The Underworld Podcast - Dawood Ibrahim, India’s D Company, and the Mumbai Attacks

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Few names strike fear into the hearts of Indians quite like Dawood Ibrahim. From a Mumbai slum he built his 'D Company' into the country's biggest mafia. Then he did something truly shocking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Hey, what's up? Hello, hello. Welcome to the Underworld podcast, where we dive into the secret world of transnational criminal organizations, scams, gangs, and all that fun stuff. I am one of your host, Danny Gold, and I'm here with Sean Williams. And, yeah, we've been doing this a few weeks now, Sean. I think we're almost getting the hang of it.

We're actually recording this before we launched, so I don't know. If you guys have a ton of feedback, we haven't listened to it yet, but we will, because this is for you, the listener. It's not for me and Sean.

No, no, no, never. I mean, you've got to see my setup here is pretty professional, actually, Danny. Like, I've got a half-finished room in a French studio. I've got a pot filter made out of insulating material. It's really, it's pro stuff. It's pro stuff.

I think we're gonna, we can only go up from here though. Yeah, we probably won't have to record the same episode like four or five times because we keep messing it up anymore. No, not again, probably. That is, that's the hope. But yeah, thank you guys for tuning in and for all their support we've gotten so far. I'm saying that, not knowing if we'll get that support, but I'm really hoping that's the case. There could be two of you that could be 2000, I don't know.

Yeah, we'll get there. Mom's doing it. We'll get there. So, Sean, who are we talking about today? What are we talking about? Have you heard of the Wood Ibrahim before? I have just a bit, but I'm looking forward to learning more from your wisdom. Yeah, this guy started out robbing people on the street,

ended up a world's most wanted criminal and terrorist. So he's had a pretty interesting career curve, yeah. Yeah, give it to me, man. Give me the rundown. Yeah, I mean, yeah, this guy like pretty much ran Mumbai. This guy, this guy's pretty much done it all, right? So he starts out the sign of a cop. Rob's neighbours and humiliates mafia dons, becomes one himself,

sticks his fingers in every criminal pie imaginable, builds an empire, bombs a city, backs terrorists, produce movies, through sports matches, runs drugs, killed rivals, began a bargaining chip in a nuclear standoff. I mean, he's done most things over the years. He sounds productive, which is an admiral skill to have. Yeah, good work ethic there. Yeah, definitely. I mean, like four decades after he started out as a gangster,

this guy is still his country's most wanted and made almost as much cash as Pablo Escobar. So he's done something right or wrong. I mean, either way, he's pretty bad, right? Yeah, I mean, bad, good at being bad, one of those... Yeah, yeah, I got you. I mean, that's the whole podcast, right? Yeah, good at being bad.

Yeah. I mean, I think, like, aside from Escobar as well, no single monster has come to take such a kind of, like, legendary folkloric character in his hometowns history. So, yeah, this is the story of Mumbai's Dabrah D-Brahim and his D-company. So two questions. How bad were the movies he made? And are we going to talk about Shantaramanol? Okay, first one, no comment. Probably pretty crap. Second one, we can, yeah. I mean, I've had plenty of conversations over the years about this book. It's basically everyone's backpackers kind of fodder, right, when I was traveling around Europe 13 years ago,

pretty much every guy had one in this bag, as well as Infinite Jest. Infinite Jest. Actually, I have not read Infinite Jest, but Shantaram, yeah, I was in Southeast Asia around the same time, maybe 13, 14, 15 years ago. And this was the book that everyone was passing around from one person to another. For those of you don't know, it's a really good read. It's about like an ex-con from Australia who finds himself in the slums of India and befriends all these guys who end up being mafiosos and gets involved in all sorts of criminal shenanigans. It's written in a weirdly poetic way that's kind of off base at times. Like he'll talk about how, you know, the sun was setting like the colors and this woman's eyes.

You know, like awful, corny stuff like that. But the story itself is just phenomenal. And there was always rumors of how much of it was true and how much wasn't. And I think Dawood Ibrahim was rumored to be one of the main characters in the book or one of the main characters was based on him. Yeah, definitely he's there. I mean, Gregory David Roberts is the guy, former heroin addict bank robber who wrote the book, and he admits that it's kind of like based on his real life in Mumbai and half just based on kind of fictional here or there, based on people that he met while he was out in India.

So, I mean, whether it's true or not, who knows. But, like, Leop holds the bar that everyone's meeting and doing shady deals. That's definitely true. A bit of a tourist trap these days, to be honest. But it's definitely good to have a few glasses of beer and, and, you know, spend a few hours in the smoky bar. There's actually an Aussie TV series of the books starting shooting last October, so I think it's going to be back in the news pretty soon.

I've amazed I haven't done something sooner, really. Yeah, I remember hearing stories that the rights have been bought with like famous actor. I think Leonardo Caprio and there's like photos. Yeah, it was Johnny Depp or something, right? Yeah, it was Johnny Depp, that's right. And there were photos of, I think, Madonna and the slums with him and all that. I mean, this book was, it was the kind of thing where you're, friend would get it you were traveling with and then you wouldn't see him for for eight days because he

was in his room locked in reading the whole thing so I'm kind of I think your story right now you tell you it's going to be the same people are going to lock themselves in a room and listen to this podcast over and over for eight days yeah do it and then donate to us obviously yeah that too yeah yeah I mean like Robert's got one thing right about Mumbai for sure that's absolutely nuts it's kind of this super city part of India but totally separate too um you know like a bit like Manhattan's basically just an island off the coast of America and not really in the country. It's got the finance, the movies, the sports. It's like New York, L.A. and Chicago rolled into one. And it's massive, right? 20 million people live in Mumbai, which is called Bombay until 95, by the way.

