter’s stories regularly
made it to page one, while exclusive and worthy stories filed by me were being
dumped inside. Mentally, I blamed it all on Prasad Patil.
Apart from the lack of inspiration, I also disliked some of the people at Mid-
Day. A senior editor sat in a glass cabin right across my desk. He would often
adjust his seat in a manner that allowed him to stare at me. Often, he messaged
about how well I was dressed, or how attractive my smile was. His attention
made me very uncomfortable.
After a couple of uneventful weeks at Mid-Day, I was rostered into the night
shift, which began late at night and ended at 7.30 a.m. One morning, I was
packing up to leave for home when I saw a man in his forties speaking on the
landline phone in the cubicle opposite me. It was unusual for a print reporter to
show up so early in the morning. I walked up to a female colleague in the
features team who was working the same shift. As she stayed in Mulund, we
would travel together. I asked her about the person whispering on the phone so
secretively.
‘You don’t know him?’ she said, aghast. ‘He is J. Dey.’
‘Which department?’ I asked.
‘He is the investigations editor.’
I recalled hearing J. Dey’s name crop up in a conversation with Unnikrishnan
at Mumbai Mirror. While I was working there, Unni was reading the Hindustan
Times in the corridor with another colleague. They were speaking in Malayalam
and happened to mention my name. I had asked Unni what the conversation was
about. He mentioned appreciatively that my story had been followed by J. Dey,
who was then a crime reporter with HT. The story was related to RDX supplies
for the 7/11 Mumbai train blasts. But I hadn’t noticed J. Dey’s stories on the
front page of Mid-Day. I blamed it on my lack of interest in reading the
newspaper as none of my stories were being taken seriously. While I was with
Mumbai Mirror, I would grab a copy first thing in the morning to check my
stories. I would look at the layout, the edit, the photographs, and feel my heart
swell with pride. My move to Mid-Day now felt like career suicide.
 A few days later, in the complex of the Mid-Day office, I saw J. Dey leaning
against a car and smoking with Iqbal Mamdani, who was a reporter with India
TV. Iqbal knew me well and called me over. He asked questions about life at
Mid-Day, to which I only had half-hearted responses. He expressed surprise that
my stories were not showing up on the front page any more, and that made me
all the more worried. Iqbal did not introduce me to J. Dey and neither did J. Dey
speak to me on his own. Throughout my journalistic career, I had never been
introduced to J. Dey, despite him being a renowned crime reporter. Our
interactions were simply limited to acknowledging each other’s presence with
glances and nothing more.
Around four months after joining Mid-Day, I received a call from the senior
officer from the Compound. He confirmed that the time was ripe to break the
Pradeep Sharma story. I filed a story without mentioning Sharma’s name. The
story read that a decorated encounter specialist was about to be arrested in a fake
encounter case. I was excited that I was finally going to get a byline of Mid-
Day’s front page. But to my shock, the story was confined to a single column at
the bottom of page number four. That day, I barged into editor Shishir Joshi’s
cabin.
‘What on earth is this?’ I said. ‘This story was page-one material!’
Shishir uncrossed his legs and looked up from his laptop. ‘Why do you think
so, Jigna?’
‘This policeman is the most feared encounter specialist in Mumbai Police.’
‘But you haven’t named him in the report.’
‘He hasn’t been arrested yet. How can I name him?’
‘That is exactly why the story is not on page one,’ he said in a calm tone.
I turned around in a huff and left, pretty sure that the story would have been a
page-one story at Mumbai Mirror or any other newspaper for that matter. A few
days later, I received an unexpected call from Hussain Zaidi. He inquired about
the story on Pradeep Sharma. I nonchalantly replied that it was a story that came
my way, and I had pursued it. He realized I had no idea of the feathers I had
ruffled, and hung up.
In the six months that I worked with Mid-Day, I had only one page-one story.
It was a sting operation involving a public prosecutor from Mazgaon accepting
bribe. I felt lifeless at Mid-Day. The reporter inside me was in a state of turmoil.
I had witnessed the dull office come to life only once during my stint. It was the
day when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on 27 December 2007. I was asked to
get a quote from a famous lawyer, which I dutifully did. That day, reporters
weren’t allowed to leave until the edition was sent to print. But some of the
editors did not even leave the comfort of their cabins.
Perhaps the best part of working with Mid-Day was the food in the canteen.
I started looking out for newer opportunities. During those days, there were
murmurs about Deccan Chronicle taking over the Asian Age and that they were
sprucing up the reporting team. Hussain Zaidi was the resident editor at Asian
Age. In March 2008, I called him and asked if he was looking to hire a court
reporter. I was not sure if he would consider me for the vacancy. To my surprise
and relief, he asked me to come over for an interview.
 10
THE OUTSIDERS

The day I was remanded to judicial custody and sent to Byculla Jail, my lawyer
asked me to contact Elizabeth, a Nigerian inmate, in case I needed any help. He
had said it without any further explanation, but I knew he meant I had to go to
her in case I was harassed too much in prison. Fortunately, the fact that the
inmates and cops both knew I was a journalist helped, and I was saved from any
major harassment. They believed I had influential contacts, and never crossed
my line. So, I didn’t go out searching for Elizabeth.
Barrack No. 2, where I was lodged, had no Africans. They were all housed in
Barracks 3, 4 and 5 on the first floor. A few days later in mid-December, during
a routine visit to Dr Khan, the jail doctor, I inadvertently ran into Elizabeth. She
was a young woman, about twenty-four years old, with curly hair. I was
surprised to find out that she could speak in fluent Hindi and Marathi.
After some perfunctory conversation, she herself told me why she was in jail.
‘They arrested me at Mumbai airport,’ she said in Hindi. ‘I was carrying
drugs.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Six years, almost,’ she said.
‘And how did you learn to speak Hindi?’
‘Oh, there’s a story behind it,’ she said.
Apparently, the police officials at the Mumbai airport had detected tiny
pouches of drugs that she had swallowed. This was her first trip to India as a
drug mule. After her arrest, she had been brought to Byculla Jail. For most
inmates, a court hearing is scheduled every fourteen days, but foreigners like
Elizabeth often have no lawyers. She also did not receive any support from her
embassy and her first court visit was scheduled only three months after her
arrest. This too was made possible because of the fellow Africans lodged in the
jail who had helped her get a lawyer. Once she settled down in the prison, some
of the fellow inmates whom she had befriended promised to teach her Hindi. She
was told that if she could communicate in the language with the judge, she might
be released early. Elizabeth was a fast learner. Her Hindi training went on for
days.
On the day of the hearing, Elizabeth was taken to the court, and when the
judge called out her name, she folded her hands and bowed in an elaborate
‘namaste’, just like she had been taught. The judge appeared pleased, and he
smiled and asked her another question. In response, Elizabeth parroted the next
line that was taught to her.
‘Teri maa ki chut.’
Before the horrified judge could speak, Elizabeth dropped the next shocker.
‘Teri maa ka bhosda,’ she shouted.
The people seated in the court burst out laughing. The judge yelled for the
police to drag Elizabeth out of his court. She didn’t even realize what she had
done wrong, and only kept repeating what she was taught. On the way back to
jail, in the police van, a woman constable explained to Elizabeth what she had
said and the consequences of her actions. On returning to Byculla Jail, Elizabeth
got into a fight with the inmates who had played this joke on her. After that,
Elizabeth did not get a court hearing for six months. But that made her
determined to closely observe and learn the local language. And her effort
showed clearly. I had lived in Mumbai most of my life, but Elizabeth’s Marathi
could put mine to shame.
The Africans were the strongest close-knit group in the jail. The other inmates
had branded all Africans as Nigerians. But these women were from various
countries of the African continent, some that I had never even heard of. Born in
poverty, most of these women had got on the wrong side of the law for small
amounts of money. Many of them had HIV, because of which some inmates
stayed away from them. Almost all the inmates would suffix their name with the
word ‘mumma’ while addressing them, especially the elder women, to show
respect.
Over the course of my term, I befriended a lady called Melody Mumma who
had been incarcerated for ten years. She was in her fifties, tall and thin, and a
motherly figure for the others in her group. She and her boyfriend had boarded
separate flights to Mumbai and Delhi respectively. Both of them were carrying
drugs that were a part of a consignment that Melody’s son-in-law was shipping
to India. And both of them were arrested. Melody was sent to Byculla Jail, and
her boyfriend was sent to Tihar Jail.
‘There’s a lot of poverty back home,’ Melody Mumma said. ‘So, I agreed to
carry drugs to India for 500 dollars.’
‘You risked a jail term for such a low amount?’
‘In my country 500 dollars is a lot of money actually,’ she said. ‘We are so
poor that some girls don’t get food to eat, and they have to solicit customers for
as little as two or three dollars.’
That explained why most of these women had HIV. They were forced into
prostitution to feed themselves and their families. And since they were not
educated about the use of protection or safe sexual practices, they ended up
contracting this deadly disease. The irony was that they were unaware of their
condition until they landed up in Byculla Jail, where a blood test was carried out
mandatorily. This is when most of them were told that they had HIV. The
inmates infected with HIV received free medical treatment and support from
various NGOs who worked with the jail authorities. Melody Mumma confessed
that they would get no medical treatment in their own countries.
‘Jail is better than home,’ she said. ‘We get three meals a day here. And this
place is more hygienic.’
But that did not stop her from praying for her release. Her boyfriend had
managed to secure bail from Tihar, and he was trying to get bail for her. She
often read from a book called Prayer Rain, by Dr D.K. Olukoya, which she
claimed was the most powerful and practical prayer manual ever written.
Melody Mumma would often wake up at 3 a.m. and whisper prayers while
reading from the book.
‘If you read this book,’ she said, ‘you will get bail soon. You are a good soul.’
 Melody Mumma also gave me a copy of the Bible. The thing with jail is that it
makes you cling to the smallest glimmer of hope you can find. I had never fasted
all my life, but in Byculla Jail I began fasting to please the gods, in the hope that
I would be set free. I also started observing maun vrats (silence). In those
periods of silence, I would not speak a word to others around me. And I started
reading from Prayer Rain. These little trysts with spirituality gave me the
strength to tide over the difficult times. When I left prison, I purchased a copy of
Prayer Rain, and continued reading from it on the nights I could not sleep at
home. A year after I was released, Melody was convicted for carrying drugs. But
since she had already spent more time in jail than what her sentence provided
for, she was set free.
Usha Maa, the warden, had told me that the Africans were extremely difficult
to control during the first few days of their term.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘They are all drugs addicts,’ she said. ‘The withdrawal makes them agitated.’
‘How did you restrain them, then?’
‘The severe cases are sent for rehabilitation at J.J. Hospital.’

I wasn’t used to taking naps in the afternoon, but I would feel so lethargic in jail
that I would sleep for three hours every afternoon. At nights, when the inmates
would gather to watch ‘Voice of India’ on TV, a song-based reality show, I would
doze off right in the middle of the programme. At times, I thought that my mind
and body had adopted sleep as an escape. But the inmates told me another story.
In order to maintain order, the jail food was laced with sedatives, they said.
When I was reporting, gangster Abu Salem and terrorist Ajmal Kasab had
made similar allegations about the jail food. At that time, I had laughed it off,
thinking that the criminals were trying to simply create a fuss. But now, I had
doubts.
During a visit to Dr Khan, I asked him if my fears about the food were true.
He vehemently denied it. But Usha Maa seemed to agree with the rumours of the
sedatives. ‘They lace the food with some chemicals to put off sexual desire,’ she
said. ‘Else the entire jail will be full of lesbian activity.’
 Usha Maa advised me against talking to an African inmate called Yusuf
Mumma, who was said to be in a lesbian relationship with another inmate.
Inmates having sex with each other wasn’t uncommon in Byculla Jail at all.
The African inmates would be very happy when any inmate would walk out
of the Byculla Jail after acquittal or bail. This was unlike the local inmates, who
only reserved jealously for each other. The locals would hurl the choicest of
curses on those who were about to get their freedom back. The Africans never
complained about the quality of food. Since they could not bear the spice of
Indian cuisine, their food was prepared separately, and though it was as bad as
what was served to the rest of us, it was still better than what they could eat back
home. They also actively participated in the Holi celebrations conducted by
Pragya Singh Thakur. They were a lively group who stood with each other
through thick and thin. For Christmas, they procured grapes and managed to
ferment it into wine, which was given in small quantities to all inmates. We
sipped on the wine while the Africans sang ‘Jingle Bells’ and other carols. On
New Year’s Eve, the Africans would throw a sort of a party after taking due
permission from the authorities. They would sing songs and dance the night
away. I was amazed at the sight of this celebration in jail. But these gatherings
served as a good distraction.
The Africans would plan their hospital visits in advance. Going to J.J.
Hospital was a chance for the African women to meet their male counterparts
from Arthur Road Jail, who would arrange a visit at the same time. Once, I
arranged for a check-up at J.J. and sent word to my sister-in-law and my son
Nishil to meet me at the hospital. As the police van drove me to the hospital, I
passed by the famous Almas Restaurant. I loved the food, and it was my place of
choice to catch up with my sources when I was a journalist. The mere sight of
the hotel made me hungry. When I reached the hospital, Nishil was already
waiting with a packet of chicken biryani from Almas. I was touched by his
gesture, but I had given up on non-vegetarian food in the hope of securing an
early release. Though I did not eat the food, I hugged him for the care he had
shown. I put on a strong face for him. If he saw me crying, he would feel all the
more miserable. We spoke a lot for two hours, until the cops came. Then it was
time to go back to the barracks again.
 Once a month, the court magistrate would visit the jail for an inspection. On
these days, the quality of the food would be extremely good so that no inmate
could complain about it. The jailer would often make it a point to introduce me
to the magistrate. But for me, the introduction would always be an
embarrassment, given the fact that I was a journalist who was now in prison. I
would look at the floor, and answer the magistrate’s questions in monosyllables,
unable to meet his eye. I dreaded being introduced to the magistrates so much
that I would pray for a court visit to be scheduled whenever their inspection was
due.

One day, after the bandi, a constable came up to my barrack. ‘Jigna,’ she said.
‘IG sahab has called you to his office.’
I wondered why the inspector general of prisons wanted to see me in his cabin
at such a late hour. All sorts of worrying thoughts flooded my mind. Had the
Crime Branch officials cooked up more evidence against me? Was my family
okay? As the constable led me towards the IG’s cabin, Pushpa Kadam, the jailer,
came around with a worried look.
‘What did you do this time?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘Did you complain against us in the court?’
I shrugged. ‘No.’
The walk to the IG’s office would have hardly been two minutes from the
barrack, but it felt like an hour. Outside the cabin, the constable ordered me to
take off my footwear and enter the cabin. I did as I was told, and nervously
stepped inside. I was surprised to see Surinder Kumar, the inspector general
(prisons), standing up to greet me. He was wearing a chequered blue shirt.
In 2009, while working for the Asian Age, I was part of a media delegation
that had accompanied the additional chief secretary (home) to Gadchiroli, a
Naxal-affected area in the interiors of Maharashtra. Since this was a conflict
zone, the additional chief secretary was provided with Z+ security. Kumar was
then posted as the IG of the Gadchiroli range, and he was entrusted with the
security of the media delegation, which included four reporters from various
publications, including me. After we landed at Nagpur airport, Kumar had
personally accompanied me in his official Ambassador car to the village, where
we were briefed about various development initiatives taken by the government.
A rehabilitation centre for naxals was inaugurated. During our interaction, I had
found him to be an extremely courteous officer.
And now I was standing before Kumar as an accused in a murder case. As he
stood up from his desk, his eyes fell on my bare feet. Immediately, he pressed a
bell and called for the constable who was standing outside his office. He asked
her why I was not wearing any footwear. When the constable cited the norm, he
advised her to ensure it did not happen to me again. Then I put my sandals back
on. Strangely, it felt like a bit of my dignity had been restored. He asked me to
take a seat.
‘How did you land up here, Jigna?’ he said.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ I said. ‘I haven’t committed any crime.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am sure there is some misunderstanding. The system has a
way of targeting upright people.’
He went on to explain how he had never bowed down to political pressure,
and to the lure of easy money, during all his years of service. For that reason, he
had often been sidelined from good postings, and he found himself in obscure
positions, like this one, that did no justice to his abilities. Even then, he was
trying to make a difference with his initiatives.
‘You have been here for a month and a half,’ he said. ‘How can we make
things better for the inmates?’
‘Sir, the food is really terrible,’ I said. ‘The rotis are inedible. Even if some of
us are on the wrong side of the law, we are still humans and our basic need for
food must be protected.’
He took notes in his diary. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I will have a copy of the jail
manual sent to you. Please read it and let me know what other reforms are
needed.’
He stood up again and shook my hand, and also advised me to keep faith in
the judiciary. His words lifted my sagging morale, and I was thankful for the
respect he had shown to me. Back in the barrack, around 7 p.m., the constable
provided me with the jail manual. The next morning, the entire jail was abuzz
with news of my meeting with the IG. Many inmates lined up to ask me
questions. Some wanted to know if I could ask for favours, some were curious if
I was going to be set free. Some were just more friendly to me because of my
newly visible connections and some prodded me about what the IG and I had
talked about. The topic was discussed for several days and I could feel that the
inmates assumed that I had a certain hold. But the attention I had grabbed had
not gone down well with Jaya Chheda, who feared losing her hold over the jail.
 11
THE RISE AND FALL

Deccan Chronicle was a revered brand in south India. The Asian Age was a
publication part of the group, and it commanded great respect too. I was told that
A.T. Jayanthi, the senior-most editor of Asian Age, would interview me before a
final call on my hiring was taken. In March 2018, while the city enjoyed Rang
Panchami, I sat at the office in Todi Industrial Estate, Lower Parel, waiting to be
called in. The exterior of the office was like a garage shed. Strangely, a long car
covered with a plastic sheet that had gathered a thick layer of dust remained
parked in the compound. It was only later that I learnt it was a high-end silver-
coloured Mercedes.
The exterior of the office was not impressive, but the newsroom inside had a
fresh decor and a cosy vibe, with yellow bulbs that gave it a non-corporate feel.
Hussain Zaidi led me to Jayanthi’s cabin. I was surprised to see her. She had an
uncanny resemblance to my ex-boss, Meenal.
‘She is Jigna Vora. She has covered some fantastic stories. But these days, I
don’t see her name on the front pages.’
‘Hussain wants you on board,’ Jayanthi said. ‘What can you bring to the Asian
Age?’
‘I am good at court reporting,’ I said. ‘And I also have some experience with
crime reporting.’
‘Full-fledged operations begin in a month,’ Hussain said. ‘Can you join by
then?’
 The Asian Age had just been taken over by Deccan Chronicle, and they were
hiring a whole new team, right from resident editor to reporter. Though the paper
was in circulation, a lot was going to change.
I agreed. I negotiated for a decent salary package and a higher designation too.
It was a smooth interview. I couldn’t be happier. I joined the Asian Age in May
2008. It was not exactly a pleasant first day as I walked in and was welcomed by
a smiling Prasad Patil. He too had quit Mid-Day and joined the Asian Age as a
political reporter. My apprehensions about him were allayed by Zaidi sir who
told me not to worry as I would be reporting directly to him, not Patil. I started
story-hunting very enthusiastically again. Among the first stories I broke was
matka king Suresh Bhagat’s fear of threat to his life, which the police had
ignored. My story, along with the picture of Jaya Chheda and Suhas Roge in a
pool, sent ripples in the fraternity.
Abu Salem was still making news in 2008. I had some information about the
love letters that actress Monica Bedi had written to him while both of them were
in jail. I knew it would make for a great story, and pursued the lead diligently.
Eventually, I found a way to the source who was in possession of those letters. I
finally met him while he was shopping for the body-hugging T-shirts that Salem
wore to court hearings. After much chasing, I obtained the letters. No one else in
the media had a whiff of this. I was excited. A great story always gave me a rush.
The letters were romantic, sexual and desperate. Some even had explicit
drawings made by Monica. She sounded like a lover anxiously longing for her
partner. But to print the story, Hussain Zaidi asked me to get a quote from
Monica Bedi herself.
Monica had already been released from Hyderabad jail. She was going to
appear in the second season of the popular reality show Bigg Boss, and was
seeking interactions with the media through her public relations (PR) team. I got
in touch with her PR agency to arrange an interview, but I hid my real objective,
which was to get her quote on her love letters to Salem. As arranged, I waited for
Monica outside a mall in Thane. She arrived in a car, and I sat in between her
and another woman, whom Monica never introduced to me. A bouncer was
sitting on the front seat, next to the driver. The car began to move towards
Andheri from Ghodbunder Road. After a few lines about her Bollywood
comeback, I asked Monica if she had written any love letters to Salem from jail.
Instantly, the colour drained from her decked-up face. She was stunned.
‘I have those letters,’ I said. ‘I need a quote from you for the story.’
She insisted that I should not publish her letters. I told her it wasn’t my
decision but my editor’s. She asked her driver to stop, and the car screeched to a
halt.
‘Get out of my car,’ she said.
I exited without being told again and took a taxi to the office. Eventually, the
story was printed. The story was sensational and made it to the front page of the
Asian Age. It created quite a storm. The TV media wanted a copy of the letters to
follow up. Aariz Chandra, a TV reporter, requested a copy from me. I consulted
Hussain Zaidi and he advised me against sharing the letters with anyone. He was
working on a book on Abu Salem, and the letters would provide meaty details
for it. At times, I have wondered if my professional equation with Aariz took a
hit because of this. He stopped talking to me after that day.
Years later, sitting in Byculla Jail, I realized that Salem himself wanted those
letters to come out in the media. This was his revenge against Monica for
ditching him. A journalist may think he or she is breaking a story, but the
journalist is seldom aware of the hidden agenda behind it. Journalists are often
used by cops, politicians, gangsters and film stars to propagate their agenda.

