The D-Company Rules

He had spent weeks trying to track the rather irregular movements of the 32-year-old police officer who had shot dead many a gangster in police encounters. The 30-something Aarif Mirza Baig had been assigned the job by Karachi-based Chhota Shakeel, the under-boss of the D company, led by don Dawood Ibrahim.
Baig's 'watchers' had warned him it would be difficult to target encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, then posted with the western region police's special squad, now with the DN Nagar police in Mumbai. Since he was 'protected' during work hours, the key was to strike during his off-duty hours, when he emerged from his flat at JB Nagar in Andheri (East).
The moment Baig and his associate shooters were looking for arrived, unexpectedly, one early morning in February 1997, they spotted Sharma at a local ice-cream shop. Shakeel's orders had been unambiguous: "Shoot to kill." But Baig let the moment slip away; his finger never reached the trigger.
He's said to have told his boss that he did not shoot because Sharma was accompanied by a little girl in a frock — a hail of bullets could have hurt the child as well.
The ruthless Shakeel did not reprimand Baig for letting go of the 'target'. For, not hurting a marked man's family is an established company ka usool (rule of the D gang). Though the underworld by definition exists in defiance of the rule of law, it operates by its own set of unwritten codes. The underworld might have just one defining religion — money — but it is also sensitive to honour, ego and loyalty. The usool, say observers, have evolved over the years in response to these factors.
Though the underworld can sometimes flout the rules to suit its convenience, here are the seven big 'uns.

On that February morning, Pradeep Sharma was unaware of the danger that had slipped by him. But one month later, in March, he arrested Baig, who was nabbed with his AK-47 assault rifle, along with six other Dawood gangsters.
During the ensuing interrogations, Baig surprised Sharma with a throwaway line: "I let you go that day." Asked to explain, he revealed the details of the incident nonchalantly.
Sharma made it clear he thought Baig was trying to bluff. Slighted, the shooter offered proof: "The little girl with you was wearing a pink frock." Sharma then recalled that his daughter, around nine years old at the time, had on her favourite pink frock that day.
There was a sudden hush in the interrogation room but Sharma moved on. He explains why: "If I had asked him any more questions he would've thought he could rattle a police officer. So I let it pass."
Baig is currently believed to be in Dubai, having jumped bail and fled the country. According to a source, the mob bosses accepted the invocation of the usool but do not rule out the possibility that Baig might have made the excuse to cover up his failure.

The original code. As a gangster currently out on bail put it, "Family ko kabhi bhi touch nahi karne ka."
Since 1993, when Dawood's right hand man Chhota Rajan caused a vertical split down the gang, they have not ceased to be at each other's throats. Dawood ordered a murderous bid on Rajan on September 15, 2000, at his Bangkok pad by a six-member hit man squad sent from Mumbai. Rajan has got several of Dawood's close associates killed, including Sharad Shetty (alias Vangya) and Sunil Sawant (alias Sautya). And the list of dead on both sides is a long one.
But the two gangs have stuck to the rules even in this unspooling series of vendetta killings. They have let the families of their rivals live in peace, even though they make easy targets. Dawood's parents, who stayed at Dongri's Temkar mohalla, are no more but while they were alive, remained untouched by his rivals. Dawood's sister, Haseena 'aapa', still stays in the area with her family. Similarly, Rajan's wife Sujata and their three daughters stay at the family's home in Chembur's Tilak Nagar. (His wife is currently in custody under the stringent MCOCA.)
The way to get back a rival gangster is to harm him personally. Says one, "If our rival is a shooter, we tip off the police to take care of him. If he is involved in smuggling, drugs or gun-running, we give the authorities the details of his consignment and get them seized." He adds matter-of-factly, "Or we can simply kill him, of course."
BUT THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO RULE TWO
* Gangsters sometimes make exceptions in times of desperation. The six Dawood hitmen who sprayed Chhota Rajan with bullets (who survived the attack and escaped with two bullet injuries) ended up hurting the wounded don's right-hand man Raoit Verma and his wife Sangeeta. Verma succumbed to his injuries but Sangeeta recovered. D company sources claim Sangeeta was hit by a "stray, ricocheting bullet".
* Vicky Malhotra, Rajan's ace shooter now in Arthur road jail, had allegedly made a 'hit' on a rival Shivram Shetty in 1996, in which his wife also died.
* An Andheri-based gangster, John, was killed at Juhu in 1983 when he was dropping his daughter off at school. John had tried to escape, but the shooters pointed their guns at the kid and asked him to return. When he did, they killed him, leaving the daughter unharmed.
* The Dawood gang killed rival Arun Gawli's brother — Kishore alias Papa — in 1989, in retaliation to Arun's murder of Dawood's hawala handler, Mahendra Choradia. Gawli squared his loss by eliminating Dawood aides Lambu Ameer and Rajji Mehendi.