And it's the most densely populated city on Earth three times more than NYC. Some people call it the Maximum City and they're not wrong about that at all. That's another good book about Mumbai. I forget who the author was. Yeah, but Maximum City. Sucetu Mehta. Yeah, it's an awesome book. Yeah, and he gets into the underworld too and the dons and all that. So, I mean, having read both these books, I've always been fascinated with the city, haven't made it there. So I'm kind of liking your description and diving into it.

Yeah, I've spent a couple of trips in Mumbai, maybe like a month or two overall, and it's one of my favorite place in the world. It's absolutely bedlam. To an outsider, it's just completely nuts and cram full of people, color. There's insane characters everywhere, yeah. There are a few things that make Mumbai tick, right? There's Bollywood, of course, pumping out thousands of movies and making idols of folks like Ashwari Rai, Namitab Bakchan. There's the big business, the billionaires of Reliance and Tata, the stock exchange and there's sport, well, cricket, really.

Every field, school, street. It's full of kids and adults playing India's favorite pastime. We're going to get deeper into that later. So brace yourselves because it's my favorite sport, too. Yeah, I'm not excited to learn about it, but I'm excited that you're excited about it. You're going to get excited. I'm going to make you excited about cricket because, yeah, no one else is. only time I've been excited about cricket was that in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, I used to watch

these Rosses play just for hours, and they'd be blasting reggae, and it looked like a good time. I had no idea it was going on, but that's the extent of my excitement about cricket. You don't need to know anything. You just sit there and enjoy it. There's actually like an amazing book about cricket in New York called Netherland as well, so I recommend that if you want to learn more. Yeah, it was fiction, right? I remember that won a bunch of awards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty awesome book. But anyway, back to India, back to India for now. Mumbai is like not just the movies, it's not just the finance and everything else.

It's actually a city of mobsters from top to bottom. There are famed gangsters like Karim Lala, Hajimistan, Bad Dubai. The origin of the word thug even comes from bands of professional robbers and murderers who flourished in Mumbai in the 1800s, actually. But above all these guys, legends, scumbags, whatever you want to call them, one man stands head and shoulders above them all. Dawood Ibrahim has made money from just about every inch of Mumbai and much further beyond. His D-Companyi has become one of the world's most notorious groups

and a political bogeyman on the subcontinent as well. But just like so many dons, Dahlwood started small. He came from Dongri, a chaotic little district in southern Mumbai, where the city thins out into a spit into the Arabian Sea. It's a largely Muslim neighbourhood in a city dominated by Hindus, which is a really important thing to remember, by the way. And it's tough, really, really tough. Next to it's the city's famous thieves' position.

are all kinds of dodgy stuff's bought and sold. Thieves was all like is that a market where thieves who have stolen stuff go sell their, their wares? I mean, that's just a great name for anything whatsoever. It's pretty cool, right? Yeah, yeah, it's like something out of a fiction movie. Like, I'm probably going to get fact checked on this, but I think yes. But like, I've been around the area and it's like absolutely crazy.

There's just market setting everything you can even imagine. I'm sure there's plenty of black market stuff. I know there's plenty of black market stuff going on too. Yeah, like this area, Dongri, it's just a hubbub of people running to and fro. Teams of pickpockets and knife-wielding hoodlums run riot for decades when Darwood was born in 55. This place is like the size of two football fields, maybe,

but it gets its reputation as Mumbai's baddest hood. Even today, totally mad, always full of people. Home to a bunch of buzzing little markets. It's a really cool place, but yeah, pretty shady too. So, Darwood's a Muslim kid from Mumbai's roughest corner and you expect him to be as tough as nails too but his dad's actually a police officer and seems to have raised his kids pretty strictly by old accounts.

It seems that Dalwood realizes pretty quickly though that towing the government line being a good boy in India like his old man isn't what makes you rich. So from an early age he gets involved in low-level thefts and throfts, robbery and fools with his older brother Shabir. By the early 70s the brothers are doing pretty well and they decide to set up their own gang. But, you know, that's hardly rocket science in Dongri.

It's been a proving ground for Mumbai's biggest gangs since the turn of the 20th century or so. Don's like Karim Lala, Haji Mastan. They both rose up from Dongri from the end of the war till the 60s. Lala was an Afghan who led the feared Patans, an Indian way of saying Pashto, which is one of the biggest ethnic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They were the big dogs in town for a long time. Mastan was originally from southern India, but he was a king in Dongri too, and he carved out a pretty successful empire,

Hawking goods from Gujarat, the state just north of Mumbai is Maharashtra that's well known for its diamonds. So all these guys came from the same tiny neighborhood that's only the size of two football fields? They didn't come from there, but they set up shop there. And I think that's kind of important, right? Because there's all these markets where things are getting bought and sold

on the black market. It just seems to have carved out this reputation as a really badass place. I think Mustan was from Tamil Nadu, which is the state that's next to Sri Lanka. Lala's from Afghanistan, but somehow they've worked their way to this little tiny corner of Mumbai. That's pretty telling, I guess.