In 2008, I covered the Ahmedabad blasts for the Asian Age. Rakesh Maria
arrested a bunch of Indian Mujahideen operatives after an email claiming
responsibility for the blast was traced to Navi Mumbai. From my sources in
Ahmedabad, I obtained a photograph of Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy, who was an
accused in the case. And then, from Mumbai, I managed to get a copy of his
signature. The signature was sent for handwriting analysis to an expert, without
revealing the identity of the person in question. The report confirmed that the
handwriting belonged to a terrorist. Once the story was printed, it spread like
wildfire and the entire media latched on to it. It was another feather in my cap.
After the 26/11 terror attacks, in December 2008, Hussain Zaidi got an offer to
work as a consultant on a documentary on the 26/11 attacks with Channel Four. I
was helping him with the research and interviews. For this documentary, we
were chasing some video footage of terrorist Ajmal Kasab’s interrogation by the
police. My source called me to Andheri, late one night. I took along a friend,
Murtuza Dewan, and drove with him at the late hour. The source seemed to have
risked a lot to get me the CD.
‘Call for help if I don’t return in fifteen minutes,’ I told Murtuza.
I walked into an office where I met my source and two unknown men. As
soon as I got the CD, I rushed back, and Murtuza drove us back. We managed to
reach the Asian Age office safely. I was overwhelmed by what I had managed to
get. That footage of the terrorists is the only one that is out till date, and was
sourced by me. Hussain Zaidi commended me for a good job. The video was
used in the documentary as well. Till date, nobody knows who leaked the CD.
The source who had passed on the CD to me was only a middleman.
In May 2010, Himanshu Roy took over as joint commissioner, law and order.
I had met him earlier when he was additional commissioner, south region, at his
office in Nagpada. The meeting was not for journalistic pursuits, but I had been
egged on to meet him by many female colleagues who couldn’t stop blushing
about his personality, muscular physique and sophisticated manner. I went to see
him, using a lame excuse for a story, and handed my visiting card to his
assistant. I was called into his cabin. The moment I entered his room he cast a
glance at my biscuit-coloured skirt and white shirt. He immediately stood up and
pulled out a chair for me with the flourish of a gentleman.
‘Can I get some tea for you?’ he asked in his smooth voice.
I politely declined and spoke to him briefly about an irrelevant case from
Colaba. I walked out of his office thoroughly impressed. Then, giggling like a
teenager, elated to meet such a polished man, I met Hussain Zaidi at office.
Hussain Zaidi warned me to be careful about my appearance when I went for
professional meetings, and not be too friendly. His words turned out to be
prophetic later.
As I started reporting more on crime, the frequency of my meetings with
Himanshu increased. I would often hear rumours about my affair with him, but I
laughed them off. It did feel strange when junior police officers began requesting
me to push for better postings with Himanshu. Male reporters from the fraternity
played their part in spreading these rumours. They would be waiting for long
hours outside Himanshu’s cabin for a quote, and I would be called in before
them. They would be oblivious to the fact that I would take an appointment from
Himanshu’s office days in advance and show up on time.
It did not help that Himanshu addressed me with quite a few adjectives in
private conversations. He would often call me ‘sweetheart’, etc. I would always
address him as ‘sir’. Truth be told, Himanshu never gave me even one big story
in all that time. In fact, he always discouraged me from pursuing certain leads.
On one rainy evening, I was sitting inside Himanshu’s cabin for a quote on the
deportation of gangster Santosh Shetty. He was sitting with his hands behind his
head, in a blue chequered half-sleeved shirt. The white T-shirt he wore inside
was visible at the seams. He looked directly into my eyes and flexed his biceps
suggestively.
‘Sir!’ I said firmly. ‘Your muscles don’t excite me.’
His biceps stopped flexing, and I realized that I had perhaps crossed a line, but
it was important that I made my stance clear to him. Though he had never made
a direct pass at me, his demeanour indicated that it was leading towards it. I
wanted to stop things before they went any further.
A few days later, in late December 2010, I received a tip-off about a well-
known builder who was into shady land dealings, and his exchanges with
Himanshu. Like a fool, I asked Himanshu if this was true, even though I wasn’t
doing a story on it. Himanshu brushed off the allegation, but this kind of rash
behaviour on my part ended up ruffling a lot of feathers with powerful people.
Later, I confronted many senior police officials about this information. A certain
hubris had taken over me. Perhaps, this played a part in my downfall.

In December 2010, once, I attended a press conference (PC) at the Crime Branch
and sat in the last row. After the PC, I met Himanshu for a quote on an exclusive
story. A man whom I had met from a matrimonial site happened to call at that
time. Usually, I didn’t answer calls when meeting police officials, but I answered
the phone that day to let him know that I would call him after my meeting with
the JCP (Crime) came to an end.
‘Boyfriend?’ Himanshu asked as soon as I had hung up.
‘Hmmm.’
‘Strange that you would want to marry someone you met online,’ he said.
 I was surprised. ‘So what?’ I said, defiantly.
His eyes became big and red. For a moment I was scared. How did he know
that the man I was contemplating to marry was someone I had met online? Had
he tapped my phone? I decided to be more careful in my interactions with
Himanshu from then on.
On 8 June 2011, I visited Himanshu’s office for a quote on another story. I
was scheduled to fly to Sikkim the next day. Himanshu mentioned how things
were calm in the city. I casually joked that this was the proverbial lull before a
storm. He laughed at that and wished me a safe journey. Three days later, J. Dey
was shot dead.
 12
JAIL’S MANDAKINI

One night in Byculla Jail, I woke up to the clanging of heavy anklets. A sight
awaited my weary eyes. Fifty-year-old Salma Bibi was prancing around the
barrack, clad in nothing but a thin, red dupatta that was draped around her torso,
tied in a peculiar knot above her cleavage. Her saggy breasts drooped down to
her paunch. With each heavy movement, her big hips swayed from one side to
the other. The silvery anklets were shining around her dark legs.
Earlier in the day, she had passed me in the reception area, wearing a cream-
coloured salwar-kameez and hurling the kind of abuses I hadn’t ever heard
before. Hence, I maintained my silence as she went about her naked antics that
night, running her hands through her shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair. None
of the other inmates seemed perturbed. A lady police constable was standing
guard outside the barrack. Salma Bibi walked up to the gates and held the iron
bars.
‘Why is the court delaying my case?’ Salma asked the constable.
The constable looked at Salma and said nothing.
‘What are you staring at?’ Salma said. ‘I’ll blow your bloody choot off.’
The constable was visibly angry, but she maintained her calm and allowed the
abuse to die down, preferring not to escalate the conflict because Salma Bibi’s
gaalis could make one’s ears bleed. I knew that most of her frustration stemmed
from the slow progress of her case.
 Salma had landed up in Barrack No. 2 on account of the various ailments she
was suffering from. Her vision was blurry and she was acutely diabetic. Her
designated place was right opposite mine. Each inmate, except the powerful
ones, had personal space only as wide as a tile. All of us would sleep around the
boundaries of the barrack. No inmate was allowed to sleep in the middle. For
dinner, Salma Bibi would sit with her back against the stone walls, wearing only
that red dupatta, and extend her legs out, while the aluminium plate would rest
on her lap. That sight would kill my appetite, or whatever remained of it.
I learnt more about Salma Bibi when we started talking. She had been in jail
for the past one-and-a-half years. Before her arrest, she had lived with her son
and second husband in the slums of Ganesh Nagar in Malad. The family stayed
in a ground-plus-one kholi, which was a room in a hutment. Her husband was in
his mid-sixties and worked as a tailor. It was alleged that Salma Bibi and her son
had killed him for the property. On the night that her husband was found dead,
Salma Bibi claimed that her son was not even home. She came down the ladder
from the first floor to find him dead already. She raised an alarm and alerted the
neighbours. The neighbours called the police, who found that the man had an
injury on his head. In their statements to the police, the neighbours alleged that
the family had been fighting a lot over the property. Now, the police had a
motive for the murder. But they didn’t recover the weapon. ‘If I indeed killed my
husband, where is the weapon I used?’ Salma Bibi would ask in her defence. She
alleged that her husband had most likely fallen on the floor and died
accidentally.
The police charged her with the destruction of evidence. Her son was also
arrested and sent to Thane Jail. He was married and had a child. Salma claimed
her son’s family stayed in their native village, but no one knew if that was the
truth.
Salma Bibi was originally from Kolkata. After her first husband had died,
nearly 25 years ago, she had moved to Mumbai with her son. But she still
believed she was the queen of Bengal, and demanded fish curry for dinner every
night. There were quite a few Bengali-speaking inmates in Barrack No. 2, and
she got along well with some of them, especially Paromita, who often had love
bites on her neck. The inmates suspected these were a result of her dalliances
with one of the lady police constables.
 Many people warned me against talking to Salma, because she was always
ready for a fight. She was in the good books of Jaya Chheda and thus would
often receive new clothes and jewellery to wear. Jaya would also arrange packets
of biryani for Salma whenever she would visit J.J. Hospital for medical check-
ups. Salma would dress up in her best attire for hospital visits, and sing praises
of Jaya after she returned. ‘Jaya Maa arranged for the best fried fish I have ever
tasted!’ she would say.
Salma took great pleasure in dressing up for the weekly visit of the male
superintendent, whom she lovingly referred to as Daroga Babu. On Fridays,
when the Daroga Babu would come for the weekly visit, she would drape her
favourite white saree, and line her eyes with kajal. She would pin up her pallu,
and put a red bindi on her forehead. Then, she would hook heavy earrings in her
earlobes, and twirl around for a round of praise from the other inmates. Fatima,
who had a habit of cracking jokes with sexual overtones, would remark that the
superintendent would be floored by the magic of Salma Bibi. Salma would blush
like a teenage girl on hearing that, and all the women would burst out laughing!
Each Friday, when the superintendent would arrive at 9.30 a.m., Salma would
stand as close as she could get to him. The superintendent would ask the inmates
if there was anything he could do for their betterment, and Salma would get in
his face and point to her left eye, which would flicker continually due to her
blurry vision.
‘Daroga Babu,’ she would say, ‘meri aankh ka toh kuch karo.’
The superintendent would move a step back. ‘Haan, haan. Karta hoon.’
She would move forward a step. ‘Kab karoge? Jaldi karo.’
All the women would chuckle, and the superintendent would exit hastily.
Salma Bibi also had a huge problem with the amount of money the Indian
government had spent on the security of Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist who was
caught alive for his role in the 26/11 terror attack. ‘These madarchods spent
four-and-a-half crore to keep that terrorist alive!’ she would say. ‘But nobody
cares that I am going blind.’
She would often notice me poring over a newspaper from the far end of the
barrack and guess which article I was reading. ‘How come you were able to see
what I was reading?’ I would ask her.
‘Utna toh dikhta hai,’ she would reply.
 Salma would often wake up in the middle of the night and hurl mindless
abuses. Sometimes, she would sit alone in the veranda and talk to herself. Once,
I sat next to her in a moment of solitude. After a while she turned to me and said,
‘I’ll go back to Bengal after my acquittal. I don’t like Mumbai any more.’
Salma Bibi had an undying belief that she would be set free in due course of
time. Jaya Chheda had promised Salma that she would use all her influence to
get her released. Salma clung to that belief as if her life depended on it.
‘I committed no crime,’ she would tell me. ‘Why should I be afraid of any
court?’
For such small favours, Jaya used Salma like her personal servant in jail. I
learnt that Salma’s son was also playing a similar role for Jaya’s son in Thane
Jail. Jaya often used to give freebies to inmates. After Jaya came back from
hospital in February, she gave Salma a pair of nighties to wear. After that, Salma
gave up draping the thin dupatta over her naked body. I noticed that Jaya had
built an army of personal assistants with her influence. Most of these were
Africans and inmates accused of murder. Jaya had convinced some of those
accused of murder that it was impossible for them to get bail, so that they could
stay in jail and serve her.
Paddu, who was Paromita’s helper, once told me that she would never get bail.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Jaya Maa has said so,’ Paddu said.
I asked for Paddu’s charge sheet, and read it. I told her that she had been taken
for a ride because bail was possible in her case. She didn’t even have a lawyer.
Many of the accused do not have the money or resources to arrange lawyers to
fight their cases. And the NGOs who work in Byculla Jail also prefer helping
only those inmates who can pay them. I had seen an NGO representative asking
an inmate for Rs 500 to deliver a message to her home. The ones who do not
have money are neglected and left to their fate. I managed to arrange a lawyer,
Raja Thakur, for Paddu.
One day, Salma returned to the barracks after a court visit, heartbroken. She
walked around the barracks like a hurt animal, hurling every abuse she knew in
Bengali. I couldn’t understand much of it, but no one had ever seen her so
disturbed. I didn’t even have the courage to console her because Jaya was
keeping a constant watch on my activities, either personally or through her
informers. Finally, Paromita walked up to Salma, and spoke to her in Bengali.
They had an animated conversation, and I heard Jaya’s name pop up a few times.
At that time, Jaya was visiting court because her trials had a daily hearing, so
perhaps Salma was less discreet than she would have normally been.
Later, Paromita told me what had transpired. The Dindoshi court was hearing
Salma’s case, and Jaya had promised to arrange the best lawyer for her. The
lawyer in question was none other than the famous Mahesh Patil, who was the
go-to person for any case in Dindoshi. During one of her court visits, Salma ran
into Mahesh Patil and asked him why he wasn’t showing up for her case. The
seasoned lawyer blew the lid off Jaya’s lies. He said he had never been paid to
argue for Salma’s case and had no reason to show up.
‘Jaya has fucked up Salma’s case,’ Paromita said.
‘What do we do now?’ I asked.
‘Wait and watch,’ she said. ‘Keep reading your Hanuman Chalisa.’
Paromita was a shrewd woman. Though she sympathized with Salma, a
conflict with Jaya would make her survival, or even anyone else’s survival,
impossible. Her fears proved right because no sooner had Jaya arrived back in
her fiefdom, one of her many spies updated her on what had occurred in her
absence. Later that night, Salma Bibi applied cold cream all over her body like
she did each night, and went to sleep while keeping a fair distance from
everyone because even the slightest of unwarranted touches irritated her no end.
In the middle of the night, the entire barrack woke up to loud abuses. Salma
Bibi and Simran, the mobile thief, were pulling each other’s hair.
‘Why did you kick me?’ Salma screamed.
‘I never touched you, whore!’ Simran shouted.
Salma Bibi spat on the floor. ‘One lauda will never suffice a cocksucker like
you!’
They threw wild punches and dragged each other around. The entire barrack
watched in stunned silence, and no one had the guts to intervene. Paromita was
sure Simran had been egged on by Jaya. The fight got so serious that the jail
authorities had to open the locks of the barrack at 2 a.m. Opening the barrack
while the bandi was in force was serious. It had never happened in front of me.
When they were finally separated, Salma and Simran had clumps of each other’s
hair in their hands. Immediately, the authorities shifted Salma to a different
circle. I didn’t get a chance to interact with Salma a lot after that. But I met her
once during a visit to Dr Khan.
‘Salma Bibi, how is your superintendent?’ I asked her in jest.
‘He is useless,’ she said. ‘His lauda can’t even stand up.’
We all laughed at that.
Salma Bibi had not forgiven Jaya Chheda and wanted her to rot in hell. Her
last piece of advice to me was to stay away from Jaya’s games, and pray to God
for my release.
Much later, I heard about Salma Bibi’s death due to tuberculosis. I always
remember Salma Bibi as the woman who sat in the veranda of Byculla Jail, and
dreamt of living a free life in Kolkata. She always claimed the police had framed
her and her son. Sometimes, she was worried about the kholi that had apparently
led to her husband’s death. She was sure the neighbours would have usurped it
by now. Unfortunately, death came to her long before the freedom she longed
for. Salma Bibi’s son was convicted in the murder case and sentenced to a life
term.
 13
COLLATERAL DAMAGE

With every passing day, I became more attentive and observant in jail. Some
inmates intrigued me, while some made me restless. Suman Soni had the latter
effect on me. She had spent about seven months in jail. The forty-something
woman was thin to the point of emaciation. She always wore a sari, and her hair
would be tied in a neat plait. Her frail arms would show in her loose-sleeved
blouses, which she had borrowed from others. Other inmates constantly bullied
her, and she did not have the physical or mental strength to stand up for herself.
She would speak to no one. Sometimes, I would see her sitting in a corner,
talking to herself and crying.
None of Suman’s family members ever came to meet her. A long time ago,
Suman had also adopted a son, who had turned nineteen while she was in jail,
but even he never bothered to check on his foster-mother. Her son’s story would
force me to confront my own horrid thoughts. What if my son did the same to
me? What if he decided to never see me again?
The powerful inmates did minimal cleaning work for the weekly visits of the
superintendent. But Usha Maa, the warden, would make Suman scrub the entire
barrack, and the poor soul would do it without a murmur of protest. The other
inmates would look at her and laugh, as she went about bearing their share of the
workload.
I managed to speak to Suman once. The conversation lasted barely thirty
minutes. She spoke in chaste Hindi, in an accent that made me guess she was
from Uttar Pradesh. Suman had been arrested for attempting to murder her
mother-in-law. Married at a young age of twelve, Suman’s life was made hell
because she could not bear any children. Her mother-in-law tortured her
endlessly. Once, she inserted forceps into Suman’s vagina and turned them so
that her womb could be destroyed forever. I was aghast at the amount of cruelty
a woman could unleash on another. As Suman shivered while recalling the tale, I
could not stop my tears.
Suman also owned a flat in Jogeshwari area. After her husband died, her
mother-in-law insisted that she leave the house and walk away. Her mental and
physical torture continued, now for the flat that her mother-in-law wanted. One
day, during an argument, Suman snapped. She picked up a wooden plank and hit
her mother-in-law on the head. The monstrous lady collapsed on the floor in a
pool of blood, but survived, and Suman landed in jail.
The Byculla Jail campus had police quarters right behind our barracks. Every
Saturday, around 2 a.m., Suman would start shouting through the small windows
that were located at the top of the barrack walls.
‘Superintendent sahab!’ she would scream. ‘You are sleeping so peacefully
with your wife. Mera toh kuch karo!’
It was her weekly ritual that humoured some inmates but irritated a few
others. Salma Bibi would often ask Suman if she wanted the superintendent to
‘douse the fire that was burning inside her body’.
I learnt that Suman had no lawyer, and thus no court visits were scheduled for
her. She had no clue what a charge sheet meant, and if there was one in her case.
I got the address of her Jogeshwari house and requested the NGOs representative
visiting the jail to contact someone from her family. But the NGOs took no
interest in her case. I pleaded with them to get her a lawyer, but they ignored that
request too.
Finally, I spoke to Paromita and we briefly discussed the possibility of getting
Suman released. Having studied law, I knew that in Suman’s case, bail was
possible. Paromita was curious about my interest in helping Suman, and other
inmates too began talking about my efforts.
One morning, at around 10 a.m., I found about half a dozen inmates circling
Suman, clapping and singing loudly. I walked over to find Suman dressed in a
gaudy sari. She had dark red lipstick spread on her lips, a thick outline of kohl
around her eyes and dangling earrings.
The inmates forced her to dance and Suman obeyed their orders. More
inmates gathered around Suman soon. I shivered as I watched the entire barrack
surround her, dancing like a nomadic tribe. Even the Africans danced while
Suman remained at the centre. They made it look like Suman was behaving like
a eunuch.
Later that day, the jail authorities arrived and took custody of Suman. I
wondered why they had taken her away, considering such bullying was not
uncommon in the jail. But later on, I learnt that Suman had been transferred to a
hospital for mentally disturbed people in Thane. The murmurs began soon after
that Jaya Chheda had had a hand in it all and got Suman transferred. My
attempts to get Suman bail had not gone down well with Jaya. Before I could do
anything, Jaya had played her cards.

In April 2012, I read a newspaper report that Mumbai Police had arrested a
struggling actress named Simran Sood in relation to the murder of Delhi
businessman Arun Tikku. The article and subsequent media coverage created
quite a buzz in Byculla Jail. All the inmates were excited about an actress
joining their ranks. Vijay Palande was also arrested. Arun Kumar Tikku, sixty-
two, had been murdered in his three-bedroom flat in Mumbai by Palande’s
associates. There was news that Simran would also be charged.
Two weeks later, Simran Sood arrived in Byculla Jail in the evening. She was
skinny, tall and fair. She was taken to Barrack No. 2. Inmates from Barrack No.
2 lined up to get a good look at the ‘actress’. But to the best of my knowledge,
Simran had only been a struggler who had perhaps appeared in a few item songs.
Next morning, Simran was shifted to Barrack No. 5. In the afternoon, she came
up to speak to me when I was reciting my prayers under the tree, which was my
usual place for meditation.
‘Can you remove my hair extensions?’ Simran asked.
I shook my head. I had never used such accessories and had no clue how to
take one off. Simran hadn’t been able to remove the extension for the past fifteen
days, and now it was pricking her scalp. I suggested that she check with Melody
Mumma, since the Africans in jail had short hair and would probably know how
to deal with an extension. When Simran visited Melody Mumma, she was finally
able to get the extension off her head. She couldn’t stop thanking me for the
help.
Simran received a lot of attention in jail due to the high-profile nature of her
case. She also started spending a lot of time with me. Jaya Chheda could not
accept this, and tried her best to cause a rift between us.
Simran was unable to get used to the jail food. Since I had received
permission through a court order to be sent home-cooked food, I suggested to
Simran that she could try getting one too. Her lawyer tried many times, but the
court never allowed Simran the requisite permission.
Simran confided to me that she had been dating a top stockbroker from
Mumbai before her arrest. Her lavish lifestyle involved partying and clubbing
every single night. She would try designer clothes for hours before finalizing her
look each evening, a stark contrast to her life now, when she had only two pairs
of clothes. She fondly remembered the new year bash that her stockbroker
boyfriend had thrown on a yacht in Goa.
‘He booked the entire yacht for me,’ she said.
‘Did he ever come to meet you when you were in police custody?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure he will visit me here.’
I merely laughed from my own experience and asked her not to expect too
much from friends.
‘He is a Gujarati,’ she said. Then she told me his name, and asked if there was
any chance I might be related to him.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Good,’ she replied. ‘Because his mother is a bitch. A control freak!’
I laughed aloud at that. Simran also mentioned that she used to go shopping to
Bangkok every weekend with a coterie of socialites. None of them had bothered
to check on her after her arrest. She said she used to also meet Santosh Shetty,
Chhota Rajan’s associate, in Bangkok. Shetty was extradited to India in 2011. I
would often find him sitting in the same vehicles during our court visits.
According to the police, Vijay Palande and Simran were husband and wife,
but Simran always insisted that Vijay was like a brother to her. Other inmates
joked about this.
 ‘Oh, yes,’ Usha Maa quipped. ‘During the day he is your brother, and at night
he is your lover!’
I offered some of my kurtas to Simran since she had so few clothes, and we
were pretty much the same height. She politely refused because her father was
due to visit her from Delhi, where her family lived. While working in
Bollywood, Simran had lived alone in Mumbai in a posh locality. Her accent had
the forced delicateness of a film star. She would lament about her situation, but I
never saw her crying in jail.
Simran was assigned to Barrack No. 5, and her space was next to Melody
Mumma. She started reading the Bible, fasting and attending some of the rituals
of Muslim inmates on Fridays, all in the hope that there would be some divine
intervention that would ensure her release. She also got addicted to the packets
of gutkha that Fatima would smuggle inside. To me, Simran often spoke about
designer brands of handbags, and I could never even pronounce their names
correctly.
Simran had never used an Indian toilet in her life before, but now she was
sharing a toilet with forty other women. Earlier, she drank nothing but mineral
water, but now she had to drink from dirty taps. Her parties would begin at 12.30
a.m. and end at 5.30 a.m. But in Byculla Jail, she had to wake up at 5.30 a.m.
and attend a headcount. The way she spoke about her life, Simran had lived in a
way that most of us cannot even dream of.
Simran often joked that once we were released, we would be the perfect
candidates for Bigg Boss. And she had a plan to go to Goa too. I had never
visited Goa before, so I would enthusiastically agree with her. ‘We’ll have so
much fun, it will be once in a lifetime’, she would say.
Simran missed her stockbroker boyfriend a lot. During each court visit, she
was hopeful that he would turn up to meet her, but each time she would return in
the evening with a dejected look on her face. I could relate to this situation
completely since so many of the people I had considered my trusted friends had
also forsaken me. But Simran still hoped that her lover would turn up to see her
the next time. I did not have the heart to burst her bubble of hope. Her brother
and father, and her lawyer would often visit her though.
In May, Jaya Chheda started guiding Simran and told her she was ready to
help her if Simran stopped talking to me. However, Simran would wait for Jaya
Chheda to leave for her court date and rush to my barrack and chat with me.
Simran would often go through the book that was delivered to Jaya every day.
Jaya would also get clothes from Westside for her. I never had the courage to tell
Simran that Jaya used most inmates like dolls, and she would break her favourite
toys as soon as she got bored of them. In Simran’s case, that happened rather
soon. Late one night, Jaya instigated a fight between an African inmate and
Simran. The African inmate slapped Simran hard and her cheeks turned red. The
entire jail was stunned. To Simran’s credit, not even such a hard slap could make
her cry. The lady constables arrived and shifted Simran to Circle 2. After that, I
would only meet Simran during doctor visits. She confessed that she missed
talking to me. I advised her to keep to herself and not get over-friendly with
anyone.
Simran secured bail a few months after me. She made a great effort to keep in
touch. Once, I took my son to the KFC at Linking Road, Bandra, and he was
enjoying his food when someone called my name aloud. I turned around and saw
Simran running towards me. She hugged me tightly. ‘You supported me during
the worst phase of my life,’ she said, and started weeping. That was the only
time I saw her cry.
 14
THE KILLING OF J. DEY

On the rainy afternoon of 11 June 2011, one piece of news spread among the
city’s journalists. A journalist had been shot in broad daylight. The telephone
line at the police control room rang non-stop. Other journalists wanted to know
if it was true or just fake news doing the rounds.
Soon, reports confirmed that fifty-six-year-old Jyotirmoy Dey had been shot
near his residence in Hiranandani Gardens, Powai. Later, another update
confirmed that J. Dey, as he was famously known, was dead.
J. Dey was the investigations editor at Mid-Day. At around 2.30 p.m. on the
fateful day, he was returning home after meeting his mother Bina at her Amrut
Nagar house in Ghatkopar. Minutes before reaching home, Dey had called his
wife to inform her that he would reach in the next 10–15 minutes. By 2.45 p.m.,
when Dey reached the main road leading to Hiranandani Gardens, four men on
two bikes opened fire at him. J. Dey, who was on a motorcycle too, collapsed
instantly. He was first rushed to a nearby hospital, which was ill-equipped to
treat such severe injuries. He had five gunshot entry wounds and four exit
wounds on his body. By the time he was taken to the Hiranandani Hospital, he
had succumbed to them.
J. Dey’s murder sent shock waves in the journalist fraternity across the
country. The six-foot-three imposing man had been one of the top crime
reporters. Many juniors looked up to him. Even before he was laid to rest,
theories about the possible motive behind his killing began to surface.
 Some said that it was the powerful oil mafia that he had irked with his
exposés. Some cited the story about red sandalwood smuggling that he was
working on as a probable reason. J. Dey’s probe about a senior cop’s close link
with Dawood Ibrahim was another theory that floated around, while some
believed that perhaps he had rubbed the underworld the wrong way through his
reports.

