Papamani's arrest in 2004

Mahalaxmi Papamani's arrest in 2004 was the culmination of a criminal career that had transformed an illiterate slum-dweller into one of Mumbai's most formidable drug lords. Her downfall was not orchestrated by the police alone, but was sealed by the testimony of the two people closest to her—her estranged husband Devendra and her own daughter Jayshree. The event exposed the brutal irony at the heart of her empire: while she commanded loyalty from an entire slum, she could not command it from her own family, and the consequences of that betrayal would prove fatal.

The Rise of a Drug Empire

Papamani's path to infamy began in the Sion-Koliwada slum, where she was approached by her neighbour and friend Savitri, a prominent drug peddler. Savitri sold pudis (packets) of heroin and, seeing the highly profitable nature of the business, Papamani decided to give it a shot. Under Savitri's tutelage, Papamani and another woman, Jyoti Adiramalingam, were given the responsibility of dividing large quantities of heroin into smaller pudis for distribution. In no time, the troika of women—Savitri, Papamani, and Jyoti—had begun to control the pudi-selling business in Sion-Koliwada. However, with profits running into lakhs, it was only a matter of time before Papamani outsmarted her own mentor with her shrewd business acumen. In 1991, she split from Savitri and began running the business independently with a loyal group of peddlers. Her business strategy was simple and devastatingly effective: she would buy five kilogrammes of heroin for anywhere 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—about the salary of a CEO of a company in Mumbai. The police tried to arrest her on several occasions, but she always managed to escape conviction for want of evidence. In the months that followed, her coterie tripled, and this illiterate slum-dweller launched a full-fledged empire with her own financial managers, peddlers, and advisors, literally converting the Sion-Koliwada slum into a drug den. She engaged several hundreds of unemployed men and women, providing income to deprived families, and became known as the poor man's bank, loaning money to run households. It is said she kept thirty to forty lakh rupees in cash tucked inside her sari, fearlessly walking the narrow alleys distributing money to poor Tamilians in return for their services.

The Shield of the Slum

Papamani's popularity within Sion-Koliwada was apparent from the way slum-dwellers took personal interest in shielding her. The slum, built on the slope of a hill with shanties attached to each other and narrow, maze-like paths, was a natural fortress. To help her escape, the slum-dwellers created several routes, hideouts, and underground passageways within the connected hutments, all leading outside the slum. Every time the police came to arrest her, people in the slum would be warned and she would be sent out through one of these routes. Matters became more complicated when Papamani came up with a novel idea: several times, the police would be confronted with 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 any confrontation with them. This shield of the slum would prove crucial during her eventual arrest, as her army of eunuchs would fight to the last to protect her.

The Arrest and Its Aftermath

On the afternoon of 19 July 2004, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) caught Jayshree with four kilos of heroin. Papamani was eventually arrested around ten days later. An officer with the NCB, personally involved in the arrest, narrated how Papamani's army of eunuchs accosted them when the cops nabbed her. They surrounded the officer's jeep in which Papamani had been herded and stopped it from moving ahead, demanding that she be freed. After much difficulty and a lathi-charge by the Antop Hill police, the officer managed to escape from the slum with Papamani in the car. Investigations revealed that Papamani had connections with the NCB's most prized catch, Ghasiram Solanki, one of the leading drug traffickers in India, though she maintained she did not know him personally. She said that while on the run, she had stayed in the house of a friend Laxmi Karpai, who bought heroin in large quantities from a woman known as Hamida aka Aapa, who arranged for the heroin from Solanki. The NCB had been looking for evidence and witnesses, and to their luck, Papamani's husband Devendra, who had been holding a grudge against her for what he saw as her abandoning him, decided to stand witness against her. During his testimony, Devendra revealed information about some of Papamani's prime properties in Salem and Mumbai, bought with income from the sale of heroin. 'My wife is in the heroin business and I am not on good terms with her,' Devendra said. Jayshree, who was also upset with her mother's attempts to keep her away from her lover and force her into the drug trade, also decided to stand witness against her. Papamani was finally convicted and put behind bars in 2004. It was ironic that the two people for whom Papamani earned turned against her. While she had so many followers, none of them were in her family.

The Price of Betrayal

Knowing perhaps that Papamani's influence would extend beyond the jail she was in, not one of the residents of Sion-Koliwada had stood witness against her. Her husband had, and he paid for it with his life. In 2007, Devendra was murdered under mysterious circumstances. For the record, he was killed by a group of drug addicts and thrown onto the railway tracks. But neighbours believe that his fate was sealed the day he decided to act against his wife. The arrest of Papamani thus stands as a stark illustration of the book's central thesis about women criminals: they are not blank slates written upon by dangerous male mafia members, but complex agents who pushed the boundaries of dominant moral codes. Papamani's story, like those of Jenabai Daaruwali and Gangubai Kathiawadi, shows that crime was not only a way of transcending poverty but also a life-saving concept. Yet her downfall reveals the profound isolation at the heart of such power—an empire built on the loyalty of strangers, but ultimately betrayed by the family it was meant to sustain.