But yeah. So it's just where the money is made, where deals are done, that sort of thing. Seems so, yeah. It's kind of the downtown for all the Bakshish and the black market stuff going on, yeah. But Darwin's a local lad, so he's actually from the neighborhood. The thing is, at the time, India's,

economy was really helping them. It's this unique thing. So put your learning cap on, by the way, because I'm going to do a quick economic history lesson. Yeah, educate me, man. I'm ready. All right. Cool. Let's go for it. So the British Raj falls in 90s 47. India's leadership closes its economy off to the world. And it kind of follows this Soviet model, right? It has five-year plans, giant public sector. It's a founder of the non-aligned movement, which is countries that refuse to at least back the Americans or the Soviets in the Cold War on paper. And it was a democracy, but it was, economy was pretty Soviet-shaped, if not completely communist. Basically, all of this means that stuff wasn't easy to find in India during the Cold War,

and the Don's made millions humping all sorts of banned goods from outside, and mostly through the docks of Mumbai. Yeah, there's no money like contraband money, I think, as we've covered pretty extensively already. Exactly, exactly, yeah. And if you wanted bootleg booze or TVs from Japan or China, you went to the dons. Gold was massive, too, a lot of that coming from Gujarat. and they're pretty much keeping to themselves. There's violence, but it wasn't crazy.

And the big bosses like Mastan and Lala, their master dealmakers above all else. As long as they were making cash, they didn't really care about getting into a scrap with their neighbours. But they're not, like, nice guys, right? I mean, they're extorting the locals, they're running illegal casinos, brothels. That's all fair game, of course.

These guys, they're like celebrities in Mumbai, pied pipers for the underworld, right? They partied with the musicians and movie stars. and hobnobbing with politicians and royalty. Bollywood lionized them in glitzy shooters starring the era's biggest celebs. They plastered all over magazines and newspapers every day of the week. Mustan especially, he loved the stardom. He drove fast cars, he wore sharp suits,

and he produced Bollywood movies himself. Actually, if you look him up on Wikipedia, he comes up as an Indian film producer, which is quite funny. He even manages to stay friendly with the leader of the Shiv Sena, which is kind of like a Hindu nationalist cross between the, Tea Party in the KKK, I guess. Yeah, they sound pretty awful. I think they're actually in the sequel to Shantaram

which was not as good. They're a big part of it, but... Oh, really? Yeah, they're shits, yeah. They're like a nasty, nasty group. Yeah, yeah. They're pretty bad guys. But yeah, I mean, the amazing thing was that Mastan is a Muslim and he worked for all these kind of grassroots Muslim causes and he manages to kind of make friends with the Shiv Seh right? So this guy is a pretty incredible deal maker. I actually visited his niece, I think it was,

when I was in Donghri, and she was a local counselor. She's still got posters of him all over the walls, and people were just constantly telling me how great he was. So, so yeah, I guess you could say that the Don's own the place, basically. I appreciate that, you know? I want a Don who drives fast cars, wears Versace suits, and makes his own movies better if the movies are about himself too. I don't want some quiet guy in the back pretending he leads a normal life, wearing glasses, acting like an accountant.

Like, give me this sort of guy any day of the week. Oh, yeah, these guys are like, they own the gangster lifestyle, right? But then that doesn't last forever. So in 1991, Soviet Union collapses. The Gulf War smashed oil prices all over the world, and it forced India to finally open its economy up. Anyway, this economy lesson ends with the dons

finding out that all the stuff they could make, cash off the black market with, it's suddenly all kosher, right? Boats are coming into Mumbai from all over the world. Capitalism is killing the Don's cash cows, and their contraband's just normal stuff now. These guys, though, they built out massive fortunes by then. If smuggling was a bit of a lame duck,

India's perestroika meant its real estate is booming. And Mumbai, as India's economic heart, was exploding. Gangs piled money into building projects, extorting managers and builders, and they got their fingers into every aspect of the city's new boom. It's always real estate. It's always... Every fucking time.

Yeah. Yeah. So by this point, I need to backtrack a bit, actually, because Darwood was well on his way to becoming a boss by then. After doing all of his small-time scams with Shabir in the old days, Darwood gets into more complex stuff. He's known as this meticulous planner, and he demands people fork out cash for made-up weddings and funerals, which of course is totally BS. Wait, can you explain that? What does that mean? how made-up funeral

It's just like a cover story, right? He's basically just sticking people up in the street, but he's saying, pay for my friend's wedding, pay for this funeral. He basically means pay me or I'll shoot you in the fucking head. And they pay up, right? I mean, this is for good reason. Darwood is known for this short temper

and he's got a punch on for vengeance as well. As a teenager, he shocks the Mumbai underworld for attacking a major don called Bashu Dada. And he attacks the guy with soda bottles and light bulbs just after Friday prayers outside the guy's mosque. Then he smashes up Bashu's headquarters and he chases the former boss out of town. It's pretty wild. I mean, soda bottles and light bulbs is kind of like a little... He sounds like a teenager, you know, in a rumble in like the 1950s. Yeah, he's literally a teenage guy just trying his arm at anything, right?