With the onset of the monsoon that year, I had finally found the time to visit
Sikkim with my family, a trip that we had planned for months. The pristine, lush
valleys were a soothing relief. We were in the picturesque town of Pelling on the
afternoon of 11 June 2011, when my Blackberry phone began beeping
continuously. The screen flashed Hussain Zaidi’s name, my editor at the Asian
Age.
‘What, sir?’ I said, in jest. ‘Can’t I enjoy a vacation without thinking about
work?’
‘J. Dey has been shot dead,’ he replied bluntly. ‘Confirm it and file a story.
Get all the details.’
The news made me gasp. I gazed at my phone wondering how a journalist
could be shot dead in a city like Mumbai. The first person I thought of
contacting was Himanshu Roy, who was joint commissioner of police (crime)
back then. I promptly dialled Roy’s number. The siren of a police jeep wailed in
the background, as Roy spoke in a voice laced with urgency. He was on his way
to Powai, where the murder had taken place. With the confirmation from the top
cop, I called Prasad Patil, the then bureau chief at Asian Age. He put another
reporter to cover the spot story while I tapped into my sources to get deeper. As
soon as I reached my room at the lodge we were staying in, I switched on the
television. J. Dey’s murder was ‘Breaking News’ on all the channels. I stopped at
NDTV and got back to making calls.
To me, J. Dey was a professional acquaintance. He was an extremely private
person who spoke only when he wanted to. My interactions with him were
limited to a distant smile, only if we happened to glance at each other at press
conferences. My mind kept drifting back to the thought that J. Dey’s murder was
a stark reminder of the perils of our profession. At around 8.30 p.m., I dictated
my inputs to a junior reporter from office. The cellular network was weak in the
mountains. But the story was filed.
The next morning, we stepped out early as the sun peeked through the
beautiful hillocks. A light drizzle fell on the roof of our Toyota Innova as we
drove along the narrow roads to see all the sights. A beautiful mist limited our
visibility. Even as I looked at the mesmerizing landscape around, my mind
pondered over J. Dey’s murder. My family, all eight of them, stopped by to enjoy
momos for brunch. But I had no appetite.
My phone buzzed continuously, even while we were in the red corridors of a
Buddhist monastery. There were several theories that circulated. The strongest
one was that he bore the brunt for reporting aggressively on the oil mafia. But
there were no concrete leads and it was all mere speculation. I continued to stay
in touch with my colleagues and sources over the next few days.
On 18 June, I returned to Mumbai. I wasted no time and went to Roy’s office
at Crawford Market. The cops, I learnt, were still clueless. They had absolutely
no leads. A large group of journalists had protested by organizing a candle march
for their fallen colleague. A delegation also met Home Minister R.R. Patil,
demanding a CBI probe in the case. Roy was under tremendous pressure to crack
it.
‘Did he have any personal animosities?’ I asked Roy. ‘Disputes?’
‘Not that we’re aware of,’ he said.
‘Any suspects at this time?’
‘We’re exploring all angles.’
‘Any leads from the CCTV footage?’
‘Like what?’
‘Perhaps the CCTV footage can reveal if the shooters escaped towards
Andheri or Ghatkopar?’
He held his chin in his hands and contained the faint smile between his thick
fingers. ‘Why should I reveal the course of my investigation?’ I understood his
need for secrecy and wished him good luck on the case.
Around that time, I also filed a story about J. Dey’s unscheduled trip to
London in 2011, allegedly to meet Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi, a close
associate of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim. Mumbai Police also began
investigating this trip.
 The media had grown restless. We needed some concrete answers on the
murder. On 27 June, exactly sixteen days after J. Dey was murdered in cold
blood, Mumbai Police announced a press conference. All of us headed to the
Police Press Club at Azad Maidan. I sat in the back row, sipping a cup of tea, as
Arup Patnaik, the city’s police commissioner, announced that they had an
important breakthrough. Standing by the commissioner’s side was Roy, his
biceps bulging in the chequered, half-sleeved shirt he wore.
‘We have arrested seven people. Underworld Don Chhota Rajan is behind the
killing,’ the cop announced.3
‘The murder was planned by Rohit Thangapani, alias Satish Kalia, at the
behest of Chhota Rajan. Kalia is a known shooter of Rajan’s gang and has
worked for him earlier too. While three persons were arrested from Mumbai,
three were arrested from Rameshwaram in Tamil Nadu, and one from Solapur.’
The revolver, bullets and the mobile phones used in the murder had been
recovered. The cops suspected that the trigger was the two articles written by J.
Dey about Chhota Rajan’s diminishing influence in the underworld. But the
police theory had too many loose ends. Nevertheless, the media congratulated
the cops, including Senior Inspector Ramesh Mahale, who was known for his
immaculate paperwork.
On 1 July 2011, in an explosive interview to NDTV, Chhota Rajan claimed
that J. Dey had been colluding with rival gangster Dawood Ibrahim. On his visit
to London, Dey had invited Chhota Rajan for an interview, but the don sensed
danger and stayed away. Rajan’s suspicion was further strengthened when Dey
invited him for an interview in the Philippines. J. Dey had thus turned traitor in
the books of Chhota Rajan, a renegade threat that had to be eliminated.
‘Reporters should not cross their limits,’ Chhota Rajan said, concluding the
interview.
Vinod Asrani, a builder based in Chembur with links to Chhota Rajan, was
also arrested by the Crime Branch. He was known to drink with Dey in the bars
of central Mumbai. Around the first week of June, he had allegedly helped the
sharpshooters identify J. Dey at a bar named ‘Uma Palace’ in Mulund, the cops
claimed. In each arrest, Mumbai Police pressed charges under the stringent
MCOCA against all the accused.
 15
DOG EAT DOG

The front-page story in a city tabloid announced that there had been a
development in the J. Dey murder case. The story stated that the police were
closely investigating the role of a female reporter in the murder, but did not
name the suspect or the policemen. Based on information provided by highly
placed sources, the story managed to create ripples and perhaps also created
anticipation that there would be a fresh arrest.
Another story in a national daily, buried somewhere in the middle pages, made
a similar claim. A female reporter, under the police scanner, had allegedly
provided the registration number of J. Dey’s bike, his residential address and his
office address to Chhota Rajan, the story stated.
I’d been living in a rented apartment in Worli since September 2010, because
it saved a lot of time travelling to the nearby Asian Age office. I was a single
parent, and my job paid for my son’s education, and for the various bills that life
never stops throwing at you. In an area where real estate costs a bomb, I paid a
modest rent of Rs 12,000 per month because the flat was only a small room
redeveloped by the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA).
I closely followed every development in the murder. I wondered who this
female reporter was. I turned the page over, not realizing that the sheet of paper
in my hands was a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.
Over the coming days, I noticed that my co-workers at Asian Age would pause
in the middle of animated conversations if I happened to be passing. Calls to my
colleagues in other media houses went unanswered and unreturned. It was
sometime towards the end of August 2011 that Zaidi sir called me to his cabin.
‘Sit,’ he said. ‘You’ve done a good job with the J. Dey case.’
I nodded.
‘The police suspect the involvement of a female reporter,’ he said. ‘Any idea
who that might be?’
I shrugged.
‘Jigna,’ he said, ‘it could be a rumour, but the needle of suspicion is pointing
at you.’
I sank into the chair, shocked. I assured him I had no role to play, which
seemed to put him at ease. Maybe these were mere rumours after all, and they’d
die their own death. I had nothing to fear because my conscience was clear. But
the rumours only got stronger. And wherever I went, I had a constant paranoia of
being followed. I’d turn around and find no one, but I could never shake off that
fear. The wildest theory on the grapevine alleged that I’d been a party to the
murder because of an affair gone wrong with J. Dey. In reality, I didn’t even
recall ever speaking to him.
At the same time, Leo, my pug whom I loved to death, was growing
increasingly distant. We usually shared a close bond, but at that time, he just
didn’t want to be anywhere near me. My mom later reasoned that perhaps Leo
had an intuition that I was going away from home, and this was his way of
preparing for it.
The rumour mills were working overtime. My name cropped up more often in
the media fraternity, though the identity of the female reporter was never
revealed in the newspapers. I discussed the situation with Hussain Zaidi again,
and we agreed it would be best to meet Himanshu Roy and clear the air. On 9
September 2011, with rain lashing down from the dark Mumbai sky, I met Zaidi
sir at the Palladium Mall in Lower Parel, where he was accepting delivery of his
new car. His wife, a devout Hindu, performed an aarti of the car, and with rain
pounding heavily against the windscreen, we reached Crawford Market at 8 p.m.
While Zaidi sir attended the meeting with Himanshu Roy, I prayed at the nearby
Hanuman temple, pleading with the god of strength to help me tide through this
crisis.
 I noticed the sombre look on Zaidi’s face when he returned. His knuckles
whitened as he clutched the steering of his brand-new car tightly.
‘Himanshu confirmed they are investigating you,’ he said.
‘Why?’ I said as I burst into tears. ‘I haven’t done anything!’
‘He says a lot of people, some in his circles, and some in ours, will be happy
to see you behind bars.’
‘Who are these people?’
‘These are murky waters, Jigna. Nothing is clear. But he assured me that he
knows you aren’t involved. And he’ll make sure justice prevails in the end.’
My breathing eased. ‘I am standing between my men and Jigna’s arrest,’ Roy
had assured Zaidi sir. I wish he had recorded that conversation.
A media association suggested that they’d present my case before the home
minister, but I did not proceed because I had no guilt to bear. Like Zaidi sir, I
believed in Himanshu Roy’s words. Looking back, that was the biggest mistake
of my life.

My family planned another vacation to Nathdwara, Rajasthan, on 25 November,

to visit the holy shrine of Srinathji. The rental lease of the SRA flat in Worli has
since ended, and I had returned to Ghatkopar to stay with my grandparents and
mother. On 31 October, I woke up to my BlackBerry phone vibrating. Megha
Prasad, a friend and a fellow journalist, had sent me numerous messages. Her
panic-stricken words asked me to check the Mumbai Mirror. I picked up the
paper in front of my door with shaking hands. The front-page report claimed that
the police had recovered call recordings in which Chhota Rajan had admitted to
unidentified people that the lady reporter had instigated the murder of J. Dey.
The police also claimed to be in possession of a threatening text message sent by
the female reporter to J. Dey. I was shaken as I finished reading the article. It
stated that over the next few days, the Crime Branch was going to call in the
reporter for questioning.
In the first week of November, I called Senior Inspector Ramesh Mahale of
the Mumbai Crime Branch. He was a deeply religious person.
‘God will help you if you’re innocent,’ he said.
‘I haven’t done anything, sir.’
 ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then come to the Unit One office if we call you. Record
your statement.’
I agreed and hung up. My son was home for his Diwali vacation, but a severe
bout of jaundice had confined him to bed. I sat with him and held out the many
medicines he’d been prescribed.
‘Things aren’t right,’ I told him.
‘Why, Ma?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll be fine. Concentrate on your studies.’
‘Okay, Ma.’
‘Remember,’ I said, ‘whatever happens, I will always be by your side.’
He moved closer and put his arms around me.
‘I’ll meet you on 9 December in Panchgani,’ I said.
He looked up. ‘Promise?’
I kissed his forehead, and a faint smile spread across his sallow face. Later, I
confided about the recent developments to my uncle and aunt, who lived next
door. They were horrified, but believed in my innocence, and promised to pray
for my safety.
On 12 November, Assistant Police Inspector (API) Vilas Datir from the Crime
Branch called my number. It was the call I’d been dreading.
‘Mahale sir must have spoken to you, madam,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘When should I come?’
‘By noon,’ he said. ‘We’ll be waiting.’
I had been to the Unit One office at Crawford Market umpteen times over the
past five years, especially when I had covered the 26/11 terrorist attacks on
Mumbai in 2008. Mahale had played a pivotal role in investigating that attack.
I parked my Hyundai i10. Never had I imagined that I would walk into these
premises as a suspect.
Inside Mahale’s office, I was asked to sit on a plastic chair. Photos of Lord
Ganesha lined the walls. Arun Chauhan, a senior inspector from the Property
Cell, took a seat opposite me. Vilas Datir, assistant police inspector, sat down on
another table in the same room. He was a tall, imposing man and tapped his
heavy fingers on a laptop throughout the interaction.
Chauhan began with the routine questions, asking for details such as my age,
and address, which I was sure he already knew. He was only easing me into the
questioning, preparing me for what lay ahead.
‘Do you know J. Dey’s wife?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Where did he live?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about your professional rivalry with him?’
‘He was far too senior for such a rivalry to exist.’
Chauhan leaned forward. ‘What kind of equation do you share with Chhota
Rajan?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘But,’ he said and showed me an international number written on a piece of
paper, ‘you’ve been in regular touch with this number in the last six months,
haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘About twenty times in the last six months. That isn’t a lot,
really.’
‘Whom does this number belong to?’
‘A friend I met on a social network.’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘Through a common friend. He has no connection to the underworld. His
profile can be verified.’
The questioning lasted for three hours, and finally, they let me go. I had kept
my bosses at Asian Age informed of my trip to Unit One. When I reached the
office in the evening, the edit meeting was in progress. Grim faces gathered
around me. I clarified that the police were suspicious about a few international
calls and that I’d recorded my statement about those. A few colleagues hugged
me, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief, thinking that the worst was behind me.
On 14 November 2011, my son returned to his boarding school in Panchgani.
The Crime Branch had not filed a charge sheet yet. Normally, the police are
expected to file a charge sheet in court in three months. But under the provisions
of MCOCA, they’d requested for an extension, which was granted by the court.
The six-month deadline to file the charge sheet was soon approaching. Over the
next few days, I also spoke to Himanshu Roy. The conversation put me at ease
and strengthened my belief that my fear had been unfounded. On 22 November,
I received a call from Binoo Nair, my colleague at the Asian Age.
 ‘Where are you?’ he asked.
‘Home.’
‘Oh. Uh . . .’ He wanted to say something but could not bring himself to do it.
‘Okay, okay.’
‘Why, Binoo?’ I asked. ‘Anything wrong?’
He spoke after an elaborate pause. ‘There were rumours at the Press Club that
you’ve been arrested.’
I tried to laugh, only to make him feel better. ‘Well, I’m talking to you.’
I hung up soon after, but that call shook me up. And then, two days later, I
received a text message from a senior IPS officer. Just two words: ‘Stay Strong.’
On the morning of 25 November, I was making some last-minute
arrangements for my trip to the Srinathji shrine in Rajasthan. Our train was
scheduled to depart at 2.30 p.m. from Bandra Terminus. I was standing with my
aunt in the balcony of her home, going over a list of things she wanted me to
bring from Rajasthan. A grey Bolero jeep stopped in the narrow lane in front of
the balcony. Three lady constables and two heavyset men in safari suits emerged
from the vehicle. There was nothing dramatic about their entry, but the purpose
behind their trained movements was evident. I rushed back to my flat, which was
next door. My grandfather looked up from the newspaper.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked in chaste Gujarati.
‘The police are here.’
‘Police? Why?’
My grandfather was a Gandhian who’d lived his entire life with two sets of
clothes. His life had been an epitome of simplicity. Confusion loomed large on
his face. Before I could explain any further, the cops appeared in the corridor.
The lady constable was dressed in plain clothes and wore a mangalsutra around
her neck.
‘Jigna Vora?’ she asked.
‘That’s me,’ I said, still in my nightclothes.
‘Get dressed,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to come with us.’
‘Why?’ my grandfather asked.
‘Routine questioning,’ she said, her tone lowered in some measure. ‘She’ll be
back by evening.’
 I knew she wasn’t speaking the truth, but I was thankful because it calmed
down my grandfather. My mother was bathing, unaware of what was happening.
My maid continued cooking in the kitchen, assuming some guests had come
over. I walked to my bedroom, and the other lady constable followed. She stayed
inside while I changed, and pointed her chin at a photo frame on the walls.
‘Who is this boy?’ she asked.
‘My son,’ I said.
She smiled in some measure and waited until I pulled on a pink T-shirt and
blue jeans. In a matter of minutes, even before I could bid goodbye to my
mother, I was inside the Bolero jeep, sandwiched between the lady constables.
On the way from Ghatkopar to Crawford Market, the lady constable asked me to
switch off and hand over the Samsung phone I’d recently purchased. At 11.20
a.m., the constables shuffled me inside the Unit One office. API Vilas Datir
spoke with a tinge of empathy in his voice.
‘Madam,’ he said. ‘You are under arrest for the murder of J. Dey.’
 16
DAYS OF DESTRUCTION

As I sat facing Vilas Datir at the Crime Branch office, I felt strange. The anxiety
and turbulent thoughts over the past few weeks had drained me. Now that I sat in
that chair, knowing that they had arrested me, my mind had gone numb. So
numb that I could collapse that very moment. The enormity of the accusation
and the uncertainty that stared at me was yet to sink in.
About fifteen minutes later, when my brain kicked into overdrive, I stared at
the sandals on my feet. I had purchased this new pair from the Lord’s showroom
right opposite the Crime Branch Office a few days ago. I looked at the silver
anklets and toe rings I hadn’t found the time to take off when the cops had come
calling. The sandals hurt like hell.
Why had they arrested me? For what?
The cops, most of whom I had professional dealings with, had stabbed me in
my back. Himanshu Roy had assured Zaidi sir that no harm would come my way
if I was innocent. I had been through a broken childhood, a broken marriage and
just when my career showed promises of a new-found hope, I was pulled to rock
bottom again. Why?
I wondered about the situation back home. What were my family members
thinking? What about my son? My grandmother had also been taking a bath
when the police picked me up. She would have stepped out and found her life
changed drastically.
 *

Ramesh Mahale called me to his cabin. He couldn’t look me in the eyes.

‘I had to do my duty.’
‘I understand, sir.’ I choked and hung my head low. ‘But this is a huge
mistake.’
‘You are allowed one phone call,’ he said. ‘Seek legal opinion.’
My mobile had already been confiscated on the way to the station. The few
cellphone numbers I could dial from memory seemed blurred by my tears.
Nobody in my family had the means to deal with such a problem. With great
effort, I dialled a number from Mahale’s landline with the hope that it would
connect to Murtuza Dewan, a friend who had a good network of lawyers. The
phone rang endlessly. Just as I was about to hang up, he answered. I was relieved
to hear his voice.
‘I’ve been arrested,’ I said in Gujarati. ‘They are going to produce me in court
in a few hours. Need a lawyer.’
‘Heard about it,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to connect with senior advocate
Mundargi.’
‘The media will be in full strength at the court,’ I said. ‘Tell my family not to
turn up. They won’t be able to handle it.’
He agreed, and we disconnected. Ramesh Mahale then asked me to take off all
the silver jewellery I was wearing. He also suggested that a constable would go
back to my home, and bring over a different pair of clothes because the pink T-
shirt and blue jeans I was wearing would not be the right attire for a court
appearance. I asked for my asthma inhaler as well. He nodded. I was thankful for
this little leniency.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Ashok Durape arrived at the office.
An ACP-level officer was mandated to produce an MCOCA-accused in court
during police custody. Durape also signed my arrest warrant. Mahale asked me
to leave his cabin. Half an hour later, a constable returned with a new set of
clothes and my inhaler.
The lady officer asked me to change in the bathroom. She warned me not to
lock the door. When I protested for my privacy, she stated she would hold the
door closed from outside and stand guard. She wanted to make sure I wouldn’t
escape or attempt suicide. The gents’ toilet was stinking. I somehow found a dry
corner and changed into a brown kurta and white leggings, and draped a shawl
over my shoulders.
Around 2.30 p.m., the police escorted me down the wooden stairs of the Unit
One office. As we descended the long staircase, the ground floor was abuzz with
activity. Mahale warned me that a huge media contingent was waiting below. I
draped the black and white shawl all over my face. ‘And for your own good,’ he
whispered in Marathi, ‘don’t utter a word on the way out.’
Cameras, mics and voice recorders were thrust into my face. The cameramen
and photographers fell over each other and created a stampede-like situation to
get a byte. A lady constable pushed me into a waiting Scorpio at the gate. A
reporter forced a mic through the window. From the corner of my eye, I realized
he was Ganesh Thakur of Star News.
‘You have been arrested for the murder of J. Dey,’ he said with journalistic
urgency. ‘What do you want to say?’
I lowered my face into my lap and wailed. What was there to say?
On the way to court, we stopped by GT Hospital at Crawford Market for my
medical check-up. A female medical intern asked me if I had any injuries or
medical conditions. I informed her of my asthma. After the check-up, we passed
by the Metro Theatre and reached the sessions court. The court gates were
packed with the media, and the police led me through the back entrance. But the
back entrance was also full of people waiting, and cameras flashed in my face as
the police dragged me to the elevator. It clanked its way up to the fifth floor. As
the elevator gates opened, more media personnel blocked our way. The police
surrounded me and we jostled our way through. All my colleagues from Asian
Age were waiting in the courtroom. Murtuza was there too. Hussain Zaidi had
tears in his eyes.
‘Sir!’ I screamed out. ‘See what they did to me!’
‘Keep calm,’ he said, trying to control his emotions.
I was ordered to stand beside the witness box. The lady officer held on tightly
to my hand. The tension in the air was palpable. Lawyers, policemen, media and
the general public had thronged to the court. Dilip Shah was the public
prosecutor. He quoted sections to the judge and argued that I had been arrested
for emailing J. Dey’s details to Chhota Rajan.
 Murtuza had engaged another senior advocate, Girish Kulkarni, for my case.
Pin-drop silence fell upon the packed court as Kulkarni put forth a brilliant
argument. He lambasted the investigation and submitted that there was no
concrete ground for my arrest.
But the judge sent me to police custody for four days, until 29 November
2011. My legal team had me sign a vakalatnama, which formalized the
appointment of my lawyer. It also submitted that I did not wish to make any
confession in this case. This would ensure that the police would not extract a
confession from me forcefully.
By 3.30 p.m., I was back to the Unit One office. Mahale asked if I wanted to
eat something. I merely shook my head. I had had tea in his office countless
number of times when reporting on crime stories.
‘How about some tea?’ he asked now.
‘The tea of your police station has turned bitter, sir.’

