mid-day turns 40: Policing the megapolis

Ramesh Mahale

I joined the Mumbai police force as a sub-inspector in 1983 and voluntarily retired as senior police inspector after serving 30 years. I saw the transformation of crime in the city. In the 1980s, there were galli ka bhais, who indulged in fierce streetfights with soda bottles, bamboo sticks and iron rods over trivial issues of how to share the spoils.

There were many gang lords, including Dawood Ibrahim and his former key aide Chhota Rajan. They were interested only in local power to control goods like gold, clothes, etc, smuggled from Dubai. Smuggling was at its peak and though it was a matter for the Customs Department, our senior officer Arvind Inamdar confiscated huge caches of gold smuggled from Dubai in 1988 and 1989. With the passage of time, the bhais graduated from iron rods to revolvers, pistols and carbines. As organised crime began to take root, policing became tougher.

In those days, serious offences were registered by the city police and immediately transferred to the crime branch. Even till 2013-14, the job of the city police was to take care of law and order, bandobast, VVIP movement, and investigation of petty crimes.

However, the face of Mumbai police changed after 2015, when the Joint CP (Law and Order) insisted that the city police would start investigating serious offences along with the crime branch.

During the 1980s, the crime branch was studded with star officers. Now, crime branch officials seem to have gone into hibernation, with most serious offences being probed by the city police. In the 1990s, only those who performed well at the police station level were transferred to the crime branch. Now, anyone can join the crime branch after five years at a police station. The crime branch has not had any remarkable detection in the last five years. But the city police, including detection teams, have been doing good work.

One of the cases I will never forget was the theft of zinc pellets from the dockyard in 1988. I was a sub-inspector deployed at Yellow Gate. The thieves had made fake documents of a truck, fake registration number plate and escaped with zinc worth Rs 36 lakh from the dockyard. The city police and crime branch were racing against time to solve the case.

The police chief asked Inamdar how many days he would take to solve the case. He said seven. The then DCP of port zone, Meeran Borwankar ma'am said they will need at least 15 days. But she assisted me a lot to solve the case in four days and recover all the zinc.

I was part of a 98-member team that investigated the case. I was asked by my seniors Rakesh Maria and Deven Bharti to hand-pick officers. It was the biggest challenge of my career. I selected officers who had worked with me in the past and were good at paperwork, fieldwork, detection, or specialists in their own field. The case was closely monitored by seniors in Mumbai and central government. The officers did not take leave for 90 days as we had to make a strong charge sheet and prosecute Ajmal Kasab.

Being the chief investigating officer of 26/11 attacks, my job was to ensure that there were no contradictions in the case, and that the chain of investigation of the circumstances is up to the mark. Our detailed investigation forced Pakistan to accept that the plan to execute 26/11 was hatched on their soil.

The writer is a former senior police inspector

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