I mean, can you imagine like the godfather getting pelted with glass bottles by a bunch of kids? kids in the street. I mean, that's pretty bold move. They're pretty early on. But even in 1974, right, and he's not 20 yet either. Dawood and his fugs rob a guy transporting cash to Haji Mastan. Big move. Even bigger than he thinks, actually, because when Dawood and Shabir look at all the stuff they've just grabbed, they find out they've just taken around $200,000, an absolute fortune at the time. Mastan isn't a man to be messed with, obviously, but actually it's Dawood and Shabir's old man who gives them a real pasting. and he hauls them down to the local police station.

So I guess they might have been feeling a bit worried by this point. But when the Ibrahims meet the local chief, he offers them a deal, and this is a big moment. The batons will become far too big for the cops to control. Defeat them, the chief tells the boys, and they'll be looked after. Instead of taking the law into your hands, he tells them, you can do it with the law by your side. Oh, you've got to take that deal. That's a good deal. Great deal, right? That's a really good deal. Yeah. And shock, they take it.

the way, at this point I'm quoting a lot of work by Hussein Zaidi, who's a Mumbai-born crime writers who's written tons of stuff about Darwin-Ebrain and other Indian dons. You should really check out his work, it's awesome. So, this episode with the robbery and the cops, it's kind of like the match that lights this standoff between the Dawwood-Shabir gang at the time and the

Patans, who'd been trampling all over Mumbai for decades. In 1981, a journalist named Iqbal Natique, who's friends with Dawood, is being to death for reporting on the Patans. This sparks an all-out war. One of the guys who killed Natique is murdered by having his ankles and wrist slashed. The other gets all of his fingers chopped off before escaping into Dongri police station.

Later that year, Patan gangsters working for Karim Lala's nephew Samad Khan, shoots a beer dead at Mumbai gas station. They go for DeWood too, but he manages to survive. Then, the Wood's vengeance instinct goes into overdrive, right? He has the two hit men taken out soon afterwards, and Samad, a pretty big boss himself, is shot dead by members of DeWood's gang, which he now calls DeCompany after himself. in 1983.

How do we rate that, that gang name? I love it. Yeah, it's pretty good. I like it too. I think it's solid. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, like, so things are happening outside of the underworld at this time that are going to become really, really important soon. So in 1984, the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP comes into power in India. So the same year, cops indict Dawood for Samad's murder, and he flees Mumbai for Dubai,

swapping one big port city for another. Is Dubai, I mean, Dubai isn't like it is now. I mean, this is 35, 40 years ago. No, there's no, like, megatowers and all that kind of glitzy, stupid stuff. There's, like, it's pretty much like a really important port stop off, though, between the Middle East and South Asia. So there's plenty of chances for enterprising Don like the wood to get his fingers into a few pies. But there's not money flowing through it like there is now where every gangster in the world

that set up shop there in a way. It's more, I mean, it's what I'm assuming. It's more like a backwater in something. sorts. It's kind of, but like the sheikhs still have the money, right? They've still got the gold and they've still got the oil. So there's money there. There's just not the kind of international

glitz that it has these days. But yeah, there's for sure tons and tons of money going through Dubai. When he gets there, the woods already involved in precious metal smuggling in India and electronics and a bunch of other stuff, like I said, the contraband that you couldn't get

in the country at the time. But he also gets stuck into Hawala, which is kind of this informal remittance system that's popular in the Middle East and South Asia. Can you break that down a little bit what it is? At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice.

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As the Krispy Chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby I'm a whole meal.

And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet? No. Crispy sauce sauce sauce. and $4. Very. Only at 711. Value through 62326

participating stores only while supplies lastly app for full terms. Or not, or you guys can just look it up, you know? Yeah, sure. Like Hawala, yeah.

Yeah, just look it up. Yeah. So, yeah, you're going to try and get me to explain some like dense economic thing that I'm not going to have a hope in hell of adequately describing.

You're doing a lot of good of work. care. Don't even, don't even sweat it. Yeah, keep me on the dons. I'm good on them. All right. The wood's ridiculously rich, of course, and he makes even more money ferry and gold from Dubai's suks into India, and he mastermines everything from abroad

and leaves a daily grind in Mumbai to his right-hand man, which is this big round guy called Chota Rajan. At the same time, cops are ramping up a war against organized crime back home, and they kill hundreds of guys during so-called encounters. At the same time, cops are ramping up a war against organized crime back home.

home and they kill hundreds of guys during so-called encounters. Hussein Zaidi calls it a bullet-for-bullet game plan. It's pretty spot on. Police tactic orders the guns they do it with. Blas some go away, say fired first, get away with it. Same thing happening in the Philippine drug war and the US right now, I guess. I mean, the scale, we're not going to do, we're not going to do that. Yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, safe. So the company at this point, its leaders are spread out across the world, the gang's numbers are growing and some of the older Donns are pushed out by the cops and their killer tactics. So throughout the 80s, D Company just swirls up. It becomes Mumbai's number one mafia by a long shot. It's pretty much a part of the city's fabric by now and the media's

full of stories about the wood. They love him. Same as been with the old Don's and Mastan and those guys. He doesn't seem to mind the attention. He hosts lavish parties and he fraternizes with Bollywood actresses. He calls all of his residences the White House, by the way, be it in Mumbai, London, Dubai, wherever. He thinks it's called to be associated with the US president. Maybe he's changed that now. Whatever he thinks, it's fair to say to DeWood believes his own hype pretty well. So Zahidi writes, right from Bollywood to horse race into the share market.