I was asked to sit outside on a chair. But since the media personnel wouldn’t stop
hounding me, the police shifted me to a small partition where a group of
constables were watching TV. The news of my arrest was playing all over. I
began crying again. A burly constable stood up from his seat and turned off the
television, and I felt thankful for his sensitivity. Around 6.00 p.m., I was
informed that I would be shifted to be locked up at Azad Maidan police station.
Like a child I pleaded with Mahale not to shift me. But as per the rules, a female
accused could not be kept at the Crime Branch after sunset.
‘I do not have any more clothes,’ I said.
‘I’ll get a message delivered to your family,’ he said. ‘You’ll be brought back
to the Crime Branch first thing in the morning.’
At the Azad Maidan police station, my uncle and cousin were waiting with my
clothes. I called out to them but a constable stopped me from meeting them,
bringing me back to the reality of my arrest. The clothes were delivered to the
police station, a stone building from the British era. An entry was made in the
station register. There was one lock-up for females, and a couple more for male
accused. I was ushered into the ladies lock-up, which was occupied by two more
ladies. The toilet and bathroom were also inside. I hadn’t stopped crying. The
behaviour of the media hurt me the most. Some kind of karma had ensured that I
was getting the same treatment I had subjected others to. I also realized that the
media was ruthless enough to relentlessly chase one of their own if it made
prime-time news.
One of the ladies in the lock-up had been arrested in a drugs-related case. She
tried to console me and offered me the mutton bheja fry that her son had brought
for her dinner. I politely refused on account of the fact that I was vegetarian.
I couldn’t sleep that night. There was a small window at the top, and I kept
trying to look out of it, but there was only darkness. The inhaler eased my
breathlessness, but it didn’t help a lot. There was enough space in the lock-up, so
I kept pacing around the cell thinking of my son. The two women were sound
asleep. The dismal stench of the toilet prevented me from going to the toilet until
I could find a cleaner place. The next morning, two lady constables asked me if I
wanted to bathe.
‘Where?’ I asked.
They pointed to the same bathroom, which offered no privacy. I decided I
would bathe at the Unit One office, which at least had a door.
The Crime Branch cops picked me up at 7.30 a.m. At the Unit One office, the
lady officer again asked me not to lock the bathroom door, and diligently stood
guard outside. There was no light in this bathroom, and the water was ice-cold.
The lady officer allowed me to use the geyser. I took a bath, changed my clothes
and stepped out. Later, the same lady officer struck up a conversation with me
and expressed astonishment over the possibility of a patrakaar killing another.
A tea vendor called Pakya arrived in the office with glassfuls of tea. He knew
me from my earlier visits. I called him over.
‘Give me a cup of tea,’ I said. ‘Please.’
He smilingly pulled out a cup from his tray. ‘Here.’
‘I have no money,’ I said. ‘I’ll pay you later, okay?’
Pakya smiled and went about delivering tea to other policemen. Mahale
arrived around 11 a.m. I asked him if I could meet my family members, but the
rules did not allow it—he would have to speak to his seniors. Senior Inspector
Arun Chauhan from the Property Cell arrived.
‘Which email address did you use to communicate with Chhota Rajan?’
Chauhan asked me.
 ‘Don’t you know already, sir?’
I had answered with my eyes locked into his, unflinchingly. He fell silent. He
never asked me another question about the case.
Mahale asked me why I had not informed them about the interview with
Chhota Rajan when I was called to give a statement in the J. Dey case. I
protested that the question had been twisted. I had been asked if I had any
‘relation’ with gangsters. The answer was I did not have any, and I still stood by
it. Mahale opened his palms towards the various portraits of Lord Ganesha on
his walls.
‘It is fine if you don’t trust me any more,’ he said. ‘Put your trust in Bhagwan.
He will ease things for you.’ I nodded.
After sunset, they shifted me back to Azad Maidan. For two days, I hadn’t
eaten a morsel. The lady arrested in the drugs case asked me to eat again, and
again I refused. That night, I put my dupatta on the floor and lay down to give
my back some rest. Late in the night, the Crime Branch cops turned up to check
on me. They shouted my name and I responded with a grunt, to show that I was
alive and hadn’t committed suicide or run away.
The next morning, 27 November 2011, I was back at the Crime Branch office.
Since it was a Sunday, my neighbour had turned up at the Crime Branch with
some food. Mahale allowed me to eat as I hadn’t eaten for two days. He also
informed me that Hussain Zaidi would come to meet me around 3.30 p.m. We
met in Mahale’s cabin, in his presence. I asked Hussain Zaidi about the situation
outside.
‘Pathetic!’ he said. ‘Media pressure is making it worse.’
‘Will our organization support me?’
‘Expect nothing,’ he said. In his attempt to stand by me, Zaidi sir had
published a front-page editorial in the Asian Age, not knowing that it would
eventually cost him his job.
I spoke in a low whisper. ‘Should I tell the cops that the Rajan interview was
facilitated by Paulson Joseph, the co-accused on the J. Dey murder case?’
‘Yes,’ Hussain Zaidi said. ‘We don’t have anything to hide.’
I turned to Mahale, and blurted it out. He was stunned to hear the revelation,
but he did not let it show on his face. Paulson had been arrested in this case way
before my arrest. His police custody had ended, and he was already in judicial
custody. A few minutes later, Hussain Zaidi left and Mahale called me for
questioning again.
‘What is this angle with Paulson?’ he asked.
I explained that I had no direct access to Chhota Rajan. For the interview over
the shoot-out at Pakmodiya Street, I had got in touch with one Nishit Chovatiya,
who was a resident of Tilak Nagar. I knew him from previous visits to Ganesh
mandals in the area. I asked Nishit if he could arrange an interview with ‘Nana’,
which is how Chhota Rajan was referred to. Nishit promised to get back to me in
a few days.
He told me I would have to visit Navi Mumbai for the interview, from where
Paulson would call Chhota Rajan. On the decided day, Nishit and I drove in his
car to Navi Mumbai. At a famous eatery, we were joined by Paulson and Arif.
Paulson messaged from his phone a few times, but received no callback. After a
long wait, we left the restaurant. Since Nishit and the others were going to south
Mumbai, they decided to drop me at Worli so that I could go to my office at
Paragon Centre. Even during the drive, Chhota Rajan did not call back. As I was
exiting the car, Arif asked for my number. When I asked for a reason, he said
that Chhota Rajan would call me when the time was right. Then, they drove off.
Mahale listened to all of this with complete silence.
‘Madarchod Paulson!’ he said. ‘He never confessed to me about this!’
On Monday, 28 November 2011, the prosecution asked for an extension of my
police custody because some new facts had emerged in the case. They also
wanted custody of Paulson again, so that they could corroborate his statements
with mine. Though I had had no contact with Chhota Rajan before or after the
interview, I wondered if I had shot myself in the foot by telling Mahale about
Paulson’s involvement in the interview. The court admitted the prosecution’s
submission and granted the required custody for seven days.
By now, the media pressure had reduced a bit. As days passed, reporters
stopped showing up as it was no longer Breaking News but had become a
routine follow-up story. I could see it in court.
Later in the afternoon, the cops took my fingerprints. They handed me a slate
with my name, and I posed for my mugshot. It was the most humiliating
experience of my life.
 The next day, on Tuesday, my aged grandfather came to meet me at the Crime
Branch. He was crying inconsolably and lamented that he was a simple man,
with no political connections and no money. I was trying to console him when
Aariz Chandra from Aaj Tak arrived. He took a keen interest in snooping on my
conversation with my grandfather. Mahale noticed this and asked Aariz to step
out. After fifteen minutes of crying, I asked my grandfather to leave because I
suspected Aariz would call every possible reporter to create unwarranted
sensationalism. I stood by the window and watched my shivering grandfather
struggle to keep his walking stick firm. Would I meet him again? My eyes filled
with tears when I saw a cameraman pointing a camera at grandfather. My
grandfather tried walking faster, but could not because of his age. The camera
followed him like a vulture. I kept watching and crying until my ailing
grandfather was out of sight.
This routine went on every single day. On 9 December 2011, I switched on the
geyser in the dark bathroom of the Crime Branch to take a bath. A loud spark
followed, and the stench of fumes filled the air. The lady constable standing
guard outside called for me.
‘I am okay,’ I said, ‘but the geyser’s dead.’
When I stepped back into the light, I noticed that a purple patch had appeared
on my hand as a result of the electric shock. The same day, the court sentenced
me to judicial custody.

During my time in police custody, I was cut off from the world outside. I had
gone from being a journalist who chased news to having no idea what was being
written about me. Around a week into police custody, when Senior Police
Inspector Arun Chauhan of the Property Cell came to the Unit One office, he
spoke to me in Hindi about a recent news article.
‘Do you know what your friends in the media are saying about you?’ he said.
I had no clue.
‘They are questioning your lavish lifestyle,’ he said. ‘Looks like you were a
regular visitor to an expensive spa in Ghatkopar.’
‘Who wrote this?’ I asked.
 ‘A reporter from DNA—Priti Acharya,’ he said. ‘So, you visited the spa once a
week?’
‘Yes,’ I said, refusing to be ashamed of taking care of myself.
‘How much does the membership cost?’ he asked.
‘Rs 35,000 for a year.’
‘Pretty expensive, isn’t it?’
I sensed the sarcasm in his voice, and clarified that I was a journalist who was
earning a decent salary each month by giving her best to her profession and her
organization. To spend a portion of my hard-earned money on myself did not
make me a criminal, nor could I be forced to feel guilty about that. Nevertheless,
I wondered how the reporter in question was able to obtain this information
about me. Then, I remembered that the reporter herself was a member of the
same ‘expensive’ spa—where she would visit for slimming sessions. The
services she was undertaking were more expensive than my membership. I had
run into her at the spa once. After I was done with my hairstyling, I had offered
to drop her to Colaba in my car since I was going down the same route to
Crawford Market. During the drive, as we crossed the Wadala Imax, our
conversation steered towards my recent trip to Sikkim, and how much I had
enjoyed eating momos there. Now, she had reported this conversation like a
story about my ‘lavish’ lifestyle. That night, sitting in the Azad Maidan police
lock-up, I realized how an innocuous conversation had been used maliciously
against me. Colleagues from my fraternity seemed more than happy to throw me
under the bus if it could do them any good.
Savita, a lady constable who was on duty during my police custody, spoke to
me about an article in a Marathi newspaper. In a press conference, then
commissioner of police Arup Patnaik had made a statement that the MCOCA
charges against me could be possibly repealed depending on how the
investigation proceeded. The police had arrested me on suspicion of my
involvement, but if the investigation suggested otherwise, they may not file a
charge sheet against me. This was the essence of the CP’s statement.
I had a background in law, and I saw no hope in such red herrings. The CP’s
words were merely perfunctory, and the entire episode of my arrest was based on
weak evidence, which I was determined to disprove in court. But I saw no
possibility that the charges would be dropped.
 There were two Bohra women from Bandra in the Azad Maidan lock-up with
me for a few days. They had been arrested with regard to a different case. They
had picked up two copies of a newspaper from a visit to the court and excitedly
asked me to read it. The front page carried news of Dev Anand’s death. He was
an actor I had admired a lot. And then there was a story about me. It said that
seven mobile phones had been recovered from Jigna Vora by the police. The
article also contained my photo in a yellow T-shirt.
There were other rumours that I was on Chhota Rajan’s payroll and had used a
satellite phone to contact him. The Bohra women seemed to be in awe of my
alleged criminal prowess.
‘You had a satellite phone?’ one of them asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘But you had seven mobile phones, yes?’
‘No. I had just one phone, which the police confiscated as soon as I was
arrested.’
‘Why is the media writing all this, then?’
I shrugged. ‘Ask them.’
Then one of them looked closely at the photograph and commented that I had
brown eyes. I had to disappoint them again by saying I had worn lenses when the
photograph was clicked. There was nothing extraordinary about me. But the
media had already worked hard to create a different impression.
 17
CASTE FACTOR

Among the first few people I got talking to in Byculla Jail was Pooja Thakker.
The fact that she was Gujarati created a strange affinity. A few exchanges in my
mother tongue soothed me to some extent. Pooja was in her early thirties, fair
and very attractive. She introduced herself as a professor of gynaecology from a
medical college in Pune. She had already been granted bail and was about to be
released in a few days. Before walking out of the jail, she asked if there was any
message I wanted to convey to my family. I asked her to tell them that I was
coping fine, and that they need not worry about me. She readily agreed to pass
on the message, and I gave her my landline number and my lawyer’s number.
I was sad to see Pooja leave and lose the one other person around me who
spoke Gujarati. But Paromita warned me that Pooja wasn’t as angelic as she had
portrayed. Pooja had been arrested for posing as a fake CBI officer and
conducting raids. She had allegedly also cheated her prospective in-laws of
jewellery worth lakhs. Paromita’s warnings made me worry if I had done the
right thing by giving her the contact details of my aged grandparents and my
mother.
Paromita also told me that Jaya Chheda would often adoringly call Pooja her
bahu rani (darling daughter-in-law) because of her good looks. She had
apparently often expressed her desire to make Pooja her daughter-in-law.
Though Pooja and Jaya were not in jail together at the time that I was there, they
had met each other before Jaya went away.
 The weeks leading up to my first court visit were filled with anxiety. I wanted
to speak with my family. And I looked forward to stepping out of the jail and
talking to my lawyer Jayesh about the legal strategy. While Girish Kulkarni was
the senior counsel, Jayesh was my lawyer for day-to-day hearings. But the
thought of facing the world again was too heavy on my mind and morale. What
would people think of me now? Would they think I was a murderer? On the day
of the court visit, I suffered from severe stomach cramps. It was like I was a
child who didn’t want to go to school but was forced to. Everyone in the sessions
court knew me and held me in high regard—the judges, the lawyers, the peons
and even the liftman. How would I ever face them?
As I was an accused under the MCOCA, I was produced in court amidst tight
security. The police retinue consisted of six policemen and policewomen in total,
including armed guards. As we approached the court building, I saw my aged
grandfather sitting on the stairs of the bridge on the fifth floor, which connected
the two court buildings. His teary eyes were fixed on the floor. He did not even
notice me approaching, but his face lit up when he finally looked up at me. I
hugged him tightly and began crying like a baby. A staunch Gandhian, my
grandfather was respected in the society for his charitable work. I was guilty of
putting him through all this humiliation. But he never castigated me and had
only words of comfort for me. In him, I found a pillar of strength. I asked him
about my mother and grandmother and was happy to hear that they were fine. I
thanked my grandfather for coming to court but pleaded with him not to attend
any more hearings because the media had turned up in full force and the pressure
of scrutiny would be too much for him to bear.
The hearing lasted barely two minutes, and my judicial custody was extended.
On my request, the court allowed me a three-minute call home. The police party
accompanied me to a PCO near a Xerox booth. My mother picked up, and she
cried on hearing my voice. I told her not to worry about me, and had a brief
word with my grandmother too. My pug, Leo, was barking in the background.
My mother said that he was aware that they were speaking to me, and was thus
getting excited. Leo would roam the house looking for me and yelp sadly when
he couldn’t find me. I asked my mother to put the phone to his ear. I said a few
familiar phrases to Leo. He barked loudly and my mother told me he began
licking the receiver. Sadly, the three minutes passed in a jiffy and I had to hang
up.
As I was leaving, I asked my grandfather if a lady called Pooja had called. He
said she had, and conveyed that she would be happy to carry any message to me
in jail, but for money. The conversation did not have a good feel to it. Luckily,
my grandfather had discussed the issue with my lawyer, Jayesh, who advised
him to tell Pooja that Jigna’s lawyer had barred all discussions. As the police car
took me back to jail, I promised myself not to trust anyone so easily in Byculla
Jail.
 18
UNLIKELY SAVIOUR

In January 2009, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorist Squad arrested IPS officer Saji
Mohan in a drug trafficking case. He had been working with the Enforcement
Directorate (ED) and Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). The ATS had
apprehended him in Mumbai trying to sell off the very narcotics he had
confiscated. It was a big story, and I had visited the ATS office to cover the story.
Police officer Pradeep Sawant of the ATS was interrogating Saji Mohan. I sat on
a chair and watched the proceedings from a distance. Mohan was seated on the
floor, and he was cooperating with his interrogators, readily answering the
questions being asked. It was a fall for this IPS officer of the 1995 batch, who
had also been conferred with a gallantry medal during his service. I had written
several stories on Saji Mohan’s lifestyle. To cover up his hair loss, he would
wear expensive wigs that allegedly cost around Rs 1.5 lakh each.
In April 2012, I was returning to Byculla Jail from a court visit when I saw
considerable police deployment outside the main gate. The policemen were
surrounding a bald man. Once I reached the barracks, I asked a constable about
the extra security. She informed me that Saji Mohan was being shifted from
Arthur Road Jail to Byculla Jail because there was a perceived threat to his life. I
had failed to recognize that the policemen were guarding him. His appearance
had changed in the years since I had seen him. My immediate thought was, How
would I face him?, as I had written multiple reports about him while reporting on
his drug haul case.
 Female inmates were not allowed to interact with male inmates, and their
areas were far away from each other. As Saji Mohan was well educated, the
prison authorities had assigned him the task of helping the jail doctor, Dr Khan,
with maintaining records. I ran into Saji Mohan during a routine visit to the
doctor, and as much as I tried to avoid him by fidgeting around the plants, he
came up and spoke to me. I thought he would hold a grudge against me for all
the stories I had written about him. To my utter surprise, he was very kind and
asked about my health. Saji believed I had not committed the crime, and that I
should trust the judiciary. I began to weep.
A few weeks later, I met Saji Mohan at the doctor’s office again. He used to
read the newspapers and had kept a tab on my case.
‘Jigna,’ he said, ‘I read some reports about some transcripts in your charge
sheet. Can you tell me about it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There is a transcript of a conversation between Chhota Rajan
and his accomplice, where he claims that I had played a part in instigating him
for the murder.’
‘If the police obtained these transcripts through telephone surveillance, you
must know that orders for such surveillance must be approved by a DIG-level
officer or by the additional chief secretary, home. Else, they are illegal.’
I thanked him profusely for the tip and made a mental note to discuss this with
Jayesh. I was touched that a policeman whose lifestyle I had left open for
everyone to judge was going out of his way to help me. My mind went back to
the day at the ATS office when he was sitting on the floor answering questions,
and I was sitting on the chair, feeling proud about being a veteran journalist.
Today, my pride had been shattered into pieces. And perhaps had also made me a
better person.
 19
CHEERLEADERS

