Antop Hill

Antop Hill is a central Mumbai locality that recurs throughout the book as a site of illicit enterprise and criminal power. From the bootlegging operation that launched Jenabai Daaruwali's fortune to the drug empire of Mahalaxmi Papamani and the real estate schemes of Sujata Nikhalje, the area anchors some of the book's most significant criminal economies and the women who ran them. Its slums, temples, and markets are not merely backdrops but active forces that shaped the lives and fortunes of the women who operated within them.

A Landscape of Illicit Opportunity

Antop Hill's role in the book's criminal geography begins with Jenabai Daaruwali. When a man proposed she enter the liquor business, he revealed that he owned a piece of land at Antop Hill where his men brewed liquor. Her job would be to sell this concentrated liquor, with the profits divided equally between them. This offer came during the era of Bombay prohibition, a policy introduced on 1 August 1939 as part of Mahatma Gandhi's and the Congress' agenda. The prohibition force was soon diverted for security measures to the docks when the Second World War broke out in 1939, weakening enforcement and creating the very conditions that made Antop Hill's brewing operation viable. The land at Antop Hill thus became the source of Jenabai's entry into a lucrative trade, transforming her from a grain broker into a liquor seller.

The area's significance deepened with the rise of Mahalaxmi Papamani. After her fortunes plummeted with the lifting of prohibition and the decline of Vardharajan Mudaliar, Papamani started over as a rag-picker and domestic help in the Antop Hill neighbourhood. It was there that she met Mani Chinapayya Devendra, whom she married. The couple eventually bought a small room near the Hanuman Temple at the Sion-Koliwada slum in Antop Hill, a modest dwelling that would become the headquarters of a sprawling drug enterprise. The slum itself, built on the slope of a hill, was described as infamous for its illicit hooch distillery owned by Vardharajan in the '80s, and later notorious for being a drug den under Papamani.

The Drug Den of Sion-Koliwada

Under Papamani's control, the Sion-Koliwada slum was converted into a full-fledged drug den. Her business strategy was simple and devastatingly effective: she would buy five kilogrammes of heroin for between one to three lakh rupees, convert ten grams into forty pudis, and sell each pudi at twenty-five rupees, making a profit of around three lakh rupees per month. The slum's physical layout became a key part of her defence. Built on a slope with shanties attached to each other, the narrow, maze-like paths were charted with escape routes, hideouts, and underground passageways that led outside the slum. Every time the police came to arrest her, the slum-dwellers would warn her and she would be sent out through one of these routes.

Papamani also deployed a novel defence: an impenetrable wall of eunuchs who formed a human barricade for the entire stretch of the slum. These eunuchs were much stronger and more abusive than the locals, and the cops usually avoided confrontation with them. When an officer with the Narcotics Control Bureau finally nabbed her in 2004, Papamani's army of eunuchs surrounded the officer's jeep and stopped it from moving, demanding her release. Only after a lathi-charge by the Antop Hill police did the officer manage to escape the slum with Papamani in the car. The slum's residents also took personal interest in shielding her, a testament to her role as the poor man's bank, loaning money to run households and distributing cash to poor Tamilians in return for their services.

A Hub of Legitimate and Illegitimate Power

The area's criminal economy extended beyond drugs and liquor into real estate. In the late '90s, as real estate and rental prices soared across Mumbai, Tilak Nagar, which was part of the broader Antop Hill area, became an attractive destination for redevelopment. Sujata Nikhalje, the wife of Chhota Rajan, began her own construction company, Khushi Developers Private Ltd, named after her youngest daughter. With her reputation as 'Nani' and wife of a gangster, Sujata often managed to arm-twist several people into selling their homes for good prices. She employed a powerful team of chartered accountants and prepared a strategy to transform Tilak Nagar into a plush suburban locality, pulling down old buildings and replacing them with sprawling malls, high-rises, and office complexes. Throughout, she kept Rajan informed via telephone calls, and his goons would terrorise builders through extortion and land-grabbing, creating a fear psychosis that allowed her business to run smoothly.

The police, who had been tapping Sujata's phone lines, learned that her conversations with Rajan would often drift into the acquisition of land and deals. A builder from a society in Chembur who had been threatened by Rajan's gang in a building contract deal filed a complaint, providing the police with the impetus for their case. This led to Sujata's arrest under MCOCA, a stringent law promulgated by the Maharashtra government in 1998 after the abrogation of TADA. The law was formulated because the state did not have any firm law with which to fight organised crime, and it was later used by the Gujarat and Delhi governments as well.

A Place of Death and Memory

Antop Hill's narrative significance is also tied to death and the state's power over life. The area is connected to the story of Mehmood Khan, a wanted gangster who was shot dead in an encounter at Santa Cruz airport. His wife, Ashraf Khan, was told at J.J. Hospital that Mehmood had been killed, but she knew this was a lie, as he could not have carried a gun past airport security. The encounter killing, a form of extrajudicial execution, is a recurring motif in the book's depiction of how the state dealt with criminals. The mention of Antop Hill in this context, alongside its role as a site of illicit brewing and drug dealing, reinforces its identity as a place where the boundaries between legitimate and illegitimate power, and between life and death, were constantly blurred.

The area's history is also rooted in the broader geography of Mumbai. Dongri, a stone's throw away from the cloth market in Kalbadevi, was initially part of the original island of Mumbai, which stretched from Malabar Hill to the Dongri hills. In the mid-1700s, the Dongri hills were levelled as part of the plan to merge the different islands of Mumbai. After the hills were levelled, the low-lying patch of uneven land between Crawford Market in the north and the reclaimed lands of Kamathipura in the south came to be called Dongri. This history of land reclamation and transformation mirrors the way Antop Hill itself was transformed by the criminal enterprises that took root there. The area's proximity to other significant locations, such as the Bada Qabrastan cemetery near Marine Lines, a sprawling 7.5 acres that is a reminder of man's mortality, further underscores the theme of death that runs through the book's depiction of Mumbai's underworld.

A Microcosm of Mumbai's Underworld

Antop Hill serves as a microcosm of the Mumbai underworld that the book documents. It is a place where women like Jenabai, Papamani, and Sujata built empires from the ground up, using the area's physical and social geography to their advantage. The slum's maze-like layout, the loyalty of its residents, and the fear inspired by gangsters all contributed to the success of these enterprises. At the same time, the area was a site of state intervention, from police raids and lathi-charges to the tapping of phone lines and the application of stringent laws like MCOCA. The book's portrayal of Antop Hill is thus not just a description of a place, but an analysis of how space, crime, and power intersect in the lives of the women who dominated Mumbai's underworld.