He aimed to spread his tentacles everywhere. There was to be no megabucks business that was not controlled by his cartel. Actually, at this point, it's worth mentioning how intertwined Bollywood and the mob were in Mumbai and still are. Sometimes literally, right? So Haji Mustan produced a bunch of movies, like I said before, and his wife, Sunnah was an actress. De Wood himself was rumored to be in a relationship with the Pakistani actress Anita Ayyub, and when a director refused to cast her in one of his films, the Wood had him killed. Yeah, that's the kind of support you want from a partner.

Like, if your man isn't having people who don't promote you murdered, then what are you doing in the relationship? Yeah, you've got to get better agents, guys. Like, this is a proper agent. Forget agent. It's a proper, like, spouse or boyfriend, you know? True, true, yeah. That's the message that we're sending out on this pod. Kill for your lover.

I think that's the message of every single true crime podcast is murder somebody for your lover so you can be with them or get away with something or whatever else. But do it better because then otherwise two white women in their 40s will solve it. Amen. So, yeah, this was in 95 that that happened. right and two years later in 97 the company hitman shot dead Gulshan Kumar who's a famous businessman

and producer and other gangs harassed actors and directors all the time there's no separating these two sides of the Mumbai. Yeah I have to imagine there's money laundering going on as well during this but I really want to know were the movies about them like were they the equivalent of rap

videos and rappers pretend they're like mafidons and shoot these like videos where they're you know sitting at a long table with a cane and directing their soldiers, but except here was it was kind of realistic too. Yeah, I would not say that the films I've seen the trailers for during my research

were realistic, but they're pretty entertaining. They're more like a 90s like Bruce Willis flick, right? It's just like all, or maybe Steven Seagal is more of a better kind of comparison. They're all like stupid fighting and like gun battles all the time. It's more like action.

These guys have this kind of like all-action sort of reputation more than just sitting back and making things happen. Is there singing and dancing? Like are these all the guys and dolls of the Indian underworld? Oh, you bet they're singing and dancing. Yeah, it's awesome. But anyway, like, remember how I told you about 91 being a seminal year for India and the mafia? Not really, but I want to hear more. Okay, well, back to my economic lesson.

So if that was the end of DeWood's first act, right? The next few come thick and fast, and they're going to define him for the rest of his life. Later that year, a bunch of D-Company mobsters are hold up in a Ritzie condo complex in northern Mumbai when up to 100 cops corner them. So till now, D-Company has reserved its violence for civis who won't pay up and rival gangs.

When these guys fight back at the police with AK-47s is the first time the group has fired on officers to kill. What makes it more shocking is that a popular news show broadcast the entire ensuing shootout after which cops kills seven of the gangsters. In 92, Darwin murderer guy who'd shot dead his brother in law earlier that year in broad daylight.

Wait, go back to the shootout with 100 police. I mean... Yeah. What? How? It just, they find these guys and they're in this kind of like newly finished block of flats in sort of central Mumbai.

And then they just start like firing at each other. other. These guys, I mean, if you see footage of terrorist attacks, it's pretty much similar to that. And then this show, I can't remember where it's called, it's kind of like a dateline show, just shows blood everywhere. The body's spat all over the floor. Like, it's pretty heavy stuff. I'm going to leave a link for a YouTube video to this old show on the website so people can check that out as well. Yeah, I want to watch. It's getting out of control at this point, right? The Wood is sitting in his ivory tower in Dubai, or in hits on all sorts. And they're pretty much wiping the floor with any rival gangs in Mumbai.

As Zahidi writes about this 92 hit. DeWood has cemented his reputation from Farah Field and with a bang, for this was not merely one gang taking revenge on the other, or extracting its pound of flesh. It was a daring daylight attack on the system itself. The killing and injury

of policemen was unheard of in Mumbai's checkered mafia history, and it seemed Mumbai was turning into another Sicily. There's your obligatory Sicily reference there. Gotta have one in every episode. Always, always. So later that year in 92, Shiv Sena radicals, remember them? They demolish a 16th century mosque in northern India.

They say it's on top of a Hindu shrine. This triggers riots that kill up to 2,000 people across the country, the vast majority of them, of course, Muslims. It's a breaking point in religious tension that harks back to the bad old days of partition in 1947, when up to 2 million died. Mumbai is this melting pot with strong Muslim neighbourhoods like Dongri, so it sees the worst of the writing. Almost half the dead lay there.

