Crime Branch

The Crime Branch of the Mumbai Police functions as the book's principal instrument of state power against the city's underworld, a sprawling investigative apparatus whose reach extends from the docks of the colonial era to the phone lines of the digital age. It is the institution that haunts the lives of the women at the center of the narrative, whether as the target of their schemes, the source of their fear, or the arbiter of their fates. More than a mere police unit, the Crime Branch emerges as a character in its own right, its methods and its failures shaping the trajectory of the criminal economy and the lives of those who inhabit it. Its history is intertwined with the very definition of crime in Mumbai, from the prohibition-era bootleggers to the drug baronesses and the corporate don wives of the late twentieth century.

Origins and Institutional Context

The Crime Branch's power is rooted in the legal and administrative structures of colonial and postcolonial Bombay. The city's policing was profoundly shaped by the introduction of prohibition on 1 August 1939, a policy central to Mahatma Gandhi's and the Congress party's agenda. The implementation of the Prohibition Act created an immediate crisis for law enforcement, with clashes between pro- and anti-prohibition groups occurring within the very first week. To enforce the new law, the home minister, Barrister K.M. Munshi, launched an intensive recruitment drive, creating an exclusive cadre known as the X Division, headed by a Deputy Commissioner of Police (Prohibition). New sub-inspectors were trained for special prohibition duty, and men from the Excise Department were absorbed into the city police. However, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 diverted this mammoth prohibition force to security duties at the docks, severely hampering the enforcement of the law and creating a vacuum that criminal entrepreneurs like Jenabai Daaruwali would exploit. This early history established a pattern of ambitious policing initiatives being undermined by larger political and security concerns, a pattern that would repeat itself in the decades to come.

The Crime Branch's jurisdiction and methods were also shaped by the physical geography of Mumbai. The city's original seven islands—Colaba, Old Woman Island, Mahim, Parel, Worli, and Mazgaon—were merged in the mid-1700s when the Dongri hills were levelled. The low-lying patch of uneven land that resulted, between Crawford Market in the north and the reclaimed lands of Kamathipura in the south, became known as Dongri, a predominantly Muslim area that would become a cradle of the underworld. The Crime Branch's headquarters, located in Crawford Market, placed it at the very heart of this criminal geography, a stone's throw from the tenements and bazaars where figures like Jenabai operated. The proximity was not merely symbolic; it meant that the police were a constant, looming presence in the lives of the city's poor and marginalized, their raids and surveillance a routine part of the landscape of places like Dongri and the Sion-Koliwada slum.

The Informant and the Officer

The relationship between the Crime Branch and the underworld was not one of simple opposition. It was a complex, symbiotic dance, where information was a currency as valuable as gold. This is most vividly illustrated in the case of Jenabai Daaruwali, who, after establishing herself as a grain broker in the 1940s, became a key informant for the Crime Branch. Her dealings in smuggled grain at Daana Bazaar, near Masjid Bunder, were illegal, and the police raided her room at Chunawala building several times, but they never managed to gather enough evidence to book her. This immunity was likely a direct result of her value as an informant. The book describes a specific instance where Jenabai, seeking to solve a problem for a young Dawood Ibrahim, decided to go directly to one of the most reputed and distinguished senior Crime Branch officers. The officer, described as tall, burly, and well-built, was considered a taskmaster in his time. Having served in the Crime Branch for years, he knew its ways well, and as an informant, Jenabai had always maintained cordial relations with him. When she arrived at the Crime Branch office at the Mumbai Police Headquarters in Crawford Market, the officer was surprised but had his constable call her in, greeting her with a respectful 'Salaam.' This scene reveals the informal, almost collegial, relationship that could exist between a powerful informant and a senior police officer, a relationship built on mutual benefit and a shared understanding of the city's power dynamics. Jenabai's ability to walk into the Crime Branch and speak directly to a senior officer underscores her unique position as a broker not just of grain, but of information and influence.

