Sagar Mahal stands as a Malabar Hill residence whose name entered the annals of Mumbai's underworld history on 2 February 1998, when Manish Shah, a business partner of industrialist Vallabh Thakkar, was shot dead near the building. The murder was no random act of street violence but a contract killing carried out by four henchmen of the gang leader Arun Gawli, acting on his explicit command. The location itself — an upscale address in one of Mumbai's most exclusive neighbourhoods — underscored the reach of the Dagdi Chawl-based gang into the city's wealthy enclaves, and the killing would become a pivotal episode in exposing the hidden hand of Gawli's wife, Asha, in his criminal empire.

The Setting and Its Significance

Sagar Mahal's location in Malabar Hill placed it at the affluent heart of Mumbai, far removed from the cramped lanes of Dongri or the slums of Sion-Koliwada that housed many of the underworld figures chronicled in the book. The contrast between the grandeur of the address and the brutality of the crime committed there highlighted the gang's penetration into respectable society. Malabar Hill, one of the city's most coveted residential areas, was an unlikely stage for a mafia assassination, yet it was precisely this incongruity that made the murder so shocking to the public and so significant to police investigators. The killing demonstrated that no part of Mumbai, however privileged, lay beyond the reach of organised crime.

The Murder of Manish Shah

On the morning of 2 February 1998, Manish Shah was gunned down near his residence at Sagar Mahal. Police investigations established that the shooting had been carried out by four of Arun Gawli's henchmen, acting on the don's orders. At the time of the murder, Gawli himself was detained at the Amravati Central Prison, serving under the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities Act. His incarceration, however, had not diminished his ability to direct operations from behind bars. The killing bore all the hallmarks of a carefully planned execution, with the victim targeted at the very threshold of his home, a location that offered both the element of surprise and a clear escape route for the assassins.

The Incriminating Note

The breakthrough in the case came not from eyewitness testimony but from a seemingly insignificant piece of evidence. During a raid on Arun Gawli's home in Dagdi Chawl, police stumbled upon tiny slips of paper. One of these contained a note concerning Manish Shah. Written in Marathi, it read: 'Asha, Rajala saangun Bandyakadun Manish Shahache kam laukar karun ghe.' — meaning, 'Asha, tell Raja to get Bandya to deal with the Manish Shah matter immediately.' The chit was a direct link between the imprisoned don and the murder, and it implicated Asha Gawli as the intermediary through whom her husband's orders were transmitted. Under interrogation, Arun confessed to sending the note addressed to his wife while he was in prison in January 1998, a month before the killing.

Asha Gawli's Role Exposed

The discovery of the note, combined with a series of stories and reports carried by Express Newsline, exposed Asha's covert involvement in her husband's mafia activities. The evidence painted a picture of a woman who was far more than a passive spouse. Asha had long served as Arun's most trusted lieutenant, running the gang's affairs by proxy whenever her husband was in jail. She had dug holes inside their kitchen — one right below the area that housed the gas cylinder — in which Arun would hide whenever the police arrived with an arrest warrant. Her role in the Manish Shah murder, however, marked a significant escalation. Although Asha was arrested in 1998 for her involvement in the case, she was later released on bail for lack of evidence. The police, now alerted to her true function within the gang, began keeping close watch on her.

Aftermath and Consequences

The murder at Sagar Mahal and the subsequent exposure of Asha's role had lasting repercussions for the Gawli family. The case demonstrated the extent to which the don's wife had become indispensable to his criminal operations, a fact that would shape her subsequent career as a political campaigner and public face of the family. In the years that followed, Asha would file her husband's nomination papers for elections, campaign on his behalf, and manage his constituency affairs while he remained in jail. The Sagar Mahal killing thus marked a turning point, transforming Asha from a behind-the-scenes operator into a figure whose activities were scrutinised by the police and the press alike. The location itself, once merely an affluent address, became a byword for the violent intersection of Mumbai's criminal underworld and its respectable upper classes.