Interpol Red Corner Notice

The Interpol Red Corner Notice is a global arrest-wanted alert issued by the International Criminal Police Organisation, or Interpol as it is commonly known, an organisation that spans 186 countries and assists national police in apprehending criminals. A Red Corner Notice is an indicator, in the form of a red flag, that pops up on the attendant's monitor if the person tries to check in at an airport, informing the attendant that this person is wanted. Within the world of this book, the notice becomes a recurring instrument of transnational law enforcement, pursued against several women criminals and their associates, yet it repeatedly proves unable to secure their capture, exposing the limits of international policing against the Mumbai underworld's mobility and resourcefulness.

Definition and Operation

The Red Corner Notice operates as a border-control tripwire: the moment a wanted person attempts to check in at an airport, the red flag appears on the attendant's monitor, alerting them that the individual is wanted. The mechanism depends entirely on the cooperation of the 186 member countries of Interpol, which assists national police in apprehending criminals. In practice, however, the notice is only as effective as the vigilance of the airport attendant and the willingness of the state to act on the alert. The book presents the notice as a formal, bureaucratic instrument of global policing, one that carries the weight of international law but whose real power is contingent on human and institutional factors at the point of contact.

The Padma Poojary Case

The most sustained treatment of the Red Corner Notice in the book concerns Padma Poojary, the alleged mastermind behind notorious gangster Ravi Poojary. Padma had used a passport to travel to several countries in Africa and the Middle East, and the police suspected that, during her course of travel, she had met her absconding husband, who had taken refuge in a foreign country. Her passport was seized and she was arrested on 4 October 2005, but she was released on bail some thirty days later. Her lawyer Shyam Keswani repeatedly denied her role in handling her husband's financial affairs, insisting, "There is no truth in the police's claims," and the police did not have any evidence to book her for assisting Ravi in his activities. Following her arrest and bail, she came under police scrutiny, with her phone lines tapped and her whereabouts monitored, leaving her with no option but to flee the country. According to the police, Padma escaped from India via the Nepal border after acquiring a new fake passport, and the police only managed to arrest the person who planned her escape. The Maharashtra police then issued an Interpol Red Corner Notice against her, yet despite Interpol's backing, the police could not track Padma down, and even five years after her escape, her location remains a mystery. The police believe that she is living with her husband and have narrowed down the location of her hideout to somewhere in South Africa. The notice, for all its international reach, proved powerless against a woman who had already demonstrated her ability to forge passports and slip across borders.

The Abu Salem and Monica Bedi Case

The Red Corner Notice also shadows the flight of Abu Salem and Monica Bedi. In the middle of 2001, they moved to the US as Fauzia and Danish Beg, with Salem believing the US would be a safe place for them. Salem possessed a non-immigrant work visa stating that he was employed as a maintenance manager for a marine engineering company, and he and his first wife Samira Jumani had made a remarkable fortune in the country, with properties worth several crore, a two-screen theatre, a gas station and a healthy bank balance. Everything seemed to be getting back to normal until 9/11 happened, after which the US seemed like the most unsafe place to be, with a growing feeling of anger and hatred among American citizens evident in incessant attacks on south Asians and a spate of arrests by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In the weeks following 9/11, Salem became very anxious and insecure, worrying constantly that the FBI would knock at his door one day and take him away. With an Interpol notice slapped against them, Salem's worries only increased, and the narrator realised that, behind all his bravado, there was a very timid being. The notice thus functioned not merely as an arrest warrant but as a psychological weapon, corroding the fugitives' sense of safety and driving Salem to spend hours on the phone and the internet plotting his next step. The eventual Lisbon arrest of the pair, described with the police convoy cutting across the runway at Lisbon airport and officers of the Policia Judicia escorting a thirty-six-year-old man in a black T-shirt and track pants, came not through the Red Corner Notice's airport tripwire but through a coordinated international operation, underscoring the notice's limitations as a passive alert system.

Limits and Significance

The Red Corner Notice's repeated failure to secure arrests reveals a structural gap in international policing. For Padma Poojary, the notice remained pending for five years with no result, her location a mystery despite the red flag theoretically popping up on any airport attendant's monitor. For Salem and Bedi, the notice heightened anxiety but did not itself lead to capture. The book's broader narrative of women criminals who flourish at a time when crimes by women were barely documented or acknowledged suggests that the notice, like other instruments of law enforcement, was designed with a certain kind of criminal in mind. The women of the underworld, from bootlegger Jenabai Daaruwali to brothel madam Gangubai Kathiawadi, operated through networks of kinship, patronage and local knowledge that transnational alerts could not penetrate. The Red Corner Notice thus stands as a symbol of the state's aspiration to global reach, an aspiration repeatedly thwarted by the ingenuity, mobility and sheer determination of the criminals it pursues. Its presence in the book underscores the asymmetry between the formal machinery of international law and the informal, adaptive structures of the Mumbai underworld, where a woman could walk the narrow alleys of her slum with thirty to forty lakh rupees tucked inside her sari, fearlessly distributing money, while the world's police forces could not locate her counterpart across the sea.