The underworld generally avoids killing a policeman, especially a high profile one. For that could trigger massive and focused police reprisals against the shooter and the rest of the mob.
The options the underworld may exercise, instead, says Mumbai Crime Branch's senior police inspector Jaywant Hargude, is to "try and get the troublesome officers transferred or harass him in some other way (without harming their families of course)."

Gangs do not take betrayals kindly and have an elephantine memory as far as avenging them is concerned. Chhota Rajan's gang is suspected to have killed a gang member, Kamal Nepali, in September last year at Kathmandu because he had helped rival Shakeel's hit-men kill Rajan's right hand Balu Dokre in Malaysia in July 2005. The Rajan team tracked Nepali for a year.
Such instances abound in the underworld where loyalty is paramount.

The gangs have a strict, vertical hierarchy when it comes to decision-making. A junior member is not expected to speak unless spoken to. And he certainly cannot talk back.
Dawood's top shooter Firoze Kokani and gangster Irfan Goga were killed when they violated this rule, claim sources. Kokani, who had escaped from police custody and fled the country, had reportedly called up Dawood himself to complain about his 'ill-treatment'. Hours later, he is suspected to have been killed by his boss's men.
Similarly, Goga was reportedly eliminated in Dubai for angering Dawood's brother Anees Ibrahim.

If he suffers the misfortune of being jailed, there is one consolation: a gangster is acknowledged to be at the top of the pecking order (rapists come last).
Because of gangland rivalries, members of one 'company' will stay firmly together and keep their distance from criminals of other hues. At Mumbai's Arthur Road jail, two group of inmates — one belonging to the D 'company' and the other to the Chhota Rajan 'company' are said to call the shots.
An ex-inmate, currently out on bail, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says the 11 Chhota Shakeel inmates deported from Dubai late 2006, are having it 'good'. "Thieves, rapists and cheats get so little space, they have to sleep on their side. These gangsters get enough space for three men to sleep," he complained.
The preferential treatment also extends to alcohol, piping hot biryani and seekh korma from time to time. And sources claim gangsters are treated well by prison officials as well and are even offered chairs when called in for questioning.

The mob swears by both, the power and virtues of silence (the Sicilian 'omerta', made famous by Hollywood). A gangster who gets caught is expected to keep his tongue tied and not 'sing'.
If you've watched the Godfather series or even Bollywood flicks like Satya and Vaastav, you know what this means: if he doesn't spill any secrets, the gang will take good care of his family. If he does, reprisal will be swift and lethal.
In any case, most information in gangland is handed out only on a need-to-know basis.
Operations are carried out by various teams — watchers, couriers, shooters — who keep in touch with a common controller but are not told each other's identities.
Email Abhishek Sharan: abhishek.sharan@hindustantimes.com

Data Safety Begins at Home

Milind Deora

‘Data is the new oil’ is a 21st-century buzzword. In the digital economy, data is fuelling the fourth Industrial Revolution, and is the most valuable resource for governments, law enforcement and private industries alike.

In that context, the debate around data localisation has been a recurring point of contention globally. In India, it has recently resurfaced owing to RBI’s April circular mandating the storing of Indians’ data from e-payment and fintech companies locally. The companies were given an October 15 deadline to comply.

Data localisation is a divisive issue in India and globally. GoI argues that the move is imperative to ensure better monitoring and supervision by law enforcement agencies. Indianborn tech firms also tend to be its proponents. Such a move ensures India is collectively responsible for the data of Indians — not just government, but also domestic-born firms and Indian divisions of global companies.

From a national security point of view, allowing Indians’ data to be stored on foreign cloud services is problematic. During my time as a minister in GoI, an informal check conducted by my team revealed that over 70% of central bureaucrats, politicians and ministers used cloud-based services like Gmail for official government purposes. Shortly thereafter, we instituted a revised policy that required only government-allotted email to be used for official business.

Data localisation could provide a massive boost to domestic employment and economy. Setting up the physical infrastructure for local data storage as well as running data centres (and processing and analysing data) would create jobs, and give impetus to entrepreneurial innovation in, say, alternative energy-powered data centres. Localisation will also bring in infrastructure and technology to India, which could contribute immensely in building our indigenous capabilities and developing industries like artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics.