Like we mentioned in your Arcon script, this moment just lit the spark on a massive outpouring of communal violence. Neighbours fought each other and the police just sprayed bullets down the street trying to keep things under control. Obviously, didn't work at all. The Willis kept decominy a largely secular organisation up till this point, but the 92 massacres encourage him to take revenge on the Shiv Sena and the Indian state. Working with Pakistan's ISI, its intelligence division,

he smuggles explosives and guns from Karachi into mum. Mumbai. Then at 1.30pm on Friday, March 12, 1993, D Company turns from a mafia into a terrorist organisation. 13 bombs tear through key buildings like the Bombay Stock Exchange, Air India HQ, and of course the head office of the Shiv Sena. By the end of the day, 250 people are dead and 1400 are injured. It's Mumbai's first exposure to these kind of terror attacks, and it will never be the same again. A BBC article describes it well. For decades, the Mumbai noir had been dominated by gold smuggling, for its ancillary industry of crime and gang warfare.

Smugglers were perversely romantic figures, none more so than De Wood Ibrahim. The son of a constable would become the city's most powerful underworld figure and eventually became India's most wanted man. Now, for the first time, the Woods gang had let beyond the violent protection of its commercial interests and into a political vendetta, wreaked indiscriminately against an entire city.

In other words, though Wood was a terrorist. The entire country blamed DeWood Ibrahim for the blasts, right Zaidie. Everybody was convinced that it was he alone who had planned the attack. Only he had the power to bring Bombay to its knees like this. I mean, you can tell by this point that DaWood is just almost like a demigod figure. He has so much power over this city that he's able to, you know, control life and death. Was there evidence against him? I actually haven't seen anything other than absolute certainty that he's.

did it. So, I don't know about that. I mean, the authorities are pretty certain. Yeah, I don't know about that. But he convinced authorities to blame his co-conspirator Tiger Memon, who's a key player in D-company as the main planner. And there's still a shred of confusion as to how the blasts actually happened. But his excuse is like, I didn't do it. The guy that I work with all the time who's underneath me, he did it? Yeah, you know, oldest trick in the book, right? Blame you lieutenant. And who is Tiger, Tiger? Tiger. Tiger. Tiger. Tiger, like that's a good, that's a good name. It's a pretty good name.

Actually, he's still on the run. No one's found him either, so he's still one of the most wanted people in India. Is Tiger his given name or is that an earned name? I am almost certain it's not his real name, but please fact-check that and send us emails. Yeah. Still, the horror didn't just tear through Mumbai. It broke D-Company into as well. Chota Rajan, remember him, the guy who was staying behind in Mumbai while Dahlwood was flaunting his cash

in Dubai. He's a Hindu and he splits from the gang and he takes his work to Southeast Asia. First stop is Kuala Lumpur, actually. DeWood and other capos to camp to Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city. They tell everyone they're still based in Dubai though. And Chota Shaquil, who's one of the other lieutenants in the D company, he even used an Emirati Sim the whole time he's in Pakistan to throw people off the scent. De Wood's image in India unsurprisingly changes at this point, from a sort of self-made godfather type to a terrorist that committed treason against his own neighbours.

You can't really pull the whole Robin Hood thing if you're blowing up civilians and attacking your own country like that. No, I mean, but Escobar managed it, right? And he was blowing up half the country at the time. That's true. I mean, he still had a lot of love in Medellan and stuff like that. So I stand corrected.

Yeah, I mean, you stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone in the street, right? And they'll still follow you. We're not doing, we can't. I mean, people don't want that. You know, we don't, we're not diving into that. This is safe space from American politics. Yeah, safe space.

From culture war and all that. It's a safe space for our audience to hear. Yeah. Now, plenty of death and violence, but it's a safe space from that other stuff. Cool. Gotcha. De Wood and Rajan then begin this kind of Cold War era, right? And they battle for control of Mumbai's black markets. Both gangs ramp up the hiring a hitman.

Gangland killings explode. At one point, a police commissioner tells residents to arm themselves with hockey sticks, the violence is so bad. I'm not sure what a hockey stick's going to do against the gun. Are there hockey sticks in India? Indy doesn't strike me as the kind of place where a lot of people play hockey. Oh, they mean like field hockey, right? Stuff with the wooden sticks.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. We're talking old British sports here. It's none of your newfangled American stuff. I would take a hockey stick over a field stick. I don't know what a field stick looks like, but hockey sticks, I think, are bigger. Would you take a hockey stick over a, like, semi-automatic, though?

No, I'll take a semi-automatic over that. Cool. Yeah. The words used a guy called Abu Salem is this handsome, daring mobster from the north of India who hires kids as trigger men from his tiny hometown and ships them quickly home after carrying out killings so shield him from the cops are obviously pretty useless.

Rajan does similar but it would be scooped up in a raid in Bali in 2015 and he's actually serving life in a Delhi prison right now. I actually met a D-Company hitman when I was last in Dubai. His name was Prince Achu. although I think it might have been a suiting him, or just a sound made at the time. The 1992 riots claimed three of I choose relatives,

and he had nowhere to turn. Plus he was full of hate. That's like a common story back then. He shot high value targets with a German Mouser gun and close quarters kills with a so-called Desi Kata that is a homemade weapon from India.

