My Name is Abu Salem PDF
Preview My Name is Abu Salem
S. Hussain Zaidi MY NAME IS ABU SALEM Contents About the Author By the Same Author Dedication Introduction and Acknowledgements Prologue 1. Barrister’s Boy 2. Salem and Sameera 3. The First Brush 4. Salem and Sanjay 5. The Big D 6. Scurrying for Cover 7. Despair in Dubai 8. First Blood 9. Salem’s Killing Machines 10. Salem Imports Rent-a-Killer 11. Taming Bollywood 12. Conspiracy in Dubai 13. An Execution, a Warning 14. Extradition Embarrassment 15. The Fallout 16. Duggal’s Doll 17. The Don’s Darling 18. A Starlet’s Rise 19. Salem in South Africa 20. Sameera’s Souten 21. Salem under Surveillance 22. Caught Out in Lisbon 23. The Lisbon Incarceration 24. Love and Longing in Lisbon 25. The Journey Back 26. The New Jersey Connection 27. Sameera Lashes Out 28. Monica the Turncoat 29. Salem’s Sojourn to Sarai Mir 30. Salem’s One-Woman Army 31. Surviving Reprisals Epilogue: A Don-in-Waiting A Note on Sources Follow Penguin Copyright PENGUIN BOOKS MY NAME IS ABU SALEM S. Hussain Zaidi is a Mumbai-based journalist, a veteran of investigative, crime and terror reporting. He has worked for the Asian Age, Mumbai Mirror, Mid- Day and Indian Express. His previous books include bestsellers such as Black Friday, Dongri to Dubai, Mafia Queens of Mumbai and Byculla to Bangkok. Black Friday and Dongri to Dubai have been adapted into the Bollywood films Black Friday and Shootout at Wadala respectively. He lives with his family in Mumbai. Also by the same author Mafia Queens of Mumbai: Stories of Women from the Ganglands (with Jane Borges) Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia Headley and I Byculla to Bangkok For Vikram the great Chandra, My mentor, my school of storytelling and writing, my guru, my friend Introduction and Acknowledgements My Name Is Abu Salem is the third book in my mafia trilogy, after Dongri to Dubai and Byculla to Bangkok. Though the actual research took four years, this has been a work-in-progress since 5 August 1997—the day I first spoke to Abu Salem. He was holed up in Dubai then; the very day four of his men were arrested in Bandra for planning an attack on the then reigning movie czar Subhash Ghai. It was also exactly a week before the gruesome murder of music magnate Gulshan Kumar. It has been over seventeen years since, and I have subsequently met Salem on several occasions. There is a deep-seated mutual dislike between us. He cannot comprehend why I’m not in awe of him and why I don’t spare my acerbic pen while writing about him. Members of the mafia often live under the illusion that they are a much-misunderstood lot and that they absolutely do not deserve the firestorm of criticism directed at them. For instance, Salem believes he is very good-looking and that he is a good human being. For me, Salem is the embodiment of all that is vicious about the mafia— unchecked power and random killings. But even ganglords and dons, despite their sadistic streaks, follow a certain unwritten code. Salem breached all of them. For instance, after killing builder Pradeep Jain, he gloated about it to his victim’s widow on the thirteenth day of rituals for her deceased husband. The woman had a nervous breakdown. In a reporting career spanning nineteen years, I’d come across all kinds of maniacs, but never one to match Salem. Incidentally, he belongs to a respectable family, with highly principled parents. As a journalist and writer, I’m not supposed to like or dislike my subject. Being objective in writing about such people is akin to a surgeon’s code to perform a surgery without allowing his feelings for or against the person to get in the way. In that sense, Salem was a complex, intricate and difficult subject to profile. However, after over four years of steady research, I realized I would need more time to finish my own investigation as several of Salem’s trials were nearing conclusion. But time was a luxury I did not have. I profusely thank my publishers at Penguin and chief editor Chiki Sarkar. Her
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