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  Special 26

  Gabriel Khan

  HarperCollins Publishers India

  For my special friend and philosopher, Shital Bhatia

  – Gabriel Khan

  Special thanks to Vikram Malhotra and my entire team at Viacom 18 motion pictures

  – Neeraj Pandey

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Prologue

  1. Law’s Raiders

  2. Chase

  3. Games of Fate

  4. The Hound Joins the Hunt

  5. Birth of a Con

  6. Wrong Man, Right Girl

  7. Cops and Cons

  8. The Crazy Quartet

  9. Chase in Chandigarh

  10. Wedding Windfall

  11. A Close Shave

  12. Looking for Mr X

  13. Calcutta Caper

  14. The First Breakthrough

  15. Planning the Con

  16. The Game Is On

  17. The Countdown Begins: Thursday

  18. Countdown: Thursday Evening

  19. Countdown: Thursday Night

  20. Setting It Up

  21. The Sting

  22. The Hit

  23. Meltdown

  24. Home Run

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Literature of the thriller and mystery genre has often been made into cinema. Examples abound from the fictional works of Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and, in recent times, Dan Brown. If you turn to the world of real-life crime, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is considered a classic, which was made into a film of the same name by Richard Brooks. Whether it is fact or fiction, the inescapable truth is that successful books have been made into films.

  What however sets this book by Gabriel Khan, based on a story by Neeraj Pandey, apart from the rest is that for the first time a real-life incident adapted for a movie is being converted into a novel.

  Neeraj Pandey has a knack for gripping audiences with the way he weaves the plot of his films. In his first film, A Wednesday, there were several edge-of-the-seat moments. And in Special 26 too he showcases his craft as a master of the thriller. Special 26 has its roots in a heist which took place in Bombay, as it was called in 1987, in which a conman perpetrated perhaps the biggest theft of our times, and was never caught. This book captures the essence of that unbelievable true story, in a simple and lucid manner.

  When I first heard about the plot, I was staggered by its audacity. And that quality, I understood later when I read up about such tricksters, is essential for any con job to succeed. Whether it was about the man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice – would you believe it? – or the man who sold the Big Ben, it was the audaciousness of the scheme which never made their targets suspect that they were being had.

  By any account, these men, and the con artiste in Special 26, are men with great mental abilities, though they put that to wrong use. They are seasoned actors of sorts, have great skills in impersonation and huge reservoirs of confidence. It is remarkable that they carried out such crimes of deception in person in an age when there were no mobile phones, SMS messages or emails. These conveniences of the modern age aid in effectively distancing a criminal from his victim in hoaxes.

  These are times when there is a debate on whether films motivate behaviour and inspire crime. These are also times when banks, financial institutions and government agencies are routinely sending out advisories alerting the public against revealing their bank details, or making payments to spurious agencies on receipt of emails and SMS messages promising windfall gains.

  Viewed in that context, the readers of this book will benefit twofold: not only will they be entertained, they assuredly will also benefit from the knowledge of how con games are played out in real life.

  Anupam Kher

  February 2013

  Introduction

  The robbery at Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri on 19 March 1987 still remains one of the biggest and most sensational unsolved cases in the history of the Mumbai police.

  As many as twenty-six so-called probationary CBI officers entered the jewellery shop, announcing that it was being raided. The mastermind strode straight to the shop owner Pratapbhai Zaveri, introduced himself as a CBI officer and produced a search warrant. He ordered that the close-circuit television camera be shut down and that the jeweller surrender his licensed revolver. No telephone calls were allowed as the CBI recruits took cash and samples of ornaments for investigation.

