Tag: Crime

Tired of being bullied, a scrawny, impoverished Dawood Ibrahim is looking for a savior, Khalid Khan Bachcha, who would teach him the ropes of handling a bunch of hooligans. Instead, what he gets is a mentor who eventually transforms him into a cunning mafia boss.

In Dawood’s Mentor, Dawood meets Khalid and they eventually forge an unlikely friendship. Together they defeat, crush and neutralize every mafia gang in Mumbai. Khalid lays the foundation for the D-Gang as Dawood goes on to establish a crime syndicate like no other and becomes India’s most wanted criminal. Here are six things, we don’t think you would know about Dawood’s mentor, the man who made India’s biggest don.

1. Khalid had managed to receive a unique title (Khalid Pehelwan ­– meaning ‘wrestler’). A pehelwan is not just a healthy man or a wrestler but a man with a massive physique. When his father stressed on wrestling and his mother emphasized on studies, Khalid secretly nursed the desire to become a police officer.

2. Khalid was an economics graduate and he understood business economics and logistics. He possessed a sharp business acumen and began exploring permutations and combinations to take dealings further.

3. Khalid was the first bona fide smuggler with properly monitored operations, which he supervised from coast to coast and vessel to vessel.

4. Khalid’s childhood in Madhya Pradesh and the friendships he had forged during his college and wrestling days with Hindus had given him a progressive and secular outlook in life. It was an absolutely new and unheard-of philosophy in the Bombay mafia.

5. Khalid never drank, even if there was intense pressure from his friends. While everyone around him got sozzled, he was seen sipping soft drinks.

Read the complete story about the mastermind’s journey in Dawood’s Mentor.

A schoolteacher who killed multiple paramours with cyanide; a mother who trained her daughters to kill children; a thug from the 1800s who slaughtered more than 900 people, a manservant who killed girls and devoured their body parts.

If you thought serial killers was a Western phenomenon, think again!

These bone-chilling stories in The Deadly Dozen by Anirban Bhattacharya will take you into the hearts and heads of India’s most devious murderers and schemers, exploring what made them kill and why?

Here are the inner working of some of the minds of India’s most gruesome killers:

GOWRI SHANKAR A.K.A. AUTO SHANKAR

“Two things fuelled Shankar’s existence—rage and sex. Mixed together, it was a deadly cocktail that would take him down the road to hell. His carnal desires were always streaked with violence, which was symptomatic of his depraved mind.”

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THUG BEHRAM- THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS SERIAL KILLER

“Behram became an expert at ‘casting’ the rumaal quickly and accurately so it landed on the Adam’s apple and in a swift move, extinguished people’s lives. Today, the infamous rumaal can be seen online, preserved in the private museum of an unknown collector.”

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STONEMAN- INDIA’S MOST ELUSIVE SERIAL KILLER

“The modus operandi was simple. The killer chose his victims from among the pavement-dwellers, especially those who slept alone, far away from a group. The killer would crush the victim’s head with a single boulder, weighing as much as 30 kg. In most cases, the victims did not have relatives or associates who could identify them.”

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RAMAN RAGHAV A.K.A. INDIA’S JACK THE RIPPER

“Raghav was a hunter and a scavenger. He killed because he had to. He was always short of money. In such a circumstance, any other person would have resorted to petty theft or burglary. But Raghav had an abundance of sinister urges. As Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.’”

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ANJANABAI, SEEMA GAVIT AND RENUKA SHINDE -CHILD KILLERS OF INDIA

“With no source of income, greed for money and a total disregard for the law, Anjana continued chain snatching and pickpocketing on temple premises. She roped in her daughters as well. Renuka was a natural and Seema was told it was a game. By her third time, Seema had begun to enjoy it. Their tiny hands could dip into pockets and open bags quite effortlessly, pulling out their contents. The trio often came under the scanner of the police. They were picked up several times. But the shrewd matriarch would grease the palms of the cops and they would be let off.”

Grab your copy of The Deadly Dozen today!

Dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, sheer greed and sometimes just a skewed moral compass. These are some of the triggers that drove the women captured in these pages to become lawbreakers.

Queens of Crime co-written by Sushant Singh and Kulpreet Yadav demonstrates a haunting criminal power that most people do not associate women with. The acts of depravity described in this book will jolt you to the core, ensuring you have sleepless nights for months.