Is that a blade or? No, it's a gun. I think they were made for like hunting deer out in the forest and the wilds and stuff. Who did he work for as a hitman. Was he working for a D-company? Was he working for a rival? Anyone who you could get a job with? He was pretty into D-company. Yeah. So he was part of this turn after the riots, right, where

it became more of an ideological sort of Islamist thing rather than just a organized crime outfit. He told me he could actually make up to three grand US for a hit, which isn't bad in a place where the average monthly income is like 400 bucks. It's far, far less in the slums, of course, where most of these guys would have come from. How did you go about meeting him? Lots of trips at two or three in the morning in the backs of cabs to absolute divey parts of town, brothels, bars, that kind of stuff.

He was one of the least reliable guys I've ever followed ever. I think like former hitmen don't really keep a great schedule. And I think it took me like a week of mismeetings to meet this guy. And then we just drove around town in the back of a cab

for like three hours chatting to him learning about his life. It's pretty full on. So is he one of these, oh, I used to do this and now I've got a non-profit that gets people out of violence or is he still active as a hitman?

Actually, kind of one of the most fascinating characters I've met in terms of how cities changed over the years, right? He used to carry out these really low-rent hits for D-company. And now he can't actually find any work. He's pissed off.

He's like, he's an out-of-work hitman because so much of the crime now has gone upstairs and it's all white-collar stuff because Mumbai is so rich, right? So if you want to carry out a crime now, you either get like a full bonafide hitman

for like thousands of bucks or you just like hack people's computers and steal all their money that way. Dude, globalization and like the technological increases in the world, right? It's putting hardworking low-rent hitman out of business. There's no jobs for them anymore.

They've got to learn new stuff. Did you tell him that he should learn how to code? I didn't quite have the ball to do at the time. Yeah, maybe I'll send him a message. So during these co-agneties, the mafia side of D company becomes this sort of cross between a McDonald's franchise and the Starzy, right? If you're in the gang or company touch, as subcontractors called themselves, you could use their words name to leverage all kinds of shady deals,

but screw up and you're in big trouble. The D company has someone on every street corner, and they're watching all the time. Do Wood, meanwhile, is still allegedly, hold up in fancy digs in his Karachi White House, quarterbacking his minions back east. India is still desperate to bring him and Tiger Mamond to justice for the 1993 bombings,

and he becomes this political actor between them and Pakistan. This is this war that's been raging ever since the countries existed independently, thanks Britain, again. It's not known whether Dawood's loyalty to Pakistan is one of religious identity or convenience, by the way. That's always been this kind of like running, debate about him. But he's definitely hand in glove with its government to some extent.

He's thought to have bailed out Pakistan's central bank with massive cash loans, and he works with Pakistani intelligence outfit the ISI. If you're an organized crime guy and you can get a deal with an intelligence agency, it just kind of as good as it gets. Nothing like having the army sitting on your doorstep to ward off potential rivals, right? Yeah. So, DeWood even helps exploit his trafficking routes to arm the Lakshar-Aa Taiiba and Islamist militant group that wants to break Indian

control of Kashmir. In fact, they would have taken to backing an array of fascist Islamist groups over the years, including Jay Shah Mohammed, another prominent Kashmiri group, and even Nigeria's Boko Haram, so maybe there is a bit of ideology behind it. In 2008, a series of blast and raids carried out by Lakshar-Eyba militants, these 164 dead across Mumbai. They include a three-day siege at a Jewish centre, indiscriminate fire into commuters at the city's CST station, its biggest one, and a four-day siege at Mumbai's I iconic Taj Mahar Hotel, Killing 31. I mean, I remember that being on the news.

It was plaster all over the place when it happened. It was pretty crazy, crazy story. Yeah, that was chaos. I mean, still, the movie came out, what, a year or two ago. But it's, I mean, this guy really hates a city now, huh? I mean, to do that, yeah, it's pretty dark. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's gone full on warlord, right?

Insiders, obviously, point a finger at DeWood after the 2008 attacks, saying he helped ship the killer. into Mumbai. No wonder by this time India's got a 25 million US dollar reward for his arrest and the US and Interpol both have him on their most wanted list. But he's never been caught. Is he just

hold up in Pakistan? Is he like out in the open or is he kidding and on the run? No, he by all accounts, he's in some like luxury condo somewhere in Karachi. It's kind of this like open secret. And we're going to get to that in a minute actually. But

First, I want to focus on a new source of income for the guy. This one I'm going to enjoy. That's cricket. Like, how much you're smiling right now? You're so excited to talk about this. Like, you have no idea. It's like the biggest sport in South Asia by a mile cricket. The Indian Premier League is this kind of like glitzy, basebally, short version of the game that's started in 2008.

It's become one of the world's richest sports tournaments and there's almost as high in average attendance as the NFL. Cricket betting is officially illegal in India, but the real market's worth about four. billion, or almost as much of the whole country's defense budget, right? It's massive. You can imagine that's a pretty tasty prize for the dons. So the one of the D Company's got its hands in. In 2013, an India Today report revealed how Darlwood's brother, Anise, ran a massive IPL betting ring, bribing star players and threatening others to throw games. In 2018, a D-Company guy told an undercover Al Jazeera reporter that he could swing 60 to 70% of games. So imagine the Sinaloa cartels

paying off Tom Brady, right, to throw duds at the Super Bowl. And that's pretty close to how big this stuff is. Did I get that reference right? Is that right? Yeah, I mean, that sort of works. Okay. Tom Brady's a football player, right? Yeah, he is.