  Forty-five minutes later, the conman asked two men to keep the briefcases in a waiting bus. The rest of the ‘officers’ were asked to guard the shop as the leader left to ‘supervise’ another raid. He never came back, and was never seen again. The loot roughly amounted to Rs 87 lakh, which in 1987 was an astronomical sum. A background check later revealed that all the hapless recruits had actually answered a classified advertisement two days earlier in a leading daily seeking applicants for the post of ‘Security and Intelligence officers’. The Mumbai Police are still clueless about the mysterious conman who knew only too well how the intelligence agency functioned. More shocking is the fact that this robbery is only one, albeit a significantly large one, of the innumerable cases that have gone undetected for decades.

  This was never extensively explored or covered except by S. Hussain Zaidi in his crime columns in the Indian Express in 1996, where he discussed twenty-six such unsolved crimes.

  So when I read the script of Special 26 by film-maker Neeraj Pandey, I was stunned. It was 4.30 a.m. by the time I finished reading it and I had been reading it for several hours. I sent him a message saying that this was material for a thriller novel.

  The story charts the capers of a gang which cons a minister in Delhi, a movie star in Chandigarh, outsmarts a raiding squad of income-tax sleuths in Calcutta and finally reaches Bombay for one last and final heist. The cat-and-mouse game between the fake CBI and the real CBI is one of the most interesting aspects of the story. The gripping story explodes in a riveting climax that will leave the readers stunned. This roller coaster of a movie, Special 26, does not allow the viewer to take his eyes off the screen for a second. It took a lot of effort to convince Neeraj that this deserves to be converted into a book. Since the story and screenplay were already in place, not much work or research had to be done.

  However, I would like to extend my gratitude and profound thanks to all those who made this book possible. My foremost thanks are reserved for Neeraj Pandey, Shital Bhatia of Friday Filmworks and Vikram Malhotra of Viacom 18. I would also like to thank Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher and Manoj Bajpai. I would like to extend my thanks to the entire crew and cast of Special 26.

  Special thanks for my favourite editor and publisher, V.K. Karthika, and Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri of HarperCollins and Rajni George. I also thank the design team at HarperCollins, which includes Shuka and especially Arijit Ganguly, who tirelessly worked to ensure that we got the exact design with a retro look and did not let up until we got the right one.

  Among others who helped with their dedication and sincerity are Aditya Prakash Iengar, Vaibhav Sorte, Bilal Siddique and Subhro Ganguly.

  Prologue

  19 March 1987.

  The four snipers were in place, the tips of their guns converging at the point that marked the entrance of the shop. They were ready.

  And so were the men down on the street. The one inside the barbershop. The one at the bus stop. The one near the run-down theatre. Hell, the bootblack was a cop too, and yes, he too was ready.

  Waseem Khan stood on the terrace of the four-storey building, his foot resting lightly on the edge as he surveyed his surroundings for the hundredth time. His appraisal might have seemed casual but those who knew him well knew it was
n’t casual at all. But then, it wasn’t a survey really; it was a scan. An intense, particular reconnaissance with zero room for error.

  Deputy Commissioner of the Economic Offences Wing, Waseem Khan was one of the most decorated and revered officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation, New Delhi. He was the go-to guy, the troubleshooter, the man whom the cops, bureaucrats and politicians could count on if they screwed up. God help you if you were a criminal and crossed swords – or paths, for that matter – with Waseem. They said he never lost his man, never gave up on a chase, never blinked.

  And this was one chase that they were losing, so they had brought in the best they had.

  ‘They’ being the Cop, the Bureaucrat and the Politician.

  Waseem looked at the building directly opposite his vantage point. It was as if a giant mirror had mated with some cement, and the result was one of the most shiny, sparkling jewellery storerooms in the city, complete with bright lights, a tasteful neon sign, brilliantly polished glass windows and doors — even the security guard’s belt buckle had a bronze mirror. The letters on the board screamed out the name: BHUVANDAS SINGHANIA JEWELLERS. This was one jeweller who had struck gold, thought Waseem, smirking at his own pun.

  What the jeweller didn’t know was that at that very moment, there were cops inside his brilliant temple to ornamentation. Today, they were jewellery connoisseurs.

