Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, still known to many as Santa Cruz Airport, is more than a transit hub in the narrative of Mumbai's underworld; it is a recurring threshold where the city's criminal and legitimate worlds collide with fatal consequences. The airport is the stage for a fake encounter killing, the point of return for an extradited gangster, and the site of an attack that transforms a man's life. It is a place where the state's power over life and death is exercised, and where the personal tragedies of the city's most notorious figures unfold in public view.

A Stage for State Violence: The Encounter Killing of Mehmood Khan

The airport is most dramatically rendered as the site of a police encounter that kills the gangster Mehmood Khan. His wife, Ashraf, arrives at the airport on the day of his death, having decided to take a cab instead of a train to meet him. She notices two police jeeps parked behind her, a detail that foreshadows the violence to come. As she waits, she hears faint gunshots from the parking lot and runs towards the sound, only to find a pool of blood near a parked taxi and policemen drawing white markings on the ground. She overhears that the wounded man has been taken to Cooper Hospital, but when she arrives, the staff are unaware of any such patient. After being directed from station to station, she finally learns at J.J. Hospital that a man named Mehmood Khan, a wanted gangster, has been shot dead in an encounter at the airport. Ashraf knows this is a lie, as her husband could not have carried a gun past airport security. The official report states that he died of four bullets after firing at the cops, and the press credits police inspector Emanuel Amolik with leading the encounter. The airport, a space of public transit, becomes the stage for a state-sanctioned killing that is presented as a legitimate act of law enforcement.

A Point of Return: The Extradition of Abu Salem and Monica Bedi

Years later, the airport serves as the point of return for another of Mumbai's most wanted, Abu Salem, and his companion, Monica Bedi. After their arrest in Lisbon, the couple is extradited to India, and their plane lands at the airport at 7.30 a.m. The police convoy that escorts them from the Lisbon airport is described as a mobile fortress, with gun-toting guards and officers of the Policia Judicia. The deputy superintendent of police, Devendra Pardesi, who has handled tough cases, finds it unreal that the man being handed over is one of Mumbai's most dreaded gangsters. Monica, who clutches a Bible like a lifesaver, is taken to a waiting room where she is handed over to CBI sleuths from Hyderabad to be arrested for securing a fake passport. The airport is thus the site where the state reasserts its control over those who have fled its jurisdiction, marking the end of their flight and the beginning of their imprisonment.

A Site of Transformation: The Attack on Ashwin Naik

The airport is also the backdrop for an attack that changes the course of a family's life. In 1991, on his way back home from the airport, Ashwin Naik's car is attacked by members of the Chhota Rajan gang. His wife, Neeta, and his father-in-law are in another car behind his. Around twenty men open fire on Ashwin's car on the Kherwadi highway, and Neeta, knowing her husband is unarmed, stops her own car and begins screaming for help. Ashwin manages to dodge the bullets and escape, but the incident convinces Neeta that her husband is unsafe. She tells him that she wants him alive, not dead, and that she does not mind if he joins hands with his own brother and becomes part of the crime syndicate. The airport, a place of arrival and departure, becomes the site of a near-death experience that pushes Ashwin into the underworld, transforming him into the first educationally-qualified gangster in Mumbai's mafia circuit.

A Liminal Space in the City's Geography

The airport's significance is heightened by its place in the city's geography, which the book maps with ethnographic detail. It is connected to the city's other spaces of crime and mortality, such as Bada Qabrastan, a sprawling 7.5-acre cemetery near Marine Lines station, and the Sion-Koliwada slum, a drug den under Mahalaxmi Papamani. The airport is a node in a network of spaces that define the city's underbelly, from the docks where Haji Mastan worked as a coolie to the slums where drug baronesses operate. It is a place where the city's legitimate and criminal economies meet, and where the state's power over life and death is starkly displayed. The airport is not just a location; it is a symbol of the precariousness of life in the Mumbai underworld, where a journey can end in death, arrest, or transformation.