He's a good one, even though we all hate him. Cool. Okay. Yeah, that works then. In 2015, Forbes estimates the Woods network at $6.7 billion. That makes him the second wealthiest gangster ever, behind Pablo Escobar's $9 billion, Forbes reckoned D was worth in 1989. Padaday presents, in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guys.

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Book Direct at choiceotels.com. I don't know if I buy that Forbes list stuff, man. Even with celebrities, you know, Google with Celebrity Network and I don't know. How do they do the math? It's all nonsense. I actually, I wrote this and then I was hoping you jump in because it seems bullshit to me, right? I mean, it can't be right. I mean, I'm sure he's making that much, but you hear stuff about Chapo, about El Mayo,

about the Russian guy, Semion and Mogilevich. What about like all the other Russian gangster businessmen who were these giant oligarchs? I don't know, man. Yeah, there's billions flying around with those guys as well. well, right? I think we can just say he's doing well. Yeah, I mean, that depends on your definition of a gangster too, right? Like Suharto, he sucked up up to 35 billion from Indonesia, and Marcos start up to 10 billion from the Philippines, right? So, you know, depends what you're calling a gangster, really. But either way, yeah, fuck Forbes. Yeah, fuck Forbes. Another great message

we're going to broadcast. Either way, though, like, DeWurzzi influence is massive in Mumbai and all over the world. A 2015 NYU paper says that today it's important that all of D Company's faces be acknowledged. This includes the organization's role as a transnational criminal organization, a terrorist group, and an economic actor inside of Pakistan. Okay, what is a 2015 NYU? Is this like some NYU undergrad just submitted a paper? Or are we talking like a... This is a professor, I think. A full-blown professor of something. I'm not sure right now, but I will post it to the website. So this is pretty heavy stuff, right?

I mean, DeWood is still in the news all the time. In June, papers report he and his wife have COVID, but they're clearly alive. And the latest twist in the D Company story actually came this week, right? As we're recording, which is like the end of August, Pakistan admitted for the first time that DeWood was living in Karachi, which, given he's been there like forever, is a bit of a piss. take. According to Pakistan state officials, DeWood has nine Indian passports and five Pakistani ones. How was the COVID story presented? Like, what do we...

We're talking like inquirer stuff, right? That's the kind of level of gossip rag that he's plastered all over these days. I mean, he's either sleeping with some Bollywood Starlet or he's got COVID or he's ordered a hit on some random guy in Mumbai. Like, the guy is never out of the news. Are there other photos? They use these kind of like stock six pictures of him. Like there's one of him at the horse racing that's been like produced about 50,000 times. I feel like I've seen only one photo of him and he just has a really sweet stash in it.

Yeah, that's his thing. Apparently he's had that shaved off these days. But they're sticking with it for the gossip rags. Yeah, it's an elegant look. Very, very. Yeah, it's a thing of beauty. He's kind of got an Escobar thing going on a bit. Yeah.

I can see that. I mean, like, there's a lot of parallels between this guy and Escobar, right? He's, he's tried to hone this Robin Hood image. He's a local kid, grown up, come from nothing, made everything. And he's bombed his own country. So actually, they're probably good friends. They might be. And he has a sweet stash and appears to favor gigantic sunglasses. And he's got a TV show coming out soon. But, like, the interesting thing about this news this week, actually, is that maybe, Pakistan's going to finally cut him loose, right? Maybe he's too much for them to handle. I mean, you've got armed struggle constantly in Kashmir, you've got the threat of mutual nuclear destruction. Maybe hiding and wanted gangster and terrorists isn't quite what the two countries need right now. Maybe he'll finally face justice, or just as likely, you'll just keep evading the authorities and becoming an even bigger tycoon in 2020s.

Where do you go if Pakistan cuts you off? What's the move for him right here? Afghanistan, I don't know Maybe he goes back to Dubai Oh Dubai, yeah of course Which White House is it going to be, you know? It's got to be Dubai, yeah, that's got to be the answer Every one of these episodes just ends out with someone settling in Dubai Yeah

Yeah, I mean, I lived there for a year actually I wouldn't recommend it But maybe if I was on the run for a masseterre attack, I might consider it That's pretty much the only time I consider actually Were you doing crimes there? I think I might have got drunk in a hotel bar which I think is technically illegal I kid someone on a dance floor

that's definitely illegal Were you hiding from crimes that were done somewhere else? Yes and we'll go no further All right thank you guys once again for joining us here at the Underworld Podcast Again subscribe on Stitcher, Spotify, iTunes Google and not just at one of them I'd like to subscribe at all those

Yeah do them all do them all Yeah. And you can always find us at the Patreon, which is patreon.com slash the underworld podcast where you can give us money to keep doing this if you enjoy it. And yeah, thanks again. Shall I do the website as well at this point? Yeah, yeah. Throw the website up there, man. If you built it. Yeah, we've got the underworld website, which is underworldpod.com. And I think we're on Twitter now and Instagram. Hopefully we're actually updating these things. I registered for them. We have not touched them yet. By the time you hear this, we're going to be active.

Oh, we're going to be active. Yeah, active. Activity. But yeah, thanks again, signing off. Yeah, cheers. Thanks for listening. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistance assistants to switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.

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