In the last week of December 2011, I met another inmate named Savita Maushi.
She was in her fifties, and had been arrested along with her son for running a
prostitution ring in Colaba. There was nothing to do after the daily bandi, so I
struck up a conversation with her.
‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.
‘One-and-a-half years,’ she said.
‘I have never seen you at the barracks before?’
‘I was being treated at the J.J. Hospital,’ she said. ‘They discharged me only a
few days ago.’
‘Hope all is well now?’
‘First class.’ She guffawed. ‘The government bore responsibility for my heart
surgery as I was under arrest. And I saved nearly three-and-a-half lakh rupees on
the operation. Being a guest of the state has its own benefits!’
Savita Maushi was rejoicing at her good fortune when a shrill voice echoed in
the corridor and a female who looked to be in her twenties emerged, singing and
dancing on her way towards the barracks. She was wearing a glittery salwar-
kameez, and garish earrings. She strode down the stairs with the confidence of a
supermodel walking down a ramp.
Savita Maushi stood up to greet her like she was a close relative. ‘My dear
Fatima! So nice to see you again.’
Fatima beamed from the other side of the iron bars. ‘I am back!’
 ‘Great!’ Savita Maushi said. ‘Let’s catch up tomorrow.’
The cops followed quickly in Fatima’s wake and led her to Barrack No. 1 for
the night. Savita Maushi told me that Fatima was a thief who had operated in the
Cuffe Parade area under the garb of a maid. The next morning, Fatima came to
meet everyone in Barrack No. 2. She hugged Paromita like a long-lost friend.
Then she came to greet me, and Paromita formally introduced both of us. I took
an instant liking to Fatima, because she was laughing and full of joy even inside
a depressing place like Byculla Jail.
‘Where do you stay, Fatima?’ I asked.
‘Lalubhai Chawl,’ she said. ‘You know the area?’
‘Of course,’ I said. The area was one of the most notorious regions in
Govandi, Mumbai, and famous for its pickpockets, thieves, murderers and all
kinds of criminals. ‘But I was told you operate in Cuffe Parade?’
‘Correct,’ she said. ‘A good thief will never operate in the same area where
she lives.’
‘Why?’
‘Not good for reputation,’ she said. Everyone broke out laughing.
‘So how come you are back now?’ I asked.
‘My partner fucked up on a simple job,’ she said.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘What happened?’
Apparently, Fatima had been working as a maid and babysitter for an affluent
couple who lived on the seventeenth floor of a high-rise in the plush Cuffe
Parade area. The couple had two children, aged three and five, whom Fatima
would babysit while the parents went about their businesses and jobs. Fatima
scanned the house for days, and she knew where the valuables were, what time
the kids slept, and when it would be best to make off with the loot. On the day
she finalized the robbery, she got one of her friends, Manisha, to help, because
the loot was worth at least Rs 10 lakh. Everything went as per plan, except that
the five-year-old child happened to wake up early that day. Manisha tried to
threaten the kid into silence, which only aggravated the little brat more and he
raised an alarm. Fatima managed to escape, while Manisha was caught by the
neighbours and handed over to the police. Days later, Fatima was also arrested.
I was amazed at the value of the theft she had attempted. It didn’t sound
exaggerated because the Cuffe Parade area was known for housing the rich and
the wealthy. She explained that the value of the stolen goods was important,
because after the robbery, she had to grease the palms of law enforcement
agencies and lawyers and a certain portion of the loot also went to the cops as
recovery. She would manage to steal from at least five to six homes before
getting arrested each time.
‘So what happens now?’
‘The cops will file a charge sheet,’ she said. ‘But bail won’t be easy unless I
give them a greater share of the pie.’
In addition to the relevant sections for robbery, the police had also charged her
with Section 326 of Cr.PC which dealt with assault and made the case more
serious. Savita Maushi told me that Fatima had made quite a fortune in her
profession of choice, and she owned at least four flats in the city and had also
invested in a lot of gold and property in her native village. Apparently, she also
spent a lot of money on dining at expensive restaurants with her boyfriends. As
days passed, Fatima and I began talking more frequently, especially during the
night. During one such conversation, she told me that she had three kids, all of
them girls, who were now in her mother’s care.
‘I miss them,’ she said. ‘And I miss Javed too.’
‘Who is he? Your husband?’
‘No.’ She giggled. ‘My boyfriend.’
I gasped. ‘You have three children with your boyfriend?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I divorced the chutiya who fathered my children a long time
back.’
‘What was his name?’
‘Saleem,’ she said. ‘The funny part is that Javed and Saleem were best
friends!’
I burst out laughing at her tone. ‘How did you get together with Javed?’
She told me that Javed was a rickshaw driver in Govandi, and would visit her
home often because he was Saleem’s best friend. After she had divorced Saleem,
she realized that Javed was interested in her. The exchange of shy glances led
her to sit in his rickshaw one day, and off they went to a motel on the outskirts of
Mumbai. Inside the motel room, she ordered beer. When she was high enough,
she ordered him to take off his clothes. As he stripped, she asked if he had been
smart enough to get a condom along. He pulled out a small packet from the
pocket of his pants, and held it up for her to see. But there was a problem—
Javed had never worn a condom before, and he was nervous. She sat cross-
legged on the bed, all naked and ready, and smiling as Javed struggled with the
piece of rubber. Finally, she crooked a finger and called him over. And then, she
rolled down the condom on him. But her problems did not end there. Javed did
not have much experience with women and he struggled to perform in bed.
When she finally held him in his hands and guided him inside, he went limp.
‘What a put-off!’ Fatima told me. ‘The behenchod held his useless lauda in his
hands and went to sleep.’
I laughed so loudly at the story that a couple of inmates woke up and chided
me for disturbing their sleep. I apologized to them, but still could not stop
giggling. Questions of morality aside, her manner of telling stories was very
funny. She was a woman who loved sex, and was completely unapologetic about
it.
Moments like these that made me laugh were few and far between. What
amazed me was that Fatima’s spirit was not broken despite her situation. A few
nights later, she began narrating another incident to me.
‘After numerous attempts, Javed got better with fucking, but I decided not to
waste my hard-earned money on hotel rooms.’
‘Then where did you make out?’
‘In his rickshaw.’
My jaw almost hit the floor. ‘What!’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But even that was a disaster.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
She told me that Javed drove her to a deserted road in Trombay. The area is
located on the outskirts of Mumbai, and sparsely populated. He parked the
rickshaw somewhere in the vicinity of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, one of
India’s premier nuclear research facilities. Javed had a different sort of research
on his mind. He wanted to have anal sex. Fatima was fairly open to the idea
because, according to her, he wouldn’t need to put on a condom. So they
undressed and tried to get intimate on the back seat of the rickshaw. But Javed
had underestimated the difficulty of anal sex. The entire rickshaw shook with the
effort. Fatima turned and scorned him, and that was all it took for him to go limp
again.
 ‘I told the motherfucker to never show me his lauda again,’ Fatima told me.
‘But even he was addicted to sex now. For the next three days, we fucked in all
different places.’
‘And what happened on the fourth day?’
‘The police arrested me for the botched job at Cuffe Parade,’ she said and
laughed.
Often during our late-night conversations, Fatima would speak about her
active sex life. What was the first thing she wanted to do after she got bail?
Nobody in Byculla Jail had a problem guessing that.
In January 2012, a heavily pregnant inmate called Vinita was moved to
Barrack No. 2. She was Fatima’s friend, and also an old-timer at Byculla Jail.
She had been in and out on various charges over the past ten years. She also
lived in Govandi, but operated in the Juhu area, living by the code of conduct of
thieves, which meant everyone stuck to their designated areas. Fatima also swore
by the code.
She was about thirty years old, but looked beyond her years because of the
various pregnancies she had been through. She had borne at least six children,
and had undergone an equal number of abortions. She giggled like a college-
going girl and confessed that none of her children had the same father.
‘What was your biggest job?’ I asked her.
‘I once worked at Parveen Babi’s home,’ she said.
‘The Bollywood actress?’ I said. ‘You looted her home?’
‘Not hers. She was confined to a wheelchair but she kept a close watch on me.
At the slightest hint of suspicion, she would create a ruckus. So I looted one of
her neighbours.’
‘How much?’
Her chest swelled with pride. ‘Rs 20 lakh.’
Later, Fatima told me that Vinita also spent a lot of her money on the men she
loved. She was fond of eating at the best restaurants of the city. She delivered a
baby in January 2012, and was out from jail around July 2012. However, she
was arrested again for a crime and was back in Byculla Jail by August 2012.
Now, she had a six-month-old baby with her. And she was pregnant again!
Nobody was surprised.
 Simran had been in jail when I was locked up. She was hardly eighteen or
nineteen years old, but already famous in her line of work—stealing mobile
phones. She lived in Mira Road in a one-bedroom flat, but her area of operation
was Malad railway station, which was heavily crowded between 8.00 a.m. and
10.00 a.m. with people rushing to office. She would wear a burqa and position
herself in front of the first-class ladies compartment. She would choose her
victims by the clothes they wore. Her preferred choice was the girls who wore
cropped tops and expensive jeans, and worked in affluent call centres in Malad.
It was most likely that such women had high-end mobile phones in their purses
or pockets. In a flash, Simran would stealthily flick the phone, switch it off and
put it inside her purse before vanishing into the sea of people at the station,
which was made easier by her short and slim demeanour. The hapless victims
did not even realize their phone had been flicked until the train left the station.
‘What would you do with the phones you stole?’ I asked.
‘I sold them to a shop in Malad east. The shop owner would destroy the SIM
card and pay me in cash, on the spot.’
‘How much did you usually make?’
She smiled, displaying a chipped tooth in the corner of her mouth. ‘About
50,000 rupees a day.’
Simran loved shopping in the big malls of Malad. She was also a regular at a
very famous pub in suburban Mumbai. All these girls who stole for a living
displayed a deep understanding of human psychology. She did not work on the
weekends, because offices were shut. Simran had also chosen Malad railway
station as her zone of operation because office-goers did not report theft as they
feared the hassles of engaging with the police. Since the crime was committed
on the railway platform, it fell under the jurisdiction of the Railway Protection
Force, which is not the most motivated crime-fighting unit. Most of her victims
did not even come back to search for their lost phones, and simply gave up hope
of recovering the device, while Simran made a fortune. When I met her, she was
pregnant, but she steered clear of discussions that veered close to the identity of
her husband.
‘Whom do you stay with?’ I asked her.
‘I stay alone,’ she said. ‘My family stays in Uttar Pradesh.’
 Later, Fatima told me that Simran was heavily into drugs and boyfriends.
Jocularly, she went to the extent of calling Simran ‘characterless’ because she
felt Simran was having an affair with her husband’s friend. When I questioned
Fatima about her similar escapades with Javed, Fatima took great pride in
explaining that all her sexual encounters with Javed had happened only after her
divorce with Saleem.
‘Unlike Simran, I never two-time my men,’ Fatima said and laughed.

Milee was a good-looking girl who had been arrested in August 2011, prior to
my arrest. Her father had passed away, while her mother and younger brother
lived in Odisha. Hardly twenty, she used to work in a factory in her village.
‘My mother and I had an argument,’ she said. ‘So I just boarded a random
train, and it brought me here.’
‘Did you have any money when you left home?’
‘About 5,000 rupees,’ she said.
‘And did you know anyone in this city?’
‘No.’
‘How did you find a place to live, then?’
‘The autorickshaw driver who picked me at Kurla station guided me to an area
near Powai.’
‘And how did you get arrested?’
Milee had found a job as an assistant to a hairdresser on the sets of a TV
serial. She would travel to work by bus every day, and noticed that a boy would
board the same bus as her, and was displaying an interest in her. Eventually, they
fell in love and he also began picking her up from work every day. On the way
back home, they would sit on the last seat of the bus. Her boyfriend would often
fondle her breasts and kiss her when he thought no one was watching.
He was the one who devised a new idea of making money. Late in the nights,
in the JVLR area, Milee would wear skimpy clothes and lure unsuspecting men
to isolated areas with the promise of sex. Moments later, her boyfriend would
arrive and they would attack the victim and make off with money and valuables.
The con was eventually busted, and Milee got arrested, while her boyfriend
escaped.
 One night, Milee asked me if I had a boyfriend. I was single then, but Milee
refused to believe me. She had heard from other inmates that I was having an
affair with Himanshu Roy, who had been instrumental in my arrest. I had no idea
how to answer that, but her questions never stopped.
‘Didi,’ she asked me, ‘what is rape?’
I was aghast. ‘What happened, Milee? Did someone force you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I am only curious to know.’
I explained the meaning of the term to her, and she listened intently.
‘Didi,’ she said, ‘I want to experience rape once.’
Disconcerted and frustrated, I blurted, ‘Have you gone mad?’
‘What difference would it make if my boyfriend raped me?’ she said and
laughed. ‘We have had sex so many times.’
Milee was hopeful that her boyfriend would bail her out. She often returned
dejectedly from court hearings at Borivali, because her boyfriend did not turn up
to help her. I could completely relate with that, because none of my friends
showed up to support me too. Every time I was taken to court, my eyes turned
towards a high-rise building that stood on the way from Byculla Jail to Kala
Ghoda court. A friend I’d known for years lived in that building, on the fourth
floor. I would expect him to be present in court, for nothing else but moral
support. But like so many others, he failed to turn up. However, Milee’s faith in
her boyfriend never wavered. Eventually, he turned up, and Milee got bail. Her
smile that day filled me with hope.
 20
THE BIRTHDAY GIFT

I turned thirty-seven on 21 February 2012, the day the police filed a charge sheet
against me.
Since my arrest in November, they had been racing against time to file a
charge sheet against me. As per the Indian Penal Code, the police have to file it
within three months. But since the Crime Branch had pressed MCOCA charges
against me, they could ask the court for gradual extensions up to a maximum of
three additional months. Using the same strategy, the Crime Branch had filed the
first charge sheet against the ten accused on 3 December 2011, about six months
after J. Dey’s murder. The reasons cited for these extensions included the delay
in processing the forensics reports, ongoing investigations, and post-mortem
reports, etc.
My name was not included in the first charge sheet. The police decided to file
a supplementary charge sheet against me at a later stage. I was accused of
providing Chhota Rajan with J. Dey’s photograph, phone number and office and
home addresses. But during the course of the investigation, the police also came
up with the notion that I had instigated Chhota Rajan to kill J. Dey.
My legal recourse ultimately depended on the charge sheet. Even though the
Crime Branch had conducted elaborate press conferences to detail my
involvement in the murder, none of that was admissible in a court of law. The
charge sheet thus became the most important document because then the police
would be going on record to say what I was accused of and the evidence they
had to prove the charges.
On one hand, I had to worry about the charge sheet, while on the other, I had
to focus on surviving life in jail. Life in Byculla Jail was torturous. At first, I
hoped and prayed to get bail. But as days turned into months, I dreaded getting
bail because I was frightened to face the world outside. It sent shivers down my
spine to think about answering questions and facing suspicious stares. My career
and reputation had been destroyed.
Jayesh Vithlani, my lawyer, would meet me regularly at Byculla Jail. He
would brief me on the progress of the case, and always advise me to be patient.
My uncle and a cousin brother would also come to meet me, and they would
keep me posted about the world outside the walls of the prison. I often asked
Jayesh if the police were going to ask for an extension to file the charge sheet
because that would mean a further delay in my bail. He did not have an opinion
on that.
The police had confiscated my personal laptop, the hard disk from the desktop
I used at the Asian Age office, and my cellphone. The forensic reports of these
devices were still pending. I was worried that the police would plant evidence
against me. Mostly, I feared that they would plant J. Dey’s photograph, or that of
his bike, in my devices, and claim that I had it stored.
Incidentally, months before I had been arrested, I was passing by Amar Mahal
Junction on my way to Chembur and happened to notice a high-end sports bike
parked outside a shop. I had clicked a photograph of that shining, yellow two-
wheeler only to show it to my son, who was extremely fond of imported bikes. I
became paranoid that the police would use this against me. Even in custody, I
had confessed to Inspector Ramesh Mahale that I had a photograph of a bike on
my phone but that bike did not belong to J. Dey.
My fears may sound like hysteria now, but the fact was that the police had
arrested me in a case where I had no involvement, and there was no reason why
they would not use unfair means to have me convicted.
I had a purchased an Apple MacBook before my arrest, and I had not even
learnt to operate it properly before I was put behind the bars. This was the laptop
that they had confiscated. There was no question about finding J. Dey’s
photograph on my laptop. But I had lots of Hindi songs from the 1970s and ’80s
on my hard disk, mostly by Mohammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar, and composed
by R.D. Burman. There were some personal photographs from a visit to
Bangkok in 2010, a junket that came from the office. We had been staying in a
resort, and some photographs in the swimming pool, of me wearing a swimming
costume. I feared the police would leak these to the media.
The police had accused me of emailing J. Dey’s details to Chhota Rajan. They
had shot off a letter rogatory to Google to obtain the emails in question from my
gmail account. I often wondered if the police could hack into my account and
create the evidence they wanted. I prayed fervently, calling upon God to undo
the wrong that had been done to me.
I also wanted to know who had recorded false statements against me, and that
would only be clear once the charge sheet was filed. The police had pulled out
my CDRs (call detail records) from my telecom operator. Though I was nowhere
connected to the crime, my personal life was all out in the open. The police
knew whom I was dating, what I was eating, what I was shopping for, and every
other possible detail. I was also worried about the safety of my family and
friends with whom I had spoken regularly, for the police could frame whomever
they wanted to.
While in custody, I was taken to court every fourteen days, but apart from my
lawyer and family members, none of my friends came to meet me. Around
fifteen people from my family, including my uncles and aunts, would turn up for
each of my court visits without fail. Despite this, the media floated reports that
my family had disowned me. In Byculla Jail, Jaya Chheda spared no opportunity
to dampen my spirits further. She was sure that Ramesh Mahale, who was the
investigating officer for her case and mine, would file such a strong charge sheet
against me that I would languish in jail for ever.
Jayesh informed me that rumours were afloat that the police would allow my
discharge from the case on 10 February 2012, since no incriminating evidence
had been found against me. I began praying fervently again, praying for my luck
to turn around. Usually, I was produced in court surrounded by the usual security
of two women constables armed with rifles, two unarmed women constables,
two male constables and one inspector. People charged of crimes under the
MCOCA were always provided with this kind of security cover so that they did
not escape under any circumstance. It was one of the most humiliating
experiences of my life, for I was treated like a terrorist. However, my fellow
inmates took great pride in this arrangement because they thought my security
was on par with that of a minister. Fatima lamented the fact that the male
constables who accompanied her to court were so frail that they would not even
get an erection!
When the day arrived, surrounded by the policemen, I walked into the court at
Kala Ghoda. Courtroom number 56 on the fifth floor was jam-packed with
media personnel. My hopes of freedom were dashed again when Raja Thakare,
the public prosecutor, informed the judge that the charge sheet had been sent to
the police commissioner’s office for sanction before it could be produced in the
court. This meant that eventually, the charge sheet would be filed and I would
not be discharged. As a crime journalist, I knew Raja Thakare professionally,
and he had given me quite a few leads on the Telgi scam. This added to my
humiliation because now he had the job to ensure I stayed behind bars. He
acknowledged my presence with a nod of his head. Ten days were additionally
provided to the prosecution, and 21 February 2012 was fixed as the next date for
my court visit.
My paranoia reached its peak in these ten days because now the trial was a
certainty. I had also developed a psychological aversion to the court, and my
stomach would ache uncontrollably every time a court visit was due. On the day
of the visit, I would have to use the filthy toilet multiple times to ease myself. I
even stopped eating to avoid this situation, but it didn’t help.
On 21 February, the court was packed again with media personnel. Crime
Branch officers arrived with a big, white bag made of jute and produced the
charge sheet before Judge S.M. Modak. Jayesh was not available on that day.
Later, Raja Thakare told me to hold on to my faith in God. Since it was my
birthday, my father’s elder brother had brought a piece of pastry for me, and the
court granted them permission to give it to me. I choked as I put a spoonful of
that cake in my mouth. My uncle had always been fond of me since childhood. If
I ever wanted a toy, he was the one I would rush to. When I was a barely six
years old, I asked him to bring me a VCR from Dubai so that I could watch
Amitabh Bachchan’s 1976 movie Hera Pheri on TV. He brought me a ‘National’
VCR, which was a favourite amongst those who worked in the Middle East. This
was the first time he had come to see me since my arrest, and he was crying
inconsolably. My only thought at that moment was to prove my innocence in this
case.
After returning to Byculla Jail, around 8.30 p.m., I was watching Doordarshan
on the small TV when the news anchor read a report of a charge sheet being filed
against me. Some of the most thickened criminals in the city turned to stare at
me. I had no idea where to look!
The next morning, a newspaper chose to carry headlines saying the Crime
Branch had gifted the charge sheet to me for my birthday. One news story stated
that I had exchanged thirty-three calls with Chhota Rajan. I was stunned. The
headlines only accentuated my fears that the police had tampered with evidence
because I had only spoken to Chhota Rajan once—for an interview over the
Pakmodiya Street shoot-out in May 2011, wherein two shooters had gunned
down Iqbal Kaskar’s driver to death. Iqbal was Dawood Ibrahim’s brother, and
their gang had been warring with Chhota Rajan’s ever since the two had parted
ways around 1993. During the course of his interview, Chhota Rajan had only
called me thrice on the same day. The first two calls lasted barely five seconds
and had got disconnected. The third call was the actual interview. This story was
already in the public domain. How the number of calls changed from three to
thirty-three was beyond my wildest imagination! There was another story that
said that Paulson, another accused in the J. Dey murder case, had confessed
about my involvement. But Paulson had been arrested way before me, and his
confession had also been recorded much earlier, when there had been no mention
of my name.
Three days later, Jayesh delivered a 3,000-page charge sheet to me in jail. The
sheer bulk of the document frightened me. All the inmates were astonished that a
supplementary charge sheet had run into 3,000 pages. At night, when other
inmates were asleep, I went about studying the charge sheet. I started turning
page after page to search for the mention of thirty-three calls between Chhota
Rajan and me. But even after I reached the last page, there was no such
statement in the charge sheet. So, the media had cooked up this story on their
own, or it had been maliciously fed to them. And they had lapped up these false
reports and printed them without a thought of the damage it would cause to me.
They never bothered checking my charge sheet either. All these reports were
published ‘according to sources’. My own judgement was that this source was
Himanshu Roy. He had been present when Hussain Zaidi, the editor of the Asian
Age, had met then home minister R.R. Patil in connection with my case.
Himanshu had made a similar statement at that time.
As I scoured through the charge sheet, I realized that most of the pages were
filled with telecom CDRs of my number and those of the witnesses. The
statements of various witnesses covered barely forty pages. Some statements
were from the cops themselves, who were present for the panchnama of my
arrest, and for the confiscation of my laptop and mobile phone.
The charge sheet made no mention of any email exchanges between Chhota
Rajan and me. Chhota Rajan’s email ID was also not mentioned in the email. I
made my notes and observations on the blank sides so that I could discuss them
with Jayesh later. Even the letter rogatory to Google did not reveal any
suspicious emails.
Four reporters had recorded their statements in the charge sheet. Their names
had been masked with white ink so that I would not attempt to influence them
during the trial. I tried figuring out the names by reading their statement.
The first reporter had received a call from Chhota Rajan on 30 June 2011, in
which Chhota Rajan claimed responsibility for J. Dey’s murder. Chhota Rajan
had explained that J. Dey had turned traitor and was spying for Dawood Ibrahim,
and thus, he had been eliminated. There was nothing incriminating against me in
this statement. I figured this reporter was Sunil Singh of NDTV.
The second statement was recorded by Jitendra Dikshit of Star News (later
ABP). This call happened on 16 November 2011, and the conversation was not
too different from the first. Again, there was no mention of my name.
Apparently, Chhota Rajan had called the third reporter around the first week
of September 2011, when the same story had been repeated, but the reporter had
asked Chhota Rajan if someone had provided him with the registration number
of J. Dey’s bike, photograph and addresses. Chhota Rajan merely said that one of
his acquaintances had sent those details, and hung up. Then, allegedly, Chhota
Rajan had called him again after two days and said that Jigna Vora had provided
the mentioned details that had helped J. Dey’s killers identify their victim.
It was easy for me to figure out statements from Sunil Singh and Jitendra
Dikshit because their interviews with Chhota Rajan were available in the public
domain. To identify the third witness, I checked the CDRs of the witnesses to
make a logical connection. No reporter had a direct line to Chhota Rajan. If an
interview or conversation had to be scheduled, the reporter would have to
connect to an intermediary known to Chhota Rajan, and then Chhota Rajan
would call the reporter at a scheduled time from a VOIP number that ended in
444 or 441. It took me two long nights, but I found the mobile number that had
received such a call in the first week of September. The number belonged to
Aariz Chandra, who worked for Aaj Tak. Aariz I thought had turned sour
because he had once asked me for the letters that Monica Bedi had written to
Abu Salem, but I had politely refused for professional reasons. Since that day, it
had felt like a cold war had started between us. I noted this down for Jayesh to
bring up as an argument for my case.

Case no: RC1(S)-2016-SCU-V-SC-II-CBI-New Delhi

Original case no: 19-2012
Aariz Chandra’s statement given to CBI on 29-03-2016 as under Section 161 of Cr.PC:

I am as above. I shifted in above address with my mother and sister only last month. I am graduate of
Mumbai University and working as News reporter. I am employed as a senior correspondent with the
hindi news channel viz Aaj tak. I am tasked with collection of information regarding criminal
activities in Mumbai and to submit this news items in the office. I know almost all the reporters from
all print media and electronic media in Mumbai area. While I was working with the sahara news
channel I got acquainted with senior correspondent Mr. Jyotirmay Dey. He had a very good
knowledge of underworld crime in Mumbai. While exchanging news information we became friends.
On 11-06-2011, I had weekly off and while I was at home, I received a call from reporter friend
that there was a firing on Mr. dey at Powai and he got killed. Thereafter on 12-06-2011, I attended
the funeral of Mr. Dey at Rajawadi crematorium. On 25-06-2011 Crime Branch Mumbai arrested
some of the accused persons in connection with the above crime and held press conference I attended
the same. In the said press conference police claimed that on the instructions of Chhota Rajan his
associates from the gang had killed Mr. dey
I further state that some time in the last week of August or first week of September, in the
afternoon, I received a phone call on my mobile phone number 98******44 from number +3444. As
I picked up the call the caller said ‘I am Nana calling. I knew that in the underworld Chhota Rajan is
known by the nickname as ‘Nana’. So also I had heard Chhota Rajan’s interview on the TV and
identified the caller to be Chhota Rajan. As such I realized that the caller was Chhota Rajan himself
and replied, ‘Yes nana speak.’ Thereafter Chhota Rajan said that, ‘he wanted to inform that J. Dey
was not a nice person. He became friendly with D company. He had betrayed me. He had published
misleading news about me. I was called to meet him in London, but my Dubai based contact
informed me that there could be threat to my life, as such I did not go. Thereafter he called me to
Phillippines. But I had my doubts, hence I got him killed. I told Chhota Rajan ‘killing him was not
the solution’. On this he quipped that ‘he was conniving with the traitors and providing them my
information.’ Thereafter I asked Chhota Rajan as to who gave him details, address and motorcycle
number of JDey. On this he replied ‘he was provided this information by his men’. He also said ‘D’
company had a hand in July blast in Mumbai. I have conveyed this information to police through my
 sources. I asked him whether he would give interview on this issue, to which he said ‘the information
is being worked out, I would call later on.’ So saying he disconnected the call.
Next day again in the evening between 1800 hrs–1900 hrs, I received a call from +3444, caller
from the other side said ‘I am Nana calling.’ I immediately recognized the voice as that of Chhota
Rajan and replied ‘Nana speak up.’ Chhota rajan then said as ‘as Jdey was working hand in glove
with the traitors, I had killed him, I was provided with the details by Jigna Vora through mails, jigna
vore had given information of Jdey’s motorcycle, photograph, phone numbers and residential address
through emails, I again asked him whether he would like to give interview about this. He declined
and disconnected the call.
Apart from above, I also want to add that except this interview, Chhota Rajan never interviewed by
me. I don’t have his numbers, the calls were originated from him only. I don’t know from whom he
got my mobile number, I did not record this interview and also this interview was not aired because
before this he had already told this to many reporters and some of them even aired the same on TV.
The statement was over and explained to me in Hindi and found to be correctly recorded.

