Interpol

Interpol, formally the International Criminal Police Organization, functions in Mafia Queens of Mumbai as the institutional bridge between Mumbai's underworld and the wider world. The book, a collection of thirteen true stories of black marketeers, prostitution ringleaders, and trained assassins, repeatedly shows how local criminal enterprises spill across national borders, and Interpol is the mechanism through which the state attempts to follow. Its appearance signals a shift in scale: what begins as neighborhood drug peddling or dockyard smuggling becomes a matter of international police cooperation, with Red Corner Notices and airport checkpoints standing between fugitives and their freedom.

Structure and Reach

The book describes Interpol as an organization spanning 186 countries that assists national police forces in apprehending criminals. Its core operational tool in the narrative is the Red Corner Notice, an indicator in the form of a red flag that pops up on an attendant's monitor if a wanted person tries to check in at an airport, informing the attendant that this individual is wanted. This system represents the globalization of law enforcement, a network designed to catch those who would otherwise vanish across borders. The organization's reach is contrasted with the local, almost parochial origins of the criminals it pursues, from the Sion-Koliwada slum to the docks of Mumbai, underscoring how far their activities have carried them from their beginnings.

Interpol in the Pursuit of Padma Poojary

The most detailed engagement with Interpol in the book concerns Padma Poojary, the wife of gangster Ravi Poojary. After her arrest on 4 October 2005 for using a passport to travel to several countries in Africa and the Middle East, where police suspected she met her absconding husband, Padma came under intense police scrutiny. With her phone lines tapped and her whereabouts monitored, she fled India via the Nepal border after acquiring a new fake passport. The Maharashtra police then issued an Interpol Red Corner Notice against her. Yet despite this international backing, the police could not track her down, and even five years after her escape, her location remained a mystery, with police narrowing down her hideout to somewhere in South Africa. The failure is striking: the same organization designed to flag her at any airport in 186 countries proved unable to find her, leaving her story without a definitive end and the chase still on.

The Shadow Over Abu Salem and Monica Bedi

Interpol's influence also hangs over the flight of Abu Salem and Monica Bedi. After moving to the United States in mid-2001 under the false identities of Fauzia and Danish Beg, the couple initially believed they were safe. But with an Interpol notice against them, Salem became anxious and insecure, worried constantly that the FBI would knock at his door. The notice transformed his bravado into visible timidity, revealing a man who spent hours on the phone and the internet plotting his next step. The fear of international arrest, rather than any actual capture, became the defining pressure of their exile, eventually contributing to their decision to undertake a world tour that led to their arrest in Lisbon. When the Portuguese police handed Salem over to Indian officials at Lisbon airport, the scene completed a circuit that Interpol had helped to close, though the organization itself is not depicted as the direct agent of the arrest.

Limits and Significance

The book's treatment of Interpol is ultimately ambivalent. On one hand, it represents the formidable reach of modern law enforcement, a network that spans continents and can flag a fugitive at any airport. On the other, its practical failures are documented with equal care: Padma Poojary evades it for years, and the notice against Salem and Bedi does not prevent their extended stay in the United States. The organization appears less as an omnipotent force than as a symbol of the state's aspiration to control crime that has outgrown national borders. In a book that repeatedly shows women building criminal empires from poverty and marginalization, Interpol stands as the distant, bureaucratic counterweight, powerful in theory but often frustrated in practice, its red flags flashing in airport terminals while the fugitives it seeks slip through the gaps of the very system designed to catch them.