  Also inside the shop was estimated to be over a couple of crores’ worth of gold and jewellery.

  This was the bait, and the robbers had already been hooked.

  What they didn’t know was that it was all fake.

  All Waseem had to do now was wait. He took out a Capstan and lit it. It was bliss for four seconds and then the same recurring thought – the government should ban these motherfucking cancer sticks.

  He looked around. Bus stop, check. Doshi and Gupte were chatting like two regular office-goers.

  Junction at the end of the road, secured. Bhonsle was standing next to his Yezdi motorcycle, as if waiting for his girlfriend.

  Next, the exit to Charni Road station. Rajni and Subhash were chatting at the entrance, posing as two casual smokers.

  The main road, check. Lying in wait there was Ranveer Singh, itching for some serious action.

  The name popped up in his head once again. Ajay Singh. Singh and his gang were both Unknown and Wanted. And they were not going to escape today.

  He’d thought of everything. Men like Waseem hate leaving things to chance. A lot was riding on today’s outcome; in fact, his entire career depended on it. He had spent the last five years trying to catch this gang, but they had remained elusive, just out of reach. It had become a matter of prestige for him to nail the sons of bitches, and do it before they fucked him – or someone else – over again.

  Yes, he was confident this would be his day. Three days ago, he had found rock-solid proof that the gang would strike here, at Bhuvandas Singhania, one of the biggest jewellers in the city. This would be their fiftieth heist.

  Waseem cursed. Fifty times before he had finally been called in!

  Not today, suckers, thought Waseem. Today, you’re going down. You know why? Because you’re up against me.

  Down on the street, everything looked exactly as it should. Except that none of it was as it seemed. Even the man in the corner who was getting his shoes polished was part of it; he had too large a bulge in his jacket for someone carrying a book. A holster maybe. Shailesh.

  The bootblack polishing Shailesh’s shoe kept an eye on everything around him. Ravi. He looked across the street at Nair, and almost smiled. Nair was the coconut man. As he came from Kerala, it was pretty much preordained that he would be the one cutting and serving coconuts. Perhaps he could have practised more, thought Waseem; every scythe of his blade threatened to split open more than just the vulnerable coconut shell.

  Waseem looked at his officers one by one. The man on the bench reading the paper. The seemingly unemployed duo chatting on the pavement near the signal. The men at the garage repairing some auto parts. And of course, the men sprinkled inside the building opposite and those inside the shop itself. The place was swarming with police.

  Waseem’s new watch told him it was just past noon. It even told him what the date was, something he was still getting used to: 19 March.

  Just then, a flash of light caught his eye. The man at the traffic lights had given him the signal, flashing the sun off his steel-encased watch right into his chief’s eyes. Showtime.

  Waseem craned his neck and waited to see what was approaching off the main road. A bus entered his line of sight. There was a subtle change in the atmosphere on the street, as if it was suddenly charged with a kind of purpose.

  The bus was full, and it was barely moving. Lumbering slowly along the road, it inched closer and finally came to a halt. It now stood about twenty metres away from the shop.

  Waseem smiled, flicked his cigarette to the ground, and stubbed it out with his Bata Ambassador shoes.

  This was it. They were all here.

  It began now.

  1

  Law’s Raiders

  Life was stagnating dangerously when the phone call came and changed Ranveer Singh’s life forever.

  Ranveer was always looking for something challenging, and the first few days had been depressingly devoid of anything. But something would come along, he was sure of it, an opportunity of some kind or another, and he swore to himself that he would grab it firmly with both hands and wring it so hard that…

  He had no idea how to complete that analogy.

  Then the phone rang.

  ‘This is Ajay Singh, CBI ward 16, Special Investigations Unit, speaking from Additional Director P.K. Sharma’s office.’ The voice was smooth and richly layered, one to which Ranveer couldn’t say no. If that voice had told him to shoot himself, he would have happily picked up the gun. You couldn’t say no to it.