The last statement in the charge sheet was from Nikhil Dixit, who was very close
to J. Dey and had even performed his last rites. He had allegedly received a call
from Chhota Rajan, in which no mention was made about me. But apparently,
when Nikhil was learning the ropes of investigative journalism, J. Dey had
spoken of a professional rivalry that existed between him and me. The evidence
of this was an SMS sent in Marathi, allegedly from me to J. Dey, which J. Dey
had shown to Nikhil. The message read, ‘Tu swatala shana samajhto kaay’ (‘You
think you are too smart?’).
I made a counter-argument that I was a Gujarati and J. Dey was a Bengali.
Both of us were working for English newspapers. Why would I send him an
SMS in Marathi?
Then there was a statement from a certain Manoj Shivdasani. He had received
a call from Chhota Rajan on 2 August 2011, which was tracked by the police.
The transcript of this call was available in the charge sheet. Here, Chhota Rajan
lamented that Vinod Chembur had been arrested in the case for identifying J.
Dey to his murderers. And then Chhota Rajan claimed that I had complained to
him about J. Dey multiple times.

Transcripts as filed in charge sheet.

Date: 4 August 2011. Time: 14.20.10

Manoj: Hello

Chhota Rajan: Haan Manoj

Manoj: Ha

Chhota Rajan: Kya haal hai raja? Uss din cut ho gaiya

Manoj: Haan, haan abhi iska tabiyat thik nahi hai, tabiyat toh thik nahi hai abhi uska bhi, Vinod ka

Chhota Rajan: Kya karega raja, bahut taklifwalli, yeh toh khota phas gaiya

Manoj: Haan

Chhota Rajan: Galat phas gaiya aur who bhi bhenchod, who bhi koi saav nahi tha, who bhi
haramipaana who bhi samnewale k liye kaam karta tha dawood k liye ISI k liye

Manoj: Acha acha

Chhota Rajan: Galat galat baatein apne liye . . . likhta tha aur kafi iske matlab jo inke editor log bhi
patrakar log bhi iske against kafi the

Manoj: Hmmm . . . mmm

Chhota Rajan: Kafi log iske against bolte the, who kya iska naam who ladki bhi phone kar k mereko
bolti thi yeh gadar hai

Manoj: Acha

Chhota Rajan: Who Jigna vora kon hai na

Manoj: Woh malum nahi

Chhota Rajan: Woh hai na

Manoj: Haan haan

Chhota Rajan: Who kafi log matlab iske against the, who jigna vora ghadi ghadi bolti thi, who aisa
hai, who waisa hai matlab samnewale k touch main hai na

Manoj: Acha acha

Chhota Rajan: Toh mai jaane ka koi matlab tha nahi, phir Phillipines bula raha tha aur gal matlab
chalo koi level hoti hai bhai matlab ek insaan

Manoj: Hu . . . hu . . .

Chhota Rajan: Patrakar hai kuch likh te hai, matlab who toh main bhi samajta hu na

Manoj: Haan haan

 Chhota Rajan: But kisi k liye kaam kare aur kisi k lie ekdum hi galat tarike se niche utar k bole toh
who galat hai na

Manoj: Thik hai

Chhota Rajan: . . . Matlab kya hai halat bura hai, matlab bahut taklif ho gayi actually matlab na

Manoj: Haan

Chhota Rajan: Yeh khota phas gaiya hai, khota

Manoj: Haan

Chhota Rajan: Tha lena dena kuch nahi iska

Manoj: Haan who toh hai, tabiyat bahut kharab hai

Chhota Rajan: . . . Tabiyat toh bechare ki bahut wohi mere ko bahut bura lag raha hai na, ki kya kare
matlab na? aisa phas gaiya thik hai dekhte hai raja koshish karo aur kya?

Manoj: Ok

Chhota Rajan: Ok

Manoj Shivdasani’s statement was recorded in the presence of a magistrate

under Section 164 of Cr.PC. In his statement, he alleged that Chhota Rajan had
also told him about receiving an email from Jigna Vora with J. Dey’s
photograph, bike registration number and addresses. However, there was no such
record in the transcript of the only conversation between Shivdasani and Chhota
Rajan. It clearly implied that Shivdasani’s testimony was false.
In the charge sheet, there was a letter from Senior Police Inspector Sripad
Kale addressed to Deven Bharati, additional commissioner, crime. This letter
was written on 1 August 2011. Kale had requested Bharati for permission to put
a number under surveillance as the number belonged to a certain ‘Raj’ who was
using it for making threatening calls. This number was the same as the one used
by Shivdasani to speak with Chhota Rajan. Now, such a permission could only
be granted by a DIG-level officer, or by the additional chief secretary, home. But
the police had recorded that call the very next day and the letter was written only
later, which actually made the tapping illegal.
 There was no forensic lab report in the charge sheet. Public Prosecutor Raja
Thakare had advised the court that the FSL report would be made available as
soon as the forensic investigations are complete.
To debunk the theory that I instigated Chhota Rajan to murder J. Dey, I noted
that my only conversation with Chhota Rajan happened on 25 May 2011, which
was an interview given to my newspaper over the Pakmodiya Street shoot-out.
Chhota Rajan had claimed responsibility for this incident, and cited the example
of his ‘patriotic don’ image. He was particularly vocal about conducting an
operation in Dawood Ibrahim’s area.
Now, to support the instigation theory, the Crime Branch claimed that on 30
June 2011, I had allegedly emailed two articles to Chhota Rajan. J. Dey had
written these articles to highlight Chhota Rajan’s diminishing influence in the
underworld, which, according to them, instigated the don to eliminate the
reporter who was bad-mouthing him. But no conversation had taken place
between Chhota Rajan and me after the interview I had conducted with him.
Also, the first charge sheet that the police filed against the ten accused had
contained a confession of accused Arun Dhake. Dhake had confessed that the
gun used in J. Dey’s murder was procured in Nainital, from one Deepak Sisodia,
around 8 May 2011. The shooters had returned to the city on 19 May 2011. So,
the conspiracy to murder had already been hatched way before I could instigate
Chhota Rajan on 30 June 2011, even if that was true.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Chhota Rajan had a change of
heart after 19 May 2011 and he had dropped the idea to kill J. Dey, but then my
alleged emails on 30 June 2011 instigated him to go ahead with the original plan.
Even in this case, there were no records, no emails or phone calls or any kind of
contact established between Chhota Rajan and me after 25 May 2011. So how
could I have instigated him?
When Jayesh came to meet me in Byculla Jail, I had all my counter-arguments
ready. Diligently, I dictated each of these points to him, which he jotted down in
his black diary. He was convinced we were on the right track. The FSL report
was still a loose end, and I feared that the police would try to manipulate it.
Jayesh suggested that we engage the services of a senior counsel to apply for
bail. It would involve a hefty fee, but Sudeep Pasbola would be the senior
advocate who would fight to get me out of jail.
 21
CHEATS

Jo Sat Baar Paath Kar Koi, Chhutahi Bandi Maha Sukh Hoi. Whoever recites this Hanuman Chalisa
100 times daily for 100 days is freed from the bondages of life and death, and enjoys eternal bliss.

My aunt believed the Hanuman Chalisa would form a protective kavach

(armour) around me in jail. The hymn proved to be a great source of strength
during my ordeal. Around 3.30 p.m. every day, I would sit by the veranda and
chant these lines with vigour. A huge tree stood in the compound, which was
some distance away, but I could not recognize its variety. The leaves on its
branches had withered away. The tree was just like me. Once it had been filled
with life, but now it was barren. The seeds of spirituality made me understand
that these cycles of degeneration would be followed by regeneration, and my life
would also be restored in the same manner. Other inmates started following my
lead and would join me at the veranda to recite their prayers every day. I often
thought of us as birds who flocked together in the hope of flying away from this
cage.
Byculla Jail could turn the staunchest sceptics into believers. I come from a
Vaishnava family. We are followers of Lord Krishna, and members of the
Krishna Panth sect. When I was young, my grandmother never allowed me to
visit a Shiva temple because I wasn’t married then. I had never recited the
Hanuman Chalisa at home because Hanumanji is a brahmachari. But in jail, I
broke all the rules that my grandmother had implemented so strictly and sought
divine assistance from Hanumanji.

Certain inmates were entitled to hot water for a bath, and Paromita would keep a
mug of water from this bucket stored in her thermos to make some coffee later in
the day. One morning, she called me over and handed me a cup of Nescafe.
‘Jigna,’ she said. ‘You should chant the mantra of Bagalamukhi Devi.’
She understood from the look on my face that I had not heard of the deity yet.
But I was prepared to do anything that could secure my release. Before my
arrest, I remembered laughing at a news story that Sheena Bora, who was
accused in a high-profile murder case, had performed a maun vrat. Now, I was
doing all the same things, and none of it seemed ludicrous.
‘What is the procedure for that mantra?’ I asked.
‘Read it eleven times a day. But be extremely careful,’ Paromita said.
‘Fumbling in the recitation will negate your wishes.’
‘Give me the mantra, please.’
‘I wrote it for Asha Pardeshi, who is lodged in Barrack No. 5. Collect it from
her.’
‘Please write it for me now.’
‘I am not in the mood,’ she said, and walked away.
The same afternoon, a woman in her fifties came and sat next to me in the
veranda. She was a plump lady, wearing a neatly draped sari. Her hair had
greyed, and I had seen her shuffle around on wobbly knees. A blue scarf covered
her head.
‘Are you Jigna Vora?’ the woman asked.
I nodded.
‘What are you reading, beta?’
‘Hanuman Chalisa,’ I replied. ‘What are you reciting?’
‘Bagalamukhi Mantra.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Are you Asha Pardeshi from Barrack No. 5?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God,’ I exclaimed. ‘Paromita asked me to get the Bagalamukhi Mantra
from you.’
 Since Asha knew the mantra by heart, I ran to get a pen and paper from the
barrack. I had this irrational fear that Asha would refuse to give me the mantra
later, and I would rot in jail for ever. But thankfully, she was still sitting in the
veranda when I returned, and I managed to write down the mantra.

The cops kept their distance from me due to my journalistic credentials. Neither
did they harass me a lot, nor did they allow me a lot of liberty, but it was a fine
arrangement that kept me out of trouble. I had never performed puja at home, but
every morning in jail I would spend an hour, from 9.30 a.m. to 10.30 a.m.,
chanting various mantras and invoking the gods. None of the inmates disturbed
me during this puja time. A baba had told my grandfather that I should recite
‘Om Namah Shivaya’ for an early release. My grandfather sent me a tulsi mala
(necklace of holy basil beads), and I would recite it 108 times in five cycles
every day. I would light incense sticks, and pray to Lord Shiva and Lord
Krishna. This was the best use of my time, and it helped me connect to my inner
self. I also began participating in all religious practices performed in Byculla Jail
—even those that crossed the line of superstition or stemmed from other
religions. Sometimes, I did not even sip water on nights of the full moon. I learnt
to recite a few duas (prayers) from the Muslim inmates. All of this gave me
some hope to cling to.
Asha and I became good friends. When the barracks were opened each
morning, Asha would come down to Barrack No. 2 to meet me as soon as she
could. Sometimes, I would go to her barrack. We would often cut vegetables for
the meals and talk about our lives. Jailers used to assign us various tasks, such as
cutting vegetables, cleaning rice, and separating wheat and chaff. It was a good
way of killing time. Seeing the worms in the vegetables, we were thankful to
have a chance to be able to cut out the spoiled parts. When I narrated my case to
Asha, she was sure that I was innocent. On my inquiring about her case, she
revealed that she had been arrested for committing a fraud of Rs 25 crore.
Apparently, a chit fund that she had started with her husband for the dhobis
(washermen) who lived near Dhobi Talao had gone bust. I remembered reading
this in the newspapers before my arrest. Asha, a native of Uttar Pradesh, lived at
Mahalakshmi with her husband, Ramesh, who was a very good cook and into the
catering business. Asha swore that she had no intention of cheating the laundry
men. Everything was going well, and her investments had ensured good
payments to those who had given her money. She had even opened an office near
Arthur Road. But at some point, she messed up, and things got out of hand. She
had every intention to repay the dhobis, and had even sold her land in UP and all
her jewellery for that purpose. Her requests to the dhobis about not filing a
police case yielded no result, and the police had arrested her and her husband.
She often cried, and reiterated that she was not running a scam.
Even though my rational mind could see ponzi written all over her scheme, in
my heart I felt she was innocent. Because I had been framed, I was inclined to
believe each woman in Byculla Jail was innocent. The police could ruin anyone
they wanted to. After the arrest of an accused, the media only covers what the
police have to say. And unlike the police, most accused do not have the liberty or
the means to organize a press conference in their defence. So there’s no real way
of hearing or knowing the accused’s side of the story.
I had instructed my family against speaking to the media. The version of the
cops is held to be the gospel truth until the court verdict is delivered. No wonder
so many cases that the police claim are ‘watertight’ in their press conferences fall
flat in a court of law.
Every time I cried in front of Asha, she would console me like a mother.
Often, she would get me wafers and bourbon biscuits from the jail canteen. On
the days I was fasting, Asha would arrange for some bananas and milk for me.
Family members were allowed to visit us once in a week, between 3.30 p.m. and
5.30 p.m. A lawyer could visit every day if required. Asha’s daughter and
grandson came to see her one day. But after the meeting, Asha returned to the
barrack with tears in her eyes.
‘What happened?’ I asked her.
‘My grandson wants to know when his nani will be back home,’ she said and
wept.
I tried to console her. ‘Is your daughter coping well?’
‘Yes. Her in-laws are very understanding. My son is in Bengaluru. He is about
to get married soon. I hope the police don’t arrest him.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Everything will be okay.’
 Asha’s case was registered by the Economic Offences Wing, and was being
heard in the court at the Azad Maidan police station premises. The police had
filed a charge sheet against her, but she hadn’t secured bail yet. On a day of a
court visit, Asha was under considerable stress.
‘The complainants take out a morcha against me during every visit,’ she said.
‘They shout slogans.’
I tried to pep her up. ‘But you will also meet your husband. And your
daughter will get home-cooked food for you.’
‘I am scared,’ she said.
‘What worse can happen to us?’ I said. ‘We are in hell already.’
That somewhat soothed her, and she went to court in better spirits. When she
returned that day, she told me that a lot of people had turned up against her and
shouted slogans for the judge to hear.
‘Oh, forget it, Asha Aunty,’ I said. ‘What did your family say?’
She replied that her husband had joked about her greying hair, and they had
shared a good meal.
‘Tell Ramesh Uncle that once we are free,’ I said, ‘I will come over to eat his
specially cooked veg biryani.’
‘We will also make some kopra pak for dessert.’ Asha smiled. ‘Just for you.’

Jaya Chheda tried her best to break the bond between Asha and me. Jaya was
always waiting for me to make a mistake, so that she could screw me over. But I
spent most of my time praying, and stayed away from all trouble.
‘Do the two of you gossip about me?’ Jaya would ask Asha.
‘No,’ Asha said. ‘We only chant the name of Bajrangbali.’
Soni Ajwani would often join Asha and me in the veranda. She was roughly
my age, had coloured blonde hair, and when I first saw her, she was wearing a
white shirt and jeans. She was also lodged in Barrack No. 5. Soni had lived as a
paying guest in a bungalow at Pali Hill. She was arrested by the Economic
Offences Wing for duping businessmen by selling them fake airline tickets. Her
aged father could not run around for her bail. Her sister lived in Dubai, and when
she would come to Mumbai, she would do the legwork for Soni’s release. She
was also the accused in cases wherein cheques had bounced. I never saw Soni
crying or emotionally vulnerable. She would often talk about her favourite
restaurants like Mini Punjab and Barbecue Nation.
‘Do you go pubbing?’ she asked me once.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t drink anyway.’
Her PG was right next to Karisma Kapoor’s apartment. Inmates would often
ask her about the film stars in Bandra. Soni never spoke a lot, but I derived a lot
of emotional support from her. She was one of the few educated people in the
jail, and the only one with whom I could hold a sensible conversation.

Asha and I believed the barren tree in the compound to be a form of Hanumanji.
When the tree would be filled with leaves and flowers again, we believed, we
would be set free. This thought gave us a sense of security, and the faith that God
would smile upon us some day and give us back our freedom. Months passed.
And eventually, leaves started appearing on the branches. I recognized then that
it was a neem tree. Small yellow flowers blossomed upon it slowly.
 22
MY WORLD WAR III

Our legal strategy was to file for bail after the police filed the charge sheet.
Jayesh had an inkling that the sessions court would reject my plea. He believed
we had a better chance in the high court. The charge sheet was filed towards the
end of February 2012. With clouds of uncertainty hovering like demons, I
collaborated with Jayesh to prepare our rebuttal to the allegations on the charge
sheet. But even as we stepped into March, Jayesh did not apply for bail. FSL
reports of my laptop and phone were pending. We did not know what those
reports would throw at us. Every passing day was filled with frustration.
Jayesh and I agreed on hiring the services of Senior Advocate Sudeep
Pasbola. Drafting a bail application at his office implied a significant legal
expense. The arguments would be charged separately. I conveyed to my family
to hand over the requisite funds to Jayesh. Pasbola’s office began drafting the
application. But even by April 2012, my bail application had not seen the
corridors of the sessions court. Raja Thakur, who was a member of my legal
team, came to meet me for a mulaqaat on one Saturday.
‘Go ahead and file my bail application,’ I said.
He looked at me as if I had committed sacrilege. ‘Jayesh won’t be too happy if
we bypass him.’
‘Where the fuck is he then?’
‘He is visiting Ganpatipule for his daughter’s first birthday.’
‘I can’t rot in here for ever!’ I said. ‘Get the application moving!’
 Raja sensed my seriousness and filed the bail application on the next Monday,
7 April 2012. Predictably, Jayesh returned from his holiday and threw a tantrum
during our next meeting.
‘What was the urgency?’ Jayesh asked. ‘You could have waited.’
‘For how long?’
‘It is not as if you’ll get bail tomorrow.’
‘Exactly. What if the sessions court rejects? Who knows how long the high
court process will take? We need to move faster.’
‘The FSL reports are pending,’ he said.
‘The FSL reports can go to hell,’ I said. ‘I am tired of waiting. Get the
argument dates from Pasbola sir.’
After a big fight in which I hurled a number of expletives at Jayesh, he finally
saw my point and agreed to move ahead with the bail plea. But he came to meet
me again after a couple of days to discuss an important development. He wanted
to engage the services of Advocate Niranjan Mundargi for the bail instead of
Sudeep Pasbola.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘The FSL reports have arrived. There are no incriminating findings against
you. I have discussed the case with Mundargi already. He says we have a fair
chance of success in the sessions court itself.’
I was aware that Niranjan Mundargi was a high court counsel. His fee would
be much higher. But I knew I could trust Jayesh with my life. He had a free hand
in making these decisions. After all, he was more of a friend than my lawyer. He
would never misguide me.
‘Get the dates for the argument, then,’ I said.
Jayesh smiled. ‘We’ll start around the end of May.’

One day, I was chatting with Asha Pardeshi in Byculla Jail when Seema Kapoor
approached me. She had been arrested for heading a prostitution racket. She had
already secured bail and was about to be released in a few days.
‘Here’s my number,’ she told me. ‘Call me when you are out.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
 She ran a finger down my cheek. ‘A beautiful girl like you, my dear, should
make at least a lakh every week.’
Even though I thought I had seen everything during all these months inside
this facility, Byculla Jail never failed to surprise me. However, Seema’s words
did not shock me because I had been through worse humiliation during this
ordeal. I merely stared at Seema, my heart beating fast in anger at her
proposition.
‘You’ll serve only high-profile clientele,’ she said. ‘Politicians. Actors.’
I took a deep breath as I heard the ‘perks’ of her job offer. I wanted her to
leave. She got the signal and walked away. Asha Pardeshi was looking away out
of embarrassment. As soon as Seema left, a tear rolled down my cheek. People
were offering me prostitution jobs now! Is that what my life had become?
Later that night, sounds of marriage processions and the tempting scents from
roadside eateries wafted into Barrack No. 2. There were three windows with iron
rods in the barrack, high up the walls and beyond the reach of the inmates. As I
had often done on other nights, I thought of the world outside and made up my
mind to never venture anywhere close to Byculla once I was out of this living
hell.