Surveillance and the Digital Age

By the turn of the millennium, the Crime Branch's methods had evolved from physical raids and informants to sophisticated electronic surveillance. The case of Shameem Mirza Beg, who worked for Chhota Shakeel under the code-name 'Mrs Paul,' demonstrates this shift. The Crime Branch was tipped off about Mrs Paul in 2001, and phone lines were immediately tapped and email IDs hacked. For over a year, the police tracked the conversations between Karachi-based Shakeel and Mumbai-based Mrs Paul, who shared filmy-style love notes and photographs over the internet, with Shakeel using the email address handsomelovely@hotmail.com and Shameem using shams143@yahoo.com. The police's ability to intercept these communications, including an 11 October 2001 conversation where Shakeel emailed a list of clothes and items needed in Nashik, reveals a new era of policing. The Crime Branch was no longer just a physical presence on the streets; it was a digital eavesdropper, able to penetrate the most intimate and secret communications of the underworld. This surveillance, however, was not always immediately effective. It took the police some time to work out who Mrs Paul was, highlighting the cat-and-mouse game that defined the relationship between the police and the criminals they pursued. The use of a deceptive code-name like 'Mrs Paul' was a deliberate tactic to send the police on a wild goose chase, a testament to the cunning of the women who operated within the criminal world.

The Limits of the Law and the 'Encounter'

The Crime Branch's power was not absolute, and its methods were often brutal and extrajudicial. The most extreme example of this is the 'encounter' killing, a practice that the book portrays as a form of state-sanctioned murder. The death of Mehmood Khan at Santa Cruz airport is a case in point. His wife, Ashraf Khan, heard faint gunshots from the parking lot and ran to find a pool of blood near a parked taxi, with policemen preoccupied with drawing white markings on the ground. She was told that Mehmood, a wanted gangster, had been shot dead in an encounter. Ashraf knew this was a lie, reasoning that Mehmood would not have been able to carry a gun past airport security. The police's claim of an 'encounter' was a transparent fiction, a way to legitimize a summary execution. The Crime Branch's role in such killings reveals a fundamental tension within the institution: it was both a law-enforcement agency and a participant in the very violence it was supposed to control. The 'encounter' was a tool of necropolitical sovereignty, a way for the state to decide who lived and who died, often without any pretense of due process. This practice, inherited from colonial-style governance, disproportionately affected marginalized communities and created a climate of fear and impunity.

The limits of the law were also evident in the Crime Branch's struggles to convict criminals through legal means. The book notes that the police tried to arrest Mahalaxmi Papamani, the drug baroness of Sion-Koliwada, on several occasions, but she always managed to escape conviction for want of evidence. Similarly, Jenabai's grain trading was illegal, but the police could never gather enough evidence to book her. These failures highlight the difficulty of prosecuting criminals who operated within communities that were either complicit or fearful, and who had the resources to hide their activities. The Crime Branch's reliance on informants and surveillance was a response to these difficulties, but it was also a sign of its limitations. The institution was often reactive, responding to crimes after they had been committed, rather than preventing them. This reactive stance, combined with the use of extrajudicial violence, suggests a police force that was powerful but not always effective, and whose methods often undermined the very rule of law it was supposed to uphold.

The Crime Branch and the Corporate Don Wife

The Crime Branch's reach extended even into the legitimate world of real estate and corporate finance, as demonstrated by the case of Sujata Nikhalje, the wife of gangster Chhota Rajan. In the late 1990s, as real estate prices soared across Mumbai, Sujata began to arm-twist people into selling their homes for good prices, using her reputation as 'Nani' and wife of a gangster. She soon started her own construction company, Khushi Developers Private Ltd, named after her youngest daughter, and employed a powerful team of chartered accountants to handle the company's finances. Throughout this period, she kept Rajan informed of her meetings via telephone calls, and often involved his men to terrorise builders through extortion and land-grabbing. 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. Sensing that something was up, the police decided to close in on her. The case gained impetus when a builder from a society in Chembur, who had been threatened by Rajan's gang in a building contract deal, filed a complaint with the police. This case illustrates the Crime Branch's ability to track the flow of illicit money into legitimate businesses, but it also shows the challenges of doing so. Sujata's use of chartered accountants and her careful management of her public persona made her a difficult target, and it was only through persistent phone tapping and a courageous witness that the police were able to build a case. The Crime Branch's pursuit of Sujata represents a new front in the war on organized crime, one that required financial expertise and a willingness to follow the money, not just the guns.

The Crime Branch's story is one of constant adaptation and inherent contradiction. It is an institution that has evolved from the prohibition-era X Division to a digitally savvy surveillance unit, yet it has never fully shed its colonial legacy of extrajudicial violence. It is a force that both protects and preys upon the city's most vulnerable, a powerful state apparatus that is often as lawless as the criminals it pursues. The book's portrayal of the Crime Branch is not one of simple villainy or heroism, but of a deeply flawed institution that is an integral part of the Mumbai underworld's ecosystem, shaping its rise, its methods, and its ultimate fate.