Some of the biggest opponents are international tech and payment giants like Google, Facebook, Visa and Mastercard, as well as industry bodies and associations, particularly those with interests in the US. Critics warn of the dangers of restricting cross-border data flows, manifesting in the ‘splinternet’ — now common terminology for a fractured, balkanised internet. Another reigning concern is India’s ability to power all the data centres that would need to be set up, since we’re an electricity-scarce country.

But the real grey area, the root of the debate, lies in the question of data security in India. As digital citizens, we must ask: is our data secure in India?

Data centres require essentially two layers of security: physical, where protocols are required to be built into the very infrastructure of the centres to safeguard against physical damage or attacks; and network, to prevent malicious data breaches and hacks. One would assume that a Facebook or a Google would have standardised security protocols for its data centres across the world, and India would be no exception.

However, what India doesn’t have are internal safeguards in terms of data protection and privacy laws like the US and Europe do. Data Security Council of India (DSCI) CEO Rama Vedashree argues that localisation does not guarantee data security, and requires a strong data protection regime. So, one can argue that data could be less safe in India because of this data protection vacuum, because citizens don’t have access to a legal and regulatory framework that safeguards their personal data.

The draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, submitted by the Srikrishna Committee, recommends storing one copy of all personal data in India, and ‘critical’ personal data only within the country. The definition of ‘critical’ was left to GoI to decide, and is now likely to be determined by individual ministries and sectoral regulators. Data localisation, combined with the governmental interpretation of ‘critical’, could well force us to think about protecting our data from State surveillance.

The biggest question in this debate, then, is about the role of the government. Twice a year, Facebook releases a transparency report that highlights the number of data requests made by each country’s government. In the latest, of the 82,341requests, the highest were made by the US government at 32,742, and the second highest by GoI at12,171. For context, that leaves 37,428 requests among the other 102 countries, an average of 367 per country (and several were in single or double digits).

Even though their numbers are a lot higher than ours, the US has a much stricter regime of checks and balances than India. These requests may be perfectly well-intentioned. But what happens when they’re not? What are the protocols for GoI to access our personal data? And how do we ensure that this data is not misused or manipulated for illegitimate purposes?

India’s still a country where law enforcement and investigative agencies are not divorced from politics, which can compromise their independence. Juxtapose this with the US where the president is currently under a special counsel investigation that’s looking into Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election.

India can definitely benefit from data localisation. But these benefits must not be stymied by a weak data protection regime. When GoI legislates on this, it must incorporate the highest standards of privacy and data protection for its citizens — without compromising national security — even if it means protecting them from GoI itself.