To cover the ever-growing legal expenses, my family decided to sell off my

grandmother’s ancestral silver jewellery and heirlooms that had been in the
family for at least a century. My grandfather had borne most of the costs of my
case. A ‘court group’ had been created within my family and included those who
were supporting me through the trial. The group would have lunch at Chetna
Hotel after my hearings. We had all managed to grow closer during this
tribulation. My grandfather would cover travelling expenses for some of my
relatives in the court group as they were not from a financially sound
background. The house was also running on my grandfather’s investments. But
there was the definite crunch of hard cash. My fixed deposits and savings had
already been used. Yet, I protested against selling the silver. My aunt convinced
me that it was necessary. Much to my guilt, the silver was sold for a sum of Rs 5
lakh.
 As Jayesh had promised, the arguments for my bail began towards the end of
May 2012. The hearings would be held once in four to five days. Niranjan
Mundargi played a crucial role in refuting the allegations of the prosecution. He
submitted that the SMS that I had allegedly sent to J. Dey was not on record. No
complaint had been lodged by the deceased or on his behalf with respect to that
SMS. There was a huge gap in the date on which the SMS was sent and the day
of the murder.
Mundargi then came to the confession of a witness who had stated that I had
instigated Chhota Rajan for the murder of J. Dey. He contested that the
incriminating portions were concocted by the police and were not a part of the
transcript of the intercepted communication that had been placed on record.
As for the statement of another witness about my role in assisting Chhota
Rajan with the crime, Mundargi argued that the statement showed
communication between the witness and Chhota Rajan on two occasions after a
gap of one or two days. He submitted that the incriminating portion about my
role did not find a place in the first communication, and appeared to have been
concocted in the second.
The information that I had allegedly supplied to Chhota Rajan was freely
available on the Internet. Another accused, Vinod Asrani, alias Vinod Chembur,
had already identified J. Dey to his shooters by hugging J. Dey at a bar, days
prior to the assault.
The prosecution had alleged that I had repeatedly tried to contact Chhota
Rajan through Paulson, another accused in this case. Mundargi contested that
there was no need for me to establish such contact, and even if it was presumed
that I tried to establish contact, it could be for my professional work as a crime
reporter.
He also brought up the two calls that I had received from the number +3444
on 25 May 2011. These were the incoming calls through which I had conducted
an interview with Chhota Rajan in my professional capacity and in the presence
of my editor, Hussain Zaidi. This interview was printed in the Asian Age on 26
May 2011 under the headline ‘Rival Don Calls, Says Dawood Left Pak 5 Years
Ago’.
The prosecution took their own time to file a reply. Public Prosecutor Raja
Thakare submitted that I had transgressed my limits as a reporter, and I had
added fuel to the fire. The statement of the witnesses was sufficient material to
establish my role in the case. The absence of incriminating portions would be
explained by the witnesses during the trial. He submitted that the boarding pass
of my vacation to Sikkim had not been filed. He also contested that it was not
necessary for every conspirator to know the role of other conspirators. To
illustrate, he used the analogy of a city bus in which any passenger may board
and get down at any time. Near the end of June, the defence and prosecution had
both played their hands. It was up to Judge S.M. Modak to decide if I deserved
bail or jail.
On 27 July 2012, the neem tree was blooming with life. Happiness coursed
through me when I glanced at that tree. Most of my family turned up in court for
a decision on the bail plea. Thankfully, the media was not allowed inside. I came
out of the court with tears in my eyes. A court reporter from a national daily
walked up to me.
‘Your bail must have been rejected, right?’ she asked.
The question stabbed me like a knife in my gut. She seemed dejected to hear
from my uncle that my bail plea had been accepted! The next day, the media was
full of reports that the prime accused in the J. Dey murder case had been granted
bail. The media never reported that I got bail because there was no incriminating
evidence against me. They had forever floated the theory that I was primarily
seeking bail on medical grounds for being asthmatic and for being a single
mother.
The next day, the media turned up in full force outside Byculla Jail in the hope
of getting a picture of me walking out. A constable told me that a media van was
positioned outside. Extra police bandobast had been made. But Jayesh had
already told my family that bail did not mean I would walk out the next day as I
had to give a surety of Rs 1 lakh, and the procedure would take some time. The
media seemed to have missed this detail. My anxiety increased manifold during
this period. I kept imagining that the police would come up with some fake
evidence or new angle to save face. In the meantime, to my surprise, Dr Khan,
the jail doctor, had me admitted to the J.J. Hospital, but they put me into the TB
ward, with patients coughing all around. Later, I came to know that inmates are
generally admitted in this ward first, and later, depending upon their disease, are
shifted to different wards.
 Just like a patient admitted in hospital wants to go home at the earliest, I
wanted to return to the world I had got used to over the past ten months. I kept
pleading with the hospital authorities to send me back to jail. Two trainee
doctors wanted to check on me, but I was so suspicious that I never allowed
them to touch me. I did not sleep a wink for two nights. I was glad that the media
wasn’t aware that I had been admitted to J.J. Hospital, else they would set up
camps outside it. On the third day, I was sent back to Byculla Jail.
On 9 August 2012, I took permission from the court to speak to my son who
was in his hostel in Panchgani. I told him that I would walk out of jail in a day or
two. On 11 August, around 7.00 a.m., the jailer Pushpa Kadam called me to her
cabin. I suspected that she was calling me because I had volunteered to cook
sabudana khichdi that was to be served in jail.
She gave me a wry smile. ‘Your packet has arrived.’
‘What packet, madam?’
‘The memo for your release on bail,’ she said. ‘Get your packing done by
10.00 a.m.’
I could have danced my way back to the barracks, but I had grown so
superstitious that I didn’t want anyone to know. I took a bath and dressed in the
new suit that my aunt had brought for this occasion. Paromita noticed the spring
in my step. ‘Your memo arrived?’ she asked. I nodded. She hugged me.
Around 10.00 a.m., one of the inmates, Pinki, arrived with a chit of names of
those who were going to be released that day. She shouted loud enough for all
the inmates to hear. ‘Jigna Vora sutli!’ (Jigna Vora released).
Those words were music to my ears. Paromita asked Pinki to let all the
barracks on all the floors know about this news. The Africans formed a circle
and danced to celebrate my release. Some of the inmates wanted to keep my
belongings for good luck. They took over my unused packets of toothpaste, soap
and even the unused sanitary pads! I hugged everyone and walked out of the
barracks. In the judicial area, I ran into Ajay Sawant, who was an officer from
the Crime Branch. The mere sight of him made me shiver. Was he here to cancel
my bail?
‘I am here for Abu Jindal,’ he said. ‘Don’t be scared. Your relatives are
waiting outside.’ Abu Jindal was an accused in the 26/11 Mumbai Attacks.
 I heaved a sigh of relief. When I finally walked out, I turned around to look at
the tall iron gates. I swore to myself that I’d do everything possible to not enter
Laal Gate again. I would never visit Byculla again! Strangely, there was not one
media personnel present to watch me walk out. But my entire family had turned
up in two cars. We sped home as fast as we could. When I reached my building,
I looked up at the window of my house and shouted for Leo. The lazy pug
rushed down the stairs and began licking my face.
A day after I came home, my grandmother was taken ill. While she was
resting in the living room, I noticed a steady stream of media personnel
gathering below. But I chose to ignore it all and tried to catch a quick nap to ease
a splitting headache. My neighbour rang the doorbell urgently. When my
grandmother opened the door, the neighbour was gasping for breath. ‘The police
are here again,’ she said.
Soon, a female ACP and the senior police inspector of Pant Nagar police
station were outside my door and asking for me. I woke up from the commotion
and walked out of my bedroom, trembling at the sight of the police. Were they
here to arrest me again? Had my bail been cancelled so soon? What would they
accuse me of this time? But the officers seemed concerned about me and asked
about my health. My landline rang at that precise moment. It was Jayesh, and he
sounded worried.
‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.
‘The police are at my door again,’ I said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Your investigating officer, Mahale, called me to check on rumours that you
had committed suicide.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, and apparently there was also a rumour that your body had been taken to
Rajawadi Hospital.’
‘That explains the cops and the media.’
‘I’ll inform Mahale that you are safe,’ he said and hung up.
I spoke to the ACP. They confirmed that such news was doing the rounds and
they were only there to check. I thanked them for their concern and went back to
sleep.
A national daily published a report stating that I was suffering from
depression. Post-bail, I was under court orders not to talk to the media. It was the
best thing to happen to me. Newspapers, magazines, television channels had
blatantly announced that if convicted, I was likely to receive a death sentence. I
wondered if the media would ever stop maligning me.
 23
RETURN OF RAJAN

After being on the run for twenty-seven years, Rajendra Sadashiv Nikhalje, alias
Chhota Rajan, was handcuffed in Bali, Indonesia’s picturesque holiday island, on
25 October 2015. His arrest and the deportation that followed was covered in
great detail and followed by most people in India. It was a significant
development for some people, especially in India’s financial capital Mumbai,
where the self-proclaimed Hindu don had run havoc in the 1980s. Even after he
fled the city in 1988, the don had continued to have a hold. From extortion and
smuggling to drug trafficking and assault, the mobster’s men ensured that his
terror spread. The don had been named in the murders of more than seventeen
people. One of them was J. Dey.
Born and brought up in Tilak Nagar in Chembur, Chhota Rajan started out
selling tickets in black at a cinema hall in his locality. From being a petty thief,
he graduated to serious crime after joining the gang of Rajan Nair, aka Bada
Rajan. After Bada Rajan’s murder, Chhota Rajan took over the leadership and
also the moniker. Rajan became a much-dreaded name after he started working
for gangster Dawood Ibrahim. But their association turned sour soon after the
1993 serial blasts in Mumbai. The split was followed by the biggest gang rivalry
that the city had ever seen. From gang wars to murders and police-led encounters
caused by tip-offs about rival gang members, the ugly bloodbath continued for a
very long time.
 *

I was in a vaastu assignment in Navi Mumbai when I saw a Times of India news
alert on my phone: ‘Chhota Rajan Detained in Bali.’
The news flash distracted me completely from the task at hand. I called
Jayesh. He was completely oblivious to the development.
‘The television people show such news every day,’ he said. ‘Most are
rumours.’
Momentarily, Jayesh seemed to be right because there were updated news
alerts that said the man detained in Bali could be Cyanide Mohan, the serial
killer who had murdered twenty-three women. But then the Bengaluru Police
soon rubbished the reports stating that Cyanide Mohan was very much in their
custody.
Subsequently, it was confirmed that the man who had been arrested was
indeed Chhota Rajan. He was travelling under the identity of Mohan Kumar
when was apprehended at the Indonesian airport after he arrived from Australia.
India’s celebration of nabbing a notorious gangster felt like a stab wound in
my stomach. The first and foremost thought in my mind was that the trial would
now be delayed. Then I wondered what Chhota Rajan would say when he would
be quizzed in the J. Dey murder case. There was no denying that whatever
Chhota Rajan said would be treated as gospel truth. When he said Jigna had sent
an email to him, everyone considered it true. When he said Jigna instigated him,
everyone accepted it too. I was not prepared for another twist. I wanted all this to
end.

On 6 November 2015, Chhota Rajan was brought to Delhi in an Indian Air Force
Gulfstream-III aircraft. It was the first time that Chhota Rajan would be tried in
any case. I was closely following the news developments. Unable to quell the
storm within me, I would call Jayesh each time an uneasy, curious question
crossed my mind. At times, he would calm me down and answer me, but there
were also moments when he would get irritated.
The media was reporting on the Chhota Rajan case every day. There were
speculations and theories around how the elusive don could have been caught so
easily. There were reports on how the Arthur Road Jail was being prepared to
house him. But the Maharashtra government came up with a surprising twist.
They decided to hand over all his cases to the Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI), India’s premier investigating agency. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis
had called for a high-level meeting with the top cops and it was followed by the
announcement:

India is a signatory to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime which mandates
international co-operation on transnational organized crime, and Chhota Rajan was arrested under
this convention. The CBI is the nodal agency for India under this convention, and hence the
government has decided to transfer all cases in Mumbai and Maharashtra to the CBI. Once it has
been decided to hand over all cases to the CBI, it is the CBI chief’s decision whether to keep him in
Delhi or bring him to Mumbai . . .

The Hindu had reported, adding that Mumbai Police had compiled a dossier of
over seventy cases, including twenty under the MCOCA.
Chhota Rajan was eventually put into a high-security cell at the Tihar jail. The
transfer of cases to CBI triggered a new round of debate by the political parties.
‘Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had time and again said that Rajan will be
brought to Maharashtra and even allotted a block in Arthur Road Jail (in
Mumbai) to lodge him. It seems the CM was making all these statements and
taking decisions without consulting the Centre,’ a senior Congress leader was
quoted in the Indian Express. ‘This means there is a complete lack of
coordination between the Centre and the state government, though BJP is in
power in both places. This is most unfortunate’, he added.
With news of the CBI’s involvement, my brain went off on another tangent.
Would the CBI now arrest me? Would they file a new charge sheet against me?
Would I be sent to Byculla Jail? Or some other jail? I called Jayesh with my new
set of questions.
‘It is obvious that the CBI will question you. But there will be no arrest,’
Jayesh told me, unhappy at having to answer more of my queries. ‘We will face
whatever comes our way,’ he said.
I didn’t have the courage to tell him that I was not prepared. What if I had to
go back to prison? How could I ever be prepared to face that?
 24
THE TRIAL

Life after bail was pleasant. Amidst all that I was forced to go through, I kept a
positive attitude by counting my blessings. The evidence against me was weak.
But the wheels of justice turn too slowly in our country. I had no clue when my
innocence would be proved, and could only find solace in the conditional bail
that had been granted to me. The court had ordered me not to travel out of
Mumbai. On the first and third Monday of every month, I had to visit the Unit
One office at the Crime Branch and mark my presence. Failure to comply with
these two conditions would lead to the cancellation of my bail. On my first visit
to the Crime Branch after bail to mark my attendance, the officers were
professionally polite in their dealings with me. I took that as a positive sign.
I had made many mannats in jail to visit temples and other religious places
once the bail was through. But I was legally confined to the jurisdiction of
Mumbai, and not even allowed to go to Thane or Vashi. While in jail, I had
vowed to visit a religious place called Titwala in Thane. Jayesh filed an
application in court for this, and it was surprisingly approved. Another
application for visiting Rajasthan was also approved, but I had to submit the
itinerary, my tickets, proof of hotel bookings and contact details before I was
allowed to travel. My court hearings were scheduled once in fifteen days. I
would rarely take an exemption from attending a hearing.
In March 2013, I filed an application seeking discharge from the case. The
lack of evidence against me was clear, and I saw no reason to face a lengthy trial.
But the application was rejected by Judge A.S. Pansare. The entire procedure
took time because forensic reports of my phone and laptop were pending, and
the official response from Google on my email activity was also awaited. But the
main criteria for rejection was that two witnesses had given statements against
me, and more light could be shed on this aspect only when the trial began.
The first witness had claimed that J. Dey had shown him an SMS that I had
allegedly sent and which reportedly said in Marathi: Tu swatala shana samajhto
kaay? The person who sent it to J. Dey was asking if he thought he was too
clever in a derogatory manner. The SMS had not been retrieved in the forensic
analysis. Only a CDR entry had shown up for an SMS I had sent to J. Dey in
April 2010, more than a year before J. Dey was killed. The SMS for which the
CDR was available had been sent in the presence of Hussain Zaidi, and was
about a completely different topic related to a crime story.
The second witness had claimed that Chhota Rajan had told him that I had
sent J. Dey’s bike number, photo and office address to Chhota Rajan. My lawyer
argued there was no evidence to support this theory, but the judge wanted to
delve deeper into the testimonies of these witnesses, which was only possible
during the trial. The rejection meant that I had to face a trial, but was in no way a
reflection of my guilt in the case. I discussed with Jayesh about going to the high
court for appeal, but Jayesh felt it was better to face the trial rather than risk a
setback in the high court. A high court application meant spending more money
to engage appropriate lawyers. ‘Okay,’ I told Jayesh. ‘Let’s face the trial.’
For each court hearing, I had to stand with the ten other accused, which
included the dreaded shooter Satish Kalia. It was one of the most humiliating
experiences of my life to be lined up like that, and I had to go through it at every
hearing. Everyone in the sessions court knew me well as a journalist. But now,
they look at me pitifully or with scorn. The fifth floor of the sessions court was
designated for only MCOCA cases. Hard-core criminals would swagger down
the corridors without a hint of fear in their eyes, while I would shiver as I made
my way to the courtroom. My manner of dressing also changed, and I would
cover myself from top to bottom, and wear a dupatta to all court hearings.
In 2013, an accused in the Aurangabad arms haul case escaped from the
sessions court premises. He was also being tried by Judge A.S. Pansare. After
this incident, Judge Pansare moved his cases to the high-security courtroom
constructed in Arthur Road Jail. It was the same jail where the 1993 bomb blasts
case was heard, where I had covered all the proceedings as a journalist. My
thoughts strayed to my interactions with Sanjay Dutt. I wondered what he would
be thinking about me now.
During those days, my entry to these premises was always graceful and
respectful. The staff at Arthur Road Jail knew me. Now, I had to bend my head
down and avoid eye contact as I passed them. To top it all, my case was to be
heard in the same room where Mumbai attacks terrorist Ajmal Kasab’s trial was
held. The courtroom had been constructed as per international standards because
the case of the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008 was covered by reporters from
across the globe. The fresh coat of paint and split air conditioners did not give
me any comfort. My stomach hurt when I thought how a dreaded terrorist who
had killed so many innocent people had sat in this very room, where I was sitting
now.
Between 2013 and 2015, the date for the next hearing kept being delayed.
Earlier, I would use a radio taxi to get to court, but my finances had taken a hit in
the past few years. I got a second-class local train pass to travel to court and thus
save money. Now my applications for travel outside the city were mostly
allowed by the court. My family members planned another trip to Nepal, to visit
the famous temple of Pashupatinath on the banks of the River Bagmati in Nepal.
More or less, it was the same group with whom I had visited Sikkim in June
2011, when J. Dey was shot dead. But this time, the judge refused my
application. He could not allow me to visit Nepal, or Dubai for that matter, since
I was an accused in a case of organized crime, and the underworld had presence
in such locations. I pleaded that my tickets were already booked. The judge
asked why I had booked the tickets. How was I supposed to explain that my
previous trips were approved only after I provided proof of my itinerary? I
dropped out of the trip to Nepal, promising myself a visit to Pashupatinath later.
On 8 June 2015, charges were framed in the J. Dey murder case. All the
accused were lined up and the charges were read to them. I, Accused No. 11,
was asked about my stand on charges that I had instigated Chhota Rajan to
murder J. Dey, and that I had supplied the underworld don with J. Dey’s details
that had helped him execute the crime. I firmly pleaded not guilty. That
afternoon, I came back home and dwelled on what lay ahead. Now that the
charges had been framed, a day-to-day trial was inevitable.
On 9 June 2015, I was sipping a cup of tea in my living room and skimming
through the newspapers, which were full of reports that charges had been framed
against Jigna Vora. I explained to my grandfather how the case would now
proceed. He was a source of eternal strength for me. Around 10.30 a.m., my
mother called on my cellphone from the landline in her room. Her health had
deteriorated over the past few months. Her diabetes had worsened. She would
constantly cough, and the doctors suspected it was tuberculosis. We had
conducted some medical tests, but the reports were still awaited. In a month, her
weight had dropped from 100 kg to 50 kg. The weakness had made her
bedridden, and she needed a bedpan on most days.
When I went into her room, she appeared to be in great distress. She asked me
to take her to the toilet. I led her inside, seated her and stood outside the ajar
door. Even from inside the toilet, she was calling out my name continuously. I
had constantly been taking care of her needs through her ailments. My
grandfather could obviously not help her with going to the washroom, changing
her clothes, or bathing her. So, I had stepped in. But on that day, as she kept
calling me continuously while inside the toilet, I lost a bit of my patience and
replied to her in an irritated tone. I craved for a breather from the constant
pressure of caretaking. Anyone who has ever taken care of an old, ailing person
will understand how stressful it can get. I had my own demons to fight: a murder
charge, a lost career, no bank balance and dwindling savings. All of this may not
justify my snapping at her, but I was fighting hard to keep my sanity through
what I was dealing with.
A deep breath calmed me down. I helped my mother out of the toilet and put
her back to bed. Then I went back to the living room. The tea had gone cold. So,
I made some more tea and served a cup to my mother too, who thanked me for
the warm drink. She also read the newspaper. Around noon, she called me again.
Every bone in her fragile body was now trembling. She complained of severe
chest pain.
She coughed loudly and struggled to catch her breath. ‘Take me to hospital.’
For so long, I had been trying to convince her to get admitted to a hospital.
She had stubbornly refused. She was adamant on paying her own medical
expenses, which I had explained to her was not possible as she had spent most of
her life as a housewife. Her counter to that explanation was to sell all her
jewellery to pay her hospital bills. Earlier, when I had had a serious conversation
about this, she had flatly refused any treatment in a hospital. She had probably
lost the will to live over the last few months. She was depressed and would pop
nearly fifty pills a day for her various ailments. But now was not the moment for
this argument. She was in tremendous pain.
I began to rub her chest and called up our family doctor. He arrived in fifteen
minutes and examined my mother. He made no serious observation, but gave her
an injection and asked me to take her to the hospital. I looked at my mother. Her
eyes were wide open with the realization of how much her condition had
worsened. I called up a friend to help me. Then, I called an ambulance, which
arrived in about thirty minutes. The paramedics pulled my mother on to a
stretcher and led us down the building. My mother was awake and spoke to me
as we climbed down the stairs.
‘Will I survive?’
‘You’ll be fine, Maa,’ I said. ‘We’ll get your medical check-ups done. You’ll
be back home in three days.’
I sat in the back of the ambulance with my mom. My friend sat in front with
the driver. Ashirwad Heart Hospital was hardly five minutes away from my
home. As I entered the hospital, I looked back and saw my mother being carried
on the stretcher. She was looking right at me. Eyes open wide, lips pursed
crookedly. Something was terribly wrong. ‘Maa . . .’ I said softly and cried. A
doctor rushed over, and my mother was taken to the emergency room. Around
1.20 p.m., they tried to resuscitate her and put her on a ventilator. By 1.45 p.m., I
had returned home to tell my grandfather that my mother was no more. By 2.30
p.m., her body was back home. Her death had happened in a matter of hours. It
was all too quick. I arranged for her final rites and stayed at home for fifteen
days. To this day, I choke to tears thinking that I spoke harshly to my mother on
the last day of her life.

I hardly got any time to mourn. The case was on and I had to throw myself into
it. A few witnesses had deposed, but Public Prosecutor Raja Thakare excused
himself, citing excess workload and other reasons. This delayed the trial. Chhota
Rajan’s deportation and the transfer of cases to the CBI also led to more delays
in my trial. In February 2016, the CBI filed a charge sheet against Chhota Rajan.
But they did not have a public prosecutor in place! After considerable wait,
Pradeep Gharat was appointed as the public prosecutor for all Chhota Rajan’s
cases. But now that we had a public prosecutor, the judge was changed. Judge
Sameer Adkar was appointed to hear all cases involving Chhota Rajan. The
courtroom was also shifted back to the sessions court, to Room No. 57. The
witnesses started deposing. The initial witnesses were those who were a part of
my panchnama. After all, hadn’t the media made me into a prime accused?
Witnesses against Chhota Rajan began deposing. His wife, Sujata, was also
called to court. But I had taken an exemption from attending the hearing on that
day.
Three witnesses were crucial to my fate: Nikhil Dixit—to whom J. Dey had
shown the SMS I had purportedly sent; Manoj Shivdasani—who had conversed
with Chhota Rajan on phone, when my name had allegedly come up; and Aariz
Chandra, to whom Chhota Rajan had allegedly said that I had emailed him J.
Dey’s photo, bike number and office address. All these witnesses had given such
statements to the police. However, statements given before police are not
admissible as evidence in court as they can be obtained under duress. What
mattered now is what these witnesses would say in court, and if their versions
could stand the cross-examination of the defence. After discussion with Jayesh, I
approached senior lawyer Prakash Shetty to be the defence counsel for my trial.
He was a methodical and calm lawyer and known to be a master in the art of
cross-examination.
Nikhil Dixit appeared in court on 3 May 2017. I almost failed to recognize
him because he had grown his hair and it was in a ponytail. Public Prosecutor
Pradeep Gharat began the examination. Sitting at the back, I silently began
chanting the Hanuman Chalisa. As part of his introduction, Nikhil confirmed
that he had met J. Dey in 2002, and the senior reporter had been a mentor to him
in crime reporting. Nikhil also admitted to knowing me as a journalist and
meeting me around 2006–07.
‘Is Jigna Vora present in court today?’ Gharat asked. ‘Can you identify her?’
 Nikhil pinpointed a finger towards the back of the courtroom, where I was
seated with the other accused. Suddenly, necks turned and the entire room was
staring at me. But by now, I had grown used to such humiliation. Then, Nikhil
admitted that J. Dey had shown him the alleged SMS that I had sent. On being
asked about the contents of the SMS, he replied in English, ‘You think you are
too smart or what?’
The PP continued his examination of the witness on other topics related to the
case. Then, defence counsel Prakash Shetty began the cross-examination. He
eased Nikhil into the probe of the SMS, during which Nikhil admitted that he did
not know Jigna Vora’s mobile number. He did not remember if Jigna Vora’s
number was stored in his mobile phone. No, he did not remember if any calls
had been exchanged between him and Jigna Vora. He did not remember the date
on which J. Dey had shown him the SMS sent by Jigna Vora. He did not verify
the mobile number of the person who had sent the SMS or who had received the
SMS. And no, he had not actually seen the SMS, contrary to what he had said
earlier. J. Dey had only told him about such an SMS. Yes, in his words, it would
be true to say that he was not aware of the contents of the SMS.
I heaved a huge sigh of relief. Prakash Shetty continued with the cross-
examination. All along, I had wondered if Nikhil had told the police that he had
seen the SMS under any kind of pressure. But again, he put it on record that it
would be incorrect to say that he was deposing falsely against Jigna Vora under
directions of the police or the CBI. After the hearing, I thanked Prakash Shetty
profusely. He smiled and said, ‘This is how the truth unfolds.’
This was a big development and a very positive one in my defence. Guess
how many newspapers reported it?
Zero.