Based on painstaking research, these are raw, violent and seemingly unbelievable but true rendition of India’s women criminals.

Here are some hard-hitting facts about a few women criminals from the book!

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Shantidevi – The Drug Queen of Mumbai

“Shantidevi started at the lowest rung. Her task was to peddle brown sugar and hashish. A daily target was set and her beat covered five-star hotels across the city. She learnt the ropes fast. There was a huge demand and she was quick to realize that the supply was barely enough to keep pace with it. Her customers trusted her more because she was a woman. She never cheated anyone, keeping the pricing as explained.”

Meeta- The Queen of the Dark

“She had earned Rs 25,000, the equivalent of five months’ salary, in just one night. Over the next three years, Meeta slept with many men. By the time she turned twenty, she had over fifty regular clients. She had paid off the debt and bought two cars: a Maruti Alto and a Wagon R.”

Resham aka Mummy- The Lady Don of Delhi

“ Mummy was sixty, a powerful don whom everybody dreaded. She had no fear: not of competitors, not of the police, not of the courts. Getting away with murder for so long had emboldened her.”

Preeti- The Tinder Murder

“Laxman tried to speak, but since his mouth was taped, he couldn’t. Preeti stepped forward and pulled off the tape. Before he could utter a word, she hissed into his ear, ‘If you shout, these men will kill you. They don’t know what they are doing. They are high on cocaine.’”

Sanjana- The Baby Killers

“Since she didn’t have a job and her daughters were too young to work, she decided to fall back on stealing. But this time, she trained her daughters as well. They became a gang of three, specializing in purse-snatching, chain-snatching, pickpocketing and shoplifting. The mother taught the girls all the tricks of the trade.”

Get your copy of Queens of Crime today!

In 2016, approximately ten people were abducted every hour in India. Of them, six were children.

Kidnapped by Arita Sarkar brings to life investigations by the police, eyewitness accounts and the perspectives of the accused, recreating each case in painstaking detail. Some of the victims you read about will never come home, but their stories will stay with you.

Read on to know about 5 kidnapping cases that you will never forget:

Case 1: Tarannum Fatema (3 year old) 

Tarannum Fatema’s disappearance baffled the police as there were no significant clues. The police officer working on the case remembered it as one of the goriest he had seen in his career.

“He lured the girl into his flat by promising her chocolates. Once inside, he used chloroform, which he had apparently stolen from his college, to render her unconscious. ‘When her sister and mother came to look for her, [redacted] panicked and strangled her with the wire of his mobile charger’ ”

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Case 2: Ritesh(7 year old) and Mukta(11 year old) Jain

The story of Ritesh and Mukta Jain is one that most parents in Coimbatore are familiar with. Their brutal murder has made people more cautious and watchful of their children’s movements.

“Though cases of kidnapping are fairly common in Coimbatore, the police claim that this case, where the kidnappers were faced with charges of kidnapping, rape and murder, was the first of its kind.”

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Case 3: Franshela Vaz (8 year old)

While most kidnappings in India are motivated by money, Franshela’s was different.T he kidnapper had never intended to demand a ransom. Driven by anger, he had always wanted to kill her, according to the police.

” ‘The man who murdered my daughter slept in the drawing room of my house. He had no shame at all. Even after killing her, he had the audacity to come and live in our house and pretend to look for her as well.’ ”

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Case 4: Adit Ranka (13 year old)

In tough times, the support of one’s family is something most people rely on. In Chandrika’s case, however, her fight to get justice for her son pitted her against other members of her rather close-knit family.

“Since the case involves her close relatives, Chandrika didn’t wish to appeal against the verdict. But she did pin her hopes on the state government who she thought would appeal against the order given by the sessions court. Neither the police nor the prosecution, however, felt the same.”

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Case 5: Anant Gupta (3 year old)

The kidnappers themselves never explained why they chose Anant and maintained that he was a random target.

“The police investigation found that Chhatrapal, the mastermind, was inspired by various movies. The police described Chhatrapal as an ‘overambitious person’ who had acted in a telefilm and wanted to try his hand at movies.”

Kidnapped documents ten cases of child abduction from across the country, Arita Sarkar investigates the bone-chilling details of the disappearance of each child. AVAILABLE NOW!