When titillation meets true crime

Long before dramatised crime shows on TV became a rage, small-town India's sex and crime games were being captured in 'graphic' graphic-novel style in Madhur Kathayein, and later its English version, Crime and Detective. With headlines like 'Pakhandi babaon ki vasna gatha', 'Ek thi Sheela, hawas ki leela', 'Aasteen mein palne wali hawas ki nagin' and pictures of busty women in slipping pallus and thunder thighs on the cover, it wasn't difficult to figure out why these crime mags found readers in the pre-YouTube era.
But Madhur Kathayein, which started in 1986, is not just one of the longest running sex-crime magazines in India; it still sells about a lakh copies a month, and has a strong fan following across north India. Crime and Detective, the English magazine, sells 40,000-50,000 copies a month, largely in the North-East. The revenue for these magazines is driven by newsstand sales.
So what's the secret to its longevity in an age where porn is available on every phone? Editor Shailabh Rawat says it's because the stories give the lower middle-class and lower class a voyeuristic look into how the upper class lives. "There is a curiosity about wife-swapping, gigolo parties and homosexuality and we provide them a glimpse of that life," he says. His publishing house Nai Sadi Prakashan has a bouquet of health and women's interest magazines but the most popular is Madhur Kathayein that is hawked at railway stations and pavement book-sellers for Rs 40.
Rawat, who is from Ranikhet in Uttarakhand, fell into writing on sex and crime by chance. He came to Delhi to prepare for the civil services exam in 1983 but soon found a job at Delhi Press' women's magazine Sarita. Later, Rawat joined Nai Sadi Prakashan and turned his attention to crime. "Newspapers and TV channels only touch the surface of a crime. We go into the human emotions, the conditions that led to the crime," says the 60-year-old.
There seems to be no dearth of it in small-town India, and Rawat has 25 reporters who file crime news from across the country. Real-life cases like the Pilibhit family that sacrificed a young girl to dispel evil spirits under the spell of a fake godman, or the woman who posed as a man to befriend and marry other women are fictionalised. Then there are stories about Jalebi baba in Haryana who moved up in life from a sweet-maker to a tantrik. The fake godman would drug women, film them and use the CDs to blackmail them. The magazine often captures murders committed in a jealous rage, or bosses forcing sex on women employees.
Though the women are there to titillate, Rawat feels the magazine's hot and heavy script has a strong social message and a happy ending. "Every article has a lesson, either warning girls not to fall for sweet talk by a stranger or showing how she can turn the tables by taking charge of the situation," he says. So in one article, the girl foils a plan to sell her to a pimp by poisoning her devious boyfriend and his pal, while in another the girl shows a lecherous filmmaker the door instead of succumbing to the casting couch.
Over the years, the magazine, has captured the phenomenon of libidinous godmen, proliferation of orchestra parties and massage parlours, with little competition, in its signature style: the photo story.
The photo story is definitely the magazine's USP but it's quite a job on shoe-string budgets. Rawat the editor turns into a shoot coordinator, finding aspiring models or theatre actors to play the lead roles, supervising lighting, photography, make-up, and even acting out scenes to give the actor cues. A small bench in his Nai Sadi office in Delhi's Mukherjee Nagar is transformed with inventive use of fake greenery, colourful bedsheets and curtains, which artfully hide some private parts. He then selects the photographs and writes the script. The wordsmith can churn out dialogues like "Doctor, why are you delaying! My body is charging with heat, so squeeze that heat out of my body." The woman mouths these lines while writhing on a bed, even as her partner in crime and sister-in-law film them so that they can blackmail the physician later.
Rajesh Dua, who is also a TV actor and has donned the role of an inspector, doctor or even a killer for photo story, is quite candid about the need for 'masala' on the cover. "Logon ko ankhen sekne ke liye kuch to chahiye (people need something to look at)," he says.
TV actor Chandrani Baidya adds, "This is the hypocrisy in India. We talk about sanskriti aur sabhyata (culture and traditions), but we all want to watch Sunny Leone."
Meet the bold cover girls

A Madhur Kathayein photo story model, equipped with costumes and a lack of inhibitions, can earn between Rs 3,000-Rs 7,000. But more than the cash, the magazine's popularity can open doors of opportunity in the entertainment industry, whether it is TV crime shows, Bhojpuri films or advertisements. Though of course, the aspiring actors, struggling models and even some desperate housewives hope that it will translate into a much-desired Bollywood break.

Twenty-six year-old Chandrani Baidya says her cover shoot got her a call for a Rakhi Sawant show because the writers felt she could handle 'bold content'. Baidya, who has moved on to TV and film says, "After my first cover, I didn't know whether to show the magazine to my parents or not. I finally did, after tearing some pages." Baidya says the parental opposition reduced only after she got a break on TV but admits that adult shoots are not for everyone. When auditioning for TV roles, Baidya found that letting people know about the adult shoots was a nuisance. "People thought if I had done such a shoot, I was comfortable with everything," she says.

Kathua, Unnao rape cases: Death penalty won't solve problem, attitude towards women needs to change

How should we as a society react to events that have happened in Kathua and in Unnao? India has become notorious around the world as a place where women and children are unsafe from sexual violence, and even if this is not the reality, it has become the perception. It should not take foreign media for us to look at ourselves honestly and ask how we can change.

What are the reasons we are unable to prevent such episodes and what actions need to follow so that we can reduce them? The first thing is that we must accept that this is not just a function of the justice and policing system.

There is a breakdown of values, and in a place where women and minorities are respected, there is no encouragement to bestiality. Do we live in such a place? The honest answer to that is obvious. Saying that the government should do something to stop such violence from happening ignores our own roles. With that understanding, let us now look at what the government can be convinced to do.

There are essentially two things that can act as a response to preventing sexual assault and rape. One of those is legislation. One popular demand that recurs every so often is to hang the rapists. The thinking is that harsh punishment is a deterrent and that the potential rapist will be worried about the consequences and therefore not carry out the act. There are many counters to it, including that having the same punishment for rape and murder encourages the rapist to kill his victim so that there is no witness. But let us ignore that for now. Politicians usually favour this solution and if you look at the newspapers of recent days, many are in agreement that there should be the death penalty for rapists.