The prosecution had lined up another witness, Rajesh Kadam, who was from the
HR and Admin of the Asian Age when the murder had taken place. On the day of
his deposition, Rajesh was unusually cold towards me. He had brought along the
attendance register, which was proof that I had gone on leave without
notification to the HR, and then returned on my own. The prosecution wanted to
build a case that I had deliberately gone to Sikkim on that day because I was
aware that J. Dey would be killed on 11 June 2011. But under Prakash Shetty’s
cross-examination, Rajesh admitted that the general norm in the office was that
reporters were supposed to inform their direct supervisors when proceeding on
leave, and a separate notification to HR/Admin was not mandatory. And then it
was presented to the court that in keeping with this norm, I had informed the
resident editor, Hussain Zaidi, about my leave, in advance and in writing over an
email. Prakash Shetty kept the window open to confirm this fact with Hussain
Zaidi if he were to be called as a witness for the defence. Rajesh’s testimony did
not damage my case at all.
Other witnesses deposed before Manoj Shivdasani was called to the stand on
23 May 2017. Quite a few reporters had turned up for his testimony because his
conversation with Chhota Rajan, which had been recorded by the police, was to
be played in court. Also, Manoj’s statement was taken before a magistrate under
Section 164 of Cr.PC, which makes it admissible as evidence in court. He was
liable for perjury if he backtracked on his statement. Under examination by the
public prosecutor, Manoj admitted that he was friends with Vinod Asrani, aka
Vinod Chembur, who was also an accused in the J. Dey murder case but had died
in 2015.
‘Can you recognize your statement which was recorded under Section 164 of
Cr.PC if it was shown to you?’ the PP asked.
‘I can say that only if the statement is shown to me,’ Manoj said.
The statement, which was kept in an open envelope, was now shown to the
witness. He admitted that it bore his signature on the last page. But then he went
on to say that the statement was recorded in Marathi, and he did not know
Marathi. When recorded, the statement was not read out to him in Hindi, a
language he understood, and he had simply signed the statement. So now, the
statement which was recorded in Marathi was read over and interpreted to him in
Hindi.
‘I do not remember the contents of the statement,’ he said. ‘At the time of
recording of my statement, I had stated the truth.’
When the recording of his call with Chhota Rajan was played in court, the part
about me emailing J. Dey’s information to Rajan was not a part of it. The
prosecution never made an application to try Shivdasani for perjury despite the
fact that he did not remember his own statement. However, another battle had
been won.
Aariz Chandra was the 100th witness in the case. He appeared only after
multiple summons, as he had shifted to Delhi. My acquittal was now dependent
on his deposition. He admitted that Chhota Rajan had called around August or
September 2011 from the number +3444. Chhota Rajan had confessed to killing
J. Dey because he suspected J. Dey was working for Dawood Ibrahim. But then,
Aariz deposed that Chhota Rajan had mentioned that he (Rajan) had emailed J.
Dey’s photo, bike number, and two articles by J. Dey about Chhota Rajan for a
popular tabloid to Jigna Vora! The judge himself was flabbergasted to hear this
and asked Aariz if he needed a glass of water.
‘No,’ Aariz said. ‘I am fine.’
The prosecution asked Aariz to repeat himself, which he did, and stated that
Chhota Rajan had mentioned that he (Rajan) had emailed J. Dey’s photo, bike
number, and two articles by J. Dey about Rajan for a popular tabloid to Jigna
Vora. In a tactical move, Prakash Shetty declined to cross-examine the witness.
He wanted to give no opportunity to Aariz to change the words he had just
spoken. From rows ahead, Jayesh turned around to look at me. He had a smile on
his face, and gave me a thumbs-up. The prosecution’s case against me had
collapsed. I was close to freedom. Very close. But nothing could be taken for
granted until the judgment was announced on 2 May 2018.
 25
ACCUSED NO. 11 ACQUITTED

The wait for 2 May 2018 was excruciating. The media trial had taken its toll on
me. J. Dey’s murder, understandably, had angered his colleagues and peers, and
they had played their part in raising voices for a death sentence against me. Even
as per law, death sentences are reserved for the rarest of rare cases. But the
media only wanted to play to the gallery, sell a few more copies, and conduct
sensational prime-time debates. I confined myself to my bedroom and seldom
stepped outside.
My grandfather, grandmother and my mother had all been alive when I was
arrested on 25 November 2011. By the time the judgment day had neared, all of
them had gone, one after another. That left me and my son against the might of
the law, government and media. Though I had put up a hell of a fight, I had also
gone through bouts of depression and severe anxiety. Having attended the trial
punctually for the last six-and-a-half years, I had had no chance to supervise my
son’s academics. He had been an excellent student, scoring more than 80 per
cent in his SSC exams. But now, even he could not focus properly on his HSC
exams. How could I blame him? I was sure he would pass, but he had slipped so
much that getting into an engineering college would be nearly impossible for
him. It was his dream to become a chemical engineer. My conviction would put
his future in jeopardy.
I called Jayesh to my home and discussed the possibility of a conviction. He
told me there was no way I was getting convicted. Though he was confident,
nothing was set in stone. He knew this as much as I did. I told him that I would
sign a few blank cheques he could use to pay for my son’s education and manage
my legal expenses in case we had to go to the high court. Jayesh agreed to this
idea with a heavy heart. Even Prakash Shetty told me not to worry. He was
confident of securing a release. ‘Legally, there is nothing against you,’ he said.
‘But in the end, you will face what is in your destiny.’
I couldn’t bear to look at the calendar any more. A few days prior to judgment,
a photographer from the Mumbai Mirror turned up at my door. I cited my bail
order and refused to talk or allow a photograph. Before the verdict, a few close
friends turned up to express solidarity. My best friend hugged me tightly. Maybe
she was wondering if she would ever see me again.

On 1 May 2018, as I prepared to go to sleep, I wondered where I would be

sleeping the next day. Would I be back on the hard floor of Byculla Jail, jostling
for space with some of Mumbai’s most hardened criminals? I had met so many
new faces in jail, and all of them came rushing back to my head—Paromita,
Sadhvi Pragya, Usha Maa, the dreaded Jaya Chheda, the cheerful Fatima, and
the lady constables. How many of them would still be there?
The media had turned up in full force when I had been arrested. Now that
Chhota Rajan was back and facing his first judgment in India, the media would
virtually occupy every inch of space in the sessions court. And what if the judge
really sentenced me to death? I closed my eyes and imagined a black hood being
put over my face, a noose tightening around my neck, hanging by the thick rope
and kicking my legs until . . . I touched my face with my hands, reassuring
myself that I was still alive. Though I wished for this night to never pass, I was
also tired of the anxiety. I went to sleep with the conviction that I would face my
destiny, whatever it was.
The next morning, three of my friends turned up to take care of my son. I gave
them strict instructions to not let him out of sight until I (or my family members)
returned in the evening. I left from Ghatkopar at 9.30 a.m. with another friend. A
photographer from Mid-Day was standing below the building. I requested him to
respect my privacy at this hour and covered my face with a pink dupatta.
 First, I went to Chembur to my uncle and aunt’s place. There, I took the
blessings of my grandfather’s younger brother and his wife. My aunt applied a
tika on my forehead and prayed for my release. My uncle and aunt drove along
with us from Chembur to Kala Ghoda, and I did not utter a word during the
entire journey. I rolled down the windows and felt the breeze blow across my
face. I felt the warmth of the sun. I breathed deeply, not knowing if this freedom
would last beyond the next few hours.
As the car approached the court premises, I kept an eye out for media
personnel. Luckily, no journalists were hounding the entry point of the first gate.
I asked my uncle to stop near Irani Hotel and made my way inside the court. But
the security guards did not allow my family members through this gate and
asked them to enter from the other gates.
At 10 a.m., the court was empty except for the heavy security deployment.
Policemen in civil clothes began entering the premises to review the security
arrangements. This was a case involving Chhota Rajan and his dreaded shooters.
The dog squad had sanitized the entire fifth floor. I passed by the staircase where
my grandfather had once sat when he’d come to meet me at my first hearing. I
could feel his presence trying to tell me that everything would be okay, just like
he would console me when he was alive.
I was sitting on the bench on the fifth floor and crying, when Jane Borges, a
reporter from Mid-Day who was also my friend, came along and sat next to me.
She spoke a few words for moral support. I handed my phone to her as I
wouldn’t be allowed to carry it inside. My family members turned up too. Some
relatives had travelled from far away. But they were not allowed into the
courtroom. Around 10.45 a.m., I trudged into the courtroom and took a seat at
my regular place. The lawyers had now started streaming in.
Around 11 a.m., the judge walked in. He jocularly quipped in Marathi that he
had been reading the interviews that some lawyers associated with the case were
giving to the media. Even by 11.30 a.m., the media was not allowed in the
courtroom. But there was a sea of lawyers inside. The other accused who were in
custody had not arrived yet. Paulson was next to me, wearing a white shirt and
black pant. The tension had made him loud and excited.
‘What do you think will happen to us?’ he said.
 I ignored him at first, but he repeated himself. ‘I don’t know,’ I said and rolled
my eyes. He was only making me more nervous.
The judge asked a clerk why the aaropis were not in court yet. The clerk
rushed to check, and came back with a response that the accused were on their
way from jail in the police vehicles. Chhota Rajan had joined via
videoconferencing and he was provided with the same update, which he
acknowledged. I cast a glance at Chhota Rajan’s face, and the apprehension on
his face was palpable. Paulson did not stop blabbering, no matter how many
times I asked him to. The clock kept ticking away. My aunt had told me that
rahu kaal would begin at 12.10 p.m. and that was worrying me now.
At 11.45 a.m., one accused entered. The others followed behind him. The
judge did not even allow any time for the accused to sit. They were lined up
according to their designated numbers. I was Accused No. 11, and Paulson was
Accused No. 10. At least five policemen in plain clothes were guarding each
accused. Jayesh looked back at me. I felt the confidence on his face had faded, or
maybe he was just as nervous as I was. The judge had a small note in his hands.
He started by pronouncing without wasting another minute. He said that the
prosecution had proved the conspiracy.
‘What is he saying?’ Paulson asked me.
I felt like punching his face, but settled for saying, ‘I don’t know!’
Accused No. 1 was pronounced as convicted.
Accused No. 2: Convicted.
No. 3: Convicted.
Four: Convicted.
This wasn’t looking good. The series of convictions continued until Accused
No. 8, Vinod Asrani, was ‘appended’. Vinod had died before the trial could
conclude.
Chhota Rajan, Accused No. 12, was also convicted. The judgment had taken
less than two minutes, an almost anticlimactic culmination of the last six-and-a-
half years. My life as it had been flashed before my eyes. Was I going to walk
through the Laal Gate again? My heart nearly stopped beating.
Jo Sat Baar Paath Kar Koi, Chhutahi Bandi Maha Sukh Hoi.
‘Accused number 10 and 11 are acquitted,’ the judge said.
What? What did I just hear?
 Paulson started jumping and shouting in his tapori lingo. ‘Apun dono acquit
ho gaye na? Haan? Haan?’
I didn’t even know what to tell him. At that moment, someone from the media
shouted, ‘Jigna Vora is acquitted,’ and rushed out to break the news to their
peers. I began crying. The courtroom began to blur before my eyes.
The judge continued that no evidence had been found against Accused No. 10
and 11. My innocence had finally been proved. I was no longer an accused
murderer.
I asked Jane Borges from Mid-day to tell my family that I was free again.
Jayesh was crying. We had started our careers on the same day. My first day as a
reporter in the sessions court had also been Jayesh’s first day as a lawyer.
Prakash Shetty’s eyes were also moist. ‘Happy, na?’ he asked me. Truly, he was
a man of few words.
I was required to post a bail bond. Once an accused is acquitted, the person is
required to sign a bond saying that he/she will remain present whenever court
calls upon them in the future. On Jayesh’s suggestion, I went out to ask my
relatives to leave, as the procedure would take until evening. The judge would
first pronounce sentences for all the convicts after lunch. As I was walking out
of court, the security stopped me. ‘At least let me go now!’ I said.
A constable then made way for me. All my relatives hugged me. They were all
crying. Using Jayesh’s phone, I called home and spoke to my son. He couldn’t
stop crying. But I was delighted to hear his voice, to know that I would be
around him for the foreseeable future at least. My relatives left soon for their
respective homes. I drank a glass of water and went back to the courtroom. Only
the friend who had accompanied me through the morning stayed back. Around
5.30 p.m., I exited from the back door with my face covered in the dupatta again.
I refused to talk to the media. I heard a female reporter snigger, ‘She is still so
arrogant.’ I ignored those words, got into Jayesh’s car and rolled up the black-
tinted windows. Six photographers on bikes chased us till CST. I did not utter a
single word throughout the journey. As the car sped along, I imagined shedding
my past, bit by bit. Perhaps, somewhere during the journey, I had also lost the
Jigna I knew.
Jayesh dropped me to Chembur, at my uncle’s place, as we suspected that the
media would have camped near my house in Ghatkopar. I took a quick nap, and
it was sound sleep for the first time in six-and-a-half years. At midnight, I came
back home—to my son and my freedom.
 EPILOGUE

The Mystery

The first charge sheet in the J. Dey murder case was filed in December 2011.
According to this 3,000-page document, Chhota Rajan was irked by two
scathing articles that J. Dey had written about him, and more so about the
remarks that he was an ageing don. These articles were published on 29 May
2011 and 4 June 2011.
After Dey was shot dead on 11 June 2011, Chhota Rajan called up some crime
reporters and news channels. He claimed that Dey had to be killed because he
had turned a traitor by joining hands with Dawood. Rajan also spoke about Dey
inviting him for a meeting in London. Dey’s visit to London was said to be a
personal one and not a trip sanctioned by office. Rajan’s trusted sources in Dubai
had warned him that a death trap had been laid for him, and Rajan had cancelled
the meeting on the basis of his suspicion. He also claimed that Dey had invited
him for a meeting in the Philippines. But this time, Rajan’s suspicion ticked him
off and he made up his mind to eliminate this alleged threat to his life.
In all these theories, one thing continued to intrigue me. Satish Kalia, the
sharpshooter who pulled the trigger on J. Dey, and his associates had procured
the weapon from Deepak Sisodia in Nainital between 12 May and 15 May 2011.
How could the articles written by Dey, which were published on 29 May 2011
and 4 June 2011, then have provoked Chhota Rajan to kill him? The only
possible theory would be that Rajan had known about the Dey articles way in
advance.
My only communication with Chhota Rajan was on 24 May 2011 for an
official interview for a story that was published the next day in the Asian Age,
where I worked then. This was much later than the weapon to kill J. Dey had
been procured. I wondered, and I still do, about how and why my name appeared
in this heinous plot at all. How had I instigated Chhota Rajan? And when exactly
did I do that? I have never found an answer to this, nor did the investigators.
 In 2016, the CBI filed a second charge sheet in the J. Dey murder case.
Strangely, this charge sheet had no mention of the two articles that the Mumbai
Police claimed had been the motive for the murder. CBI’s theory claimed that
Chhota Rajan plotted the murder because Dey was writing a book on the
underworld titled Chindi: Rags to Riches. The term chindi in the slang of
Mumbai is a derogatory reference to something or someone of little
consequence. The book apparently referred to the small beginnings of Chhota
Rajan, when he had started selling movie tickets in black near Sahakar Cinema
in Chembur. Reportedly, Chhota Rajan was seething at the way he was going to
be portrayed in the book. Email exchanges between J. Dey and his book editor
were made part of the CBI charge sheet. But J. Dey was a very private person.
He was never outspoken, and pretty much kept his work and personal life a
secret from anyone who did not need to know. How did Chhota Rajan then come
to know about Dey’s book? There hasn’t been a satisfactory answer to this
question.
Against me, the CBI relied on the statement of Aariz Chandra. In the
judgment, the judge considered all theories and generally agreed to Chhota
Rajan’s version of events. Chhota Rajan’s interviews played a key role as an
extrajudicial confession. In recent times, the Supreme Court of India has ruled
that an extrajudicial confession is a ‘weak piece of evidence’, but can be acted
upon to convict a person if a court is satisfied that it is voluntary.
The judge observed that in no interview had Chhota Rajan claimed that I,
Jigna Vora, Accused No. 11, had instigated him to murder J. Dey. In an interview
to NDTV, Chhota Rajan had made no mention of my name. About ten days
before my arrest, when Chhota Rajan spoke to Jitendra Dikshit, who was with
Star News then, he did not mention me. When Chhota Rajan spoke to journalist
Nikhil Dixit, who was Dey’s best friend, he kind of lamented about making a
mistake by killing Dey, but I was not mentioned in the conversation. When
Dey’s wife deposed in court, she spoke about some friction between her husband
and an ACP of the Mumbai Police, but she did not talk about any history that
existed between J. Dey and me. There was no proof of any email exchanges
between Chhota Rajan and me. The mobile phones recovered from me did not
have any incriminating evidence even after extensive forensic analysis. My
name had only popped up in Aariz Chandra’s statement to the police.
 I had written a story about Dey’s meeting with Dawood aide Iqbal Mirchi in
London. The lead for this story had been provided by my sources in the Mumbai
Police, who later claimed that I had tried to mislead their investigation by the
article. The court, however, did not agree to this particular argument of the
Mumbai Police.
The men who killed J. Dey were convicted. These included Satish Kalia, the
dreaded sharpshooter, Anil Waghmode, who was riding the bike on that rainy
day, Abhijit Shinde, Arun Dake, Sachin Gaikwad, Nilesh Shendge, Mangesh
Agawane, and Deepak Sisodia, who supplied the gun. Vinod Chembur, who had
allegedly identified the target to the shooters, was appended from the trial on
account of his death. Chhota Rajan himself was convicted, and his interviews
after the murder played a part in his conviction. Paulson Joseph, who was
accused of providing SIM cards to the shooters, was acquitted. A certain Ravi
Rateshwar, who was named a witness in the charge sheet filed by the Mumbai
Police, was listed as an accused in the CBI charge sheet.
Rateshwar is currently based in Dubai and efforts are on to extradite him to
India. Apparently, he is a close aide of Chhota Rajan. Another associate of
Deepak Sisodia, Nancy Bisht, is still at large. Ravi Rateshwar and Nancy Bisht
are the two wanted accused in this case till date.
The judgment spans over 600 pages. Three small paragraphs in those 600 are
about me. ‘There is nothing in their evidence to suggest that the Accused No. 11
had instigated the Accused No. 12 (Rajan) to commit the murder of J. Dey or
that she had any other role in this offence,’ the judgment stated.
Those three paragraphs restored the dignity that had been ripped away bit by
bit, every day, for seven long years.
Will life be the same again? I can’t tell. Can I go back to being the star
reporter that I was? No. All this for a weak, malicious allegation that could not
be proven. As I look back at the case, I still wonder why J. Dey was really
murdered. Perhaps that will for ever remain a mystery.
1
‘10 Facts About the Malegaon Blasts’, Wire, 25 June 2015,
https://thewire.in/law/10-facts-about-the-malegaon-blasts
2
Smruti Koppikar, ‘A Myth Blasted?’ in ‘Terror Probe Malegaon’, Outlook, 10
November 2008, pp. 30–31, https://books.google.co.in/books?
id=PzEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=ats+arrests+pragya+thakur+malegaon+b
1i4PWA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXhP6Yve3hAhUY2o8KHSG3BqU4RhDoATADeg
3
https://www.indiatoday.in/india/photo/mumbai-police-press-conference-on-j-
dey-murder-365761-2011-06-27/3 NDTV, ‘Chhota Rajan Gang Had Journalist
Dey Killed: Police’, https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/chhota-rajan-gang-had-
journalist-dey-killed-police-459579
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I must thank my family members—my maternal uncle Ketan
Sanghavi, maternal aunt Priti Sanghavi, Neela Bhuta, Jayesh Bhuta, and my
uncle Rajesh Vora—for standing by me, rock solid during these seven years of
ordeal. I really appreciate them for always being present at my court hearings
while I was in custody and when I returned.
Special thanks goes to my cousin, Paresh Vora, for diligently bringing me
home-cooked food for three months, prepared by Aruna bhabhi. Travelling to
Byculla from Santa Cruz is never easy but he would come every day with the
food. I thank all my near and dear ones who kept faith and believed in me. My
grandparents, who were in their mid-eighties at that time, never questioned my
innocence. I wish my mother and grandparents could have witnessed the fact
that I have been proved innocent.
I am indebted to my son for not doubting me even once and grateful for
understanding me in my fight for justice. It was equally tough for him to go
through the humiliation.
I am thankful to Rajeev Sharma for being in my life when I was going through
its worst and most difficult phase. Thanks, Rajeev, for truly loving and believing
me.
I am grateful to my lawyer, Mr Prakash Shetty, for always having his ears
open for me and believing in my side of the story. Thank you, sir, for giving me
this second lease of life. Jayesh Vithlani for being a friend first, more than a
lawyer. Thank you for patiently handling my frustration, tantrums, fears and
tears right from the day of my arrest till acquittal and always being there for me.
I am grateful to my childhood friends Nilesh Vasi, Ramesh Chaudhry, Vivek
Desai, and Sangeta Telekar, for always cheering me up and helping me rebuild
my life. I am thankful to Rekha and Atul Parekh for supporting our family in this
tough time.
I am also grateful to my police officer friends who stood beside me and
prayed for me. I would also especially like to thank a police officer from
Gujarat, whose absence was always present and whom my eyes would always
hunt for during these seven years. I understand his dilemma but thanks for being
present, albeit silently, during my struggle to prove my innocence.
Special thanks goes to Kashif Shaikh and Jyoti Shelar for putting my story
into words and working so dedicatedly on this. I still remember the late-night
conference calls from different corners of the city to discuss the book.
I want to thank Hussain Zaidi, my mentor, and my boss at that time, for
believing in me and having my back all these years. This book couldn’t have
been possible without him. Thank you, sir.
Lastly, sorry to everyone, particularly my family, who had to go through all
the humiliation.
 THE BEGINNING

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This collection published 2019

Copyright © Jigna Vora 2019
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Jacket images © Bhavana
This digital edition published in 2019.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05648-3
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