  ‘CBI?’ he repeated. Then immediately, he checked himself and said, ‘Janab.’ The word expressed both respect and surrender.

  ‘We are conducting some very high-profile raids,’ Ajay continued. ‘For that, we need adequate backup. I need you, three of your men and a woman officer. The best you have, Ranveer. We need three uniformed men and two officers from Safdarjung police station.’

  ‘Only five, sir? Not more?’ Ranveer was under the impression that you needed a lot more manpower to carry out a raid.

  Ajay clicked his tongue in irritation. ‘Yes, five. Five is enough,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to scare them away.’

  ‘Ah, I see sir! We’ll be there,’ said Ranveer.

  Ajay’s voice grew distant, and Ranveer could hear a muffled voice speaking from behind wherever Ajay was. Then the man was back on the phone again. ‘They have to be your best, Inspector Ranveer. The CBI doesn’t work with riff-raff.’

  ‘Of course, sir! I know that, sir!’

  ‘Good. Now, I want you and your people to meet us at the Safdarjung bus stop in fifteen minutes, got it? Don’t be late!’

  ‘Sir, yes sir!’ Ranveer almost saluted, but checked himself in time. ‘Where is the raid, sir?’

  ‘Listen kid, even I don’t know where. Only my boss Sharmaji knows. He will tell me when he feels it’s time. Meet us at the bus stop. Don’t be late.’

  Before Ranveer could say anything, the line went dead.

  Exactly fifteen minutes after the call, a jeep carrying Ranveer, Shanti – the woman constable – and three others screeched to a halt near the Safdarjung bus stop. A man got out of a spanking white Ambassador parked on the side of the road, and walked towards them. He was a nondescript man: clean-shaven face, drab suit and an utterly forgettable face.

  Ranveer and Shanti got out of their Gypsy. The man strode up to them and stuck out his hand. ‘Ranveer? I’m Ajay Singh.’

  Okay, so this was the Voice. ‘Good morning, sir. We’re all here, the backup you wanted.’

  ‘Good. Follow us in your vehicle, please,’ Ajay said, then turned
briskly and headed back to his car.

  Fifteen minutes later, the vehicles came to a halt in front of an imposing bungalow. There was a flurry of doors opening and closing, and the two groups converged.

  Shanti’s face wore a worried expression. ‘Anything wrong, constable?’ asked Ajay.

  ‘No, sir, nothing!’ she said, her face clearing magically.

  ‘Come on, what is it?’

  Shanti wrestled with it for a second, and then blurted out, ‘Sir, this is Minister Gupta’s house!’

  Ajay arched an eyebrow. ‘And your point is?’

  For a moment, Shanti was confused, and then the penny dropped. So did her jaw. ‘We’re raiding the minister’s house!’

  Ajay smiled enigmatically. ‘Ranveer, come with me. I just want to… Sharmaji, this is Ranveer, the officer I told you about.’

  The man to whom Ajay had just deferentially introduced Ranveer was a towering behemoth of a man. Everything about him was muscle and intimidation. ‘Yes, yes. Ajay, can we get along with this now? I don’t want these fuckers to get the chance to hide anything.’

  Ranveer stood back, well aware that he was just the hired help. The real deal was the CBI raid that was going to play out in a matter of minutes.

  Sharmaji stomped to the gate and flashed his ID card at the security guards. This immediately cleared all potential hurdles, and the gate was flung open. Sharmaji strode over to the portico, saw that the main door was open, and stomped right in, yelling ‘CBI’ at the top of his lungs, his men Iqbal, Joginder and Ajay in tow; followed by Ranveer, Shanti and three others, who were openly awed by these daring moves.

  To the right of the main door was the living room, where Minister Gupta was ensconced in a discussion with his PA. Sharmaji’s entry seemed to disturb the PA more than his boss; he scrambled up and hurried over to Sharmaji, flapping his arms in outrage.

  ‘Hey hey hey! What’s the meaning of this?’