The death penalty exists in India for murderers. Is it a deterrent and does it stop murders? Let us look at the numbers. India’s court awarded 136 death sentences in 2016. But that year, there were over 30,000 murders in India. Handing out death sentences does not stop murderers. Our laws also provide for appeal and remission, and so, the number of people who were actually hanged in 2016 was zero. We should understand this when we seek a silver bullet to end rape in the form of the ‘hang the rapists’ demand.

Now let us look at the numbers for rape and sexual assault. The total number of rape cases registered in India was 38,947 and there were over 1,06,000 crimes against children. The problem with the rape number is that government data suggests that 99 percent of victims of sexual violence in India do not report the incident to the police.

In the United States, out of 1,000 instances of rape and sexual assault, 310 (meaning 31 percent) are reported. And only 6 people, meaning less than 1 percent, are actually finally jailed. This means that we are not alone in not being able to deliver justice and it is a complex issue that requires a lot of thinking and hard work.

There are various issues here, some are social and some that can be corrected by the state. The common factor between victims in India and elsewhere is that rape is an intensely personal crime and not one that is easy to share. The social issues in India are many, and the position and treatment of women in our society is the main one. The second one is that we believe that family ‘honour’ is reposed in the body of women and that it is ‘lost’ when a woman is assaulted. This prevents individuals from revealing details even to their families, leave alone strangers in the police station.

There are things that the police can do and it is to follow the law. The law says that all victims in India can report in any police station of their choosing (and not only in the one in whose jurisdiction the crime is committed). Secondly, the victim can choose to record her statement in any language of her choosing. This is difficult because most police stations do not have individuals who speak even English properly, and prefer to record the FIR in the local language only. Thirdly, the victim’s statement must be recorded by a woman police officer. This again is not done, because of the lack of women police officers and the lack of police generally. One popular slogan is ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ but these are meaningless words when the size of the Indian government, as measured by the number of police, doctors, nurses etc, is very small per capita compared to the rest of the world.

The facts show that to prevent sexual crimes, we have to make large changes in our society and its treatment of women at the level of the family. And we need to ensure that the existing laws on reporting sexual violence are followed at the level of every police station across India. This is very, very hard work but it will ensure that the rate of reporting goes up, at least to the levels where it is in the rest of the world. After the rate of reporting goes up, the state needs to ensure that it conducts proper investigations (which need resources and cannot be done with the same force or budget) that increases the rate of convictions.

All of this is difficult, and most politicians know that it is close to impossible. That is why the easy way is chosen and that is to demand that rapists be hanged. The fact that murderers are also hanged and it has no effect on murders does not seem to worry us.

A SERVICE NOT SO SECRET

Those times — involving strippers, hotels rooms, weapons and presidents — when agencies meant to be undercover inadvertently made public their activities

Recently, a PIL was filed alleging that there was the involvement of the British Secret Service in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. It was later deemed that there wasn’t substantive material to re-investigate the case. Five other cases when the Secret Service was in the news:

1 Stripped of duty

In April 2012, US Secret Service agents who were off-duty were accused of bringing strippers back to their hotel in Cartagena, Colombia. This incident allegedly occurred right before a presidential visit to the Summit of the Americas. Some of the agents had their clearances revoked while a few of the agents returned to duty and some others retired or resigned.

2 Spirit of the moment

In March 2014, scandal broke out in the Netherlands which involved the US Secret Service. Three of the Secret Service agents went drinking which ended with one agent allegedly passing out in the hotel hallway in Amsterdam on a Sunday morning. It was later reported that the three agents were part of the Counter Assault Team and have since been placed on administrative leave.

3 A shot at recovering a bullet

In November 2013, US Secret Service supervisor Ignacio Zamora was found allegedly trying to get into the room of a woman he met at a hotel bar in order to recover a bullet from his Secret Service weapon he left in her room. The woman denied him entry, he asked the hotel for access, which made the hotel report the incident to the White House. This resulted in two of the agents assigned to presidential detail, including Zamora, to be moved from their positions.

4 I spy with my little eye

Recently, former British Secret Service agent Christopher Steele was in the news for being the author of a controversial dossier that alleged that Russia was collecting compromising data on American President Donald Trump. Steele served with the MI6, which is the British Secret Service, from 1987 to 2009. It also speculated that Steele was in communication with the FBI. Steele is currently supposed to be in hiding with his family, after he was reported as the author of the dossier.

5 Leakage issues

Last year, the US Secret Service apologised for leaking private information about the Congressman who was investigating them for other scandals. The Congressman was the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and in charge of leading investigations into the Secret Service’s multiple security failures in the past few years. It was reported that over 40 agents were given disciplinary punishments after the information was leaked.