1991 Lokhandwala Complex shootout
Encyclopedia
The 1991 Lokhandwala Complex shootout was a gunbattle
that occurred on 16 November 1991 at the Lokhandwala Complex
, Bombay (now Mumbai), between seven gangsters led by Maya Dolas and members of the Mumbai police
and the ATS led by the then Additional Commissioner of Police, Aftab Ahmed Khan
. The four hour long shootout was termed as India's "first daylight encounter
" and was videographed and conducted in full view of the public. It ended in the deaths of all seven gangsters, including Maya Dolas, Dilip Buwa and Anil Pawar.
In the late 1980s, the Bombay underworld was under the firm control of the D-Company
, headed by Dawood Ibrahim
. From his base in Dubai
, Ibrahim controlled underworld activities through his various lieutenants. Among the most prominent was Mahindra Dolas, a gangster who known was more popularly by his nickname Maya. Dolas had got his start running several successful extortion rackets for the Indian National Congress
criminal-politician, Ashok Joshi's gang at Kanjurmarg
. On 3 December 1988, Joshi was killed at the Bombay-Pune
road near Panvel
by a 15-man hit squad led by Chhota Rajan
at Ibrahim's orders.
After Joshi's murder, Maya later broke out of the Ashok Joshi gang, and formed his own gang. He then convinced notorious Joshi gang sharpshooter Dilip Buwa
to switch sides and together on 17 September 1989, they led a stealth attack against the Joshi gang in Kanjurmarg, in which five people were killed. This brought them into favour with Dawood Ibrahim, who was gunning for the Joshi gang after the killing of his pointman Satish Raje. Dolas and Buwa were a feared duo and soon began a steady rise within the ranks of the D-Company. They also conducted extortion activities on Ibrahim's behalf. However, they were also fugitives on the run, with ongoing arrest warrants for them. Maya Dolas, had in fact escaped from prison a few years prior to the shootout.
shows parts of the shootout as captured in 1991. According to the former Additional Commissioner of Police Aftab Ahmed Khan
, the ATS received a tip-off from a police informer that Maya Dolas and his gang were hiding in the A wing, flats 002 and 003 in the Swati building at the Lokhandwala Complex, a posh upper middle class residential area. The informer reported that they were armed and were waiting for a few builders who would be coming in the evening. The apartment in which they were hiding belonged to Gopal Rajwani
, a fugitive gangster from Ulhasnagar
and associate of Dawood Ibrahim. The ATS formed three teams for the task of arresting the fugitives and taking them into custody. One was for reconnaissance
, while the other two cordoned off the spot.
What happened next is subject to dispute and controversy. According to the official police version, Officer M.I. Qavi was the first to go there. Qavi spotted Gopal Rajwani at the main gate, but did not arrest him for fear of surprising the gangsters hidden inside the building. On the other hand, Rajwani did not recognise the police officers who were in their plain clothes and escaped without any incident. The ATS officers Sunil Deshmukh, Z.M. Gharal and Qavi were the first to walk into the ground floor apartment where seven of them were watching TV. When they burst into the apartment, six of the gangsters, including Dolas, raised their arms in surprise.
Dilip Buwa, who was armed with an AK-47
assault rifle, opened fire on the officers. Officer Gharal, who was not wearing body armour, was shot in the chest twice, puncturing his lungs. Qavi was shot in the elbow. Buwa's brazen attack was soon followed by the others. The ground floor apartment had two doors, one opening into the compound and the other to the building's staircase. While the police officers came out from the front door, the gangsters escaped into the interiors using the stairs.
Khan used the loudspeakers to request residents to go to the kitchen and lie on the floor, to avoid accidentally getting hit by a stray bullet. He also asked the gangsters to surrender, even when half the force was surrounding the building. The gangsters refused to surrender and responded with bullets and profanities. In the ensuing shootout, the police used 450 rounds of ammo. Every other wall on all sides of the building was rained heavily with bullets. At the end, all seven gangsters were killed, with the last gangster being shot down at the terrace of Swati building. Although post shootout media coverage made out Maya Dolas to be the main shooter, according to Khan, in reality it was Dilip Buwa. Khan stated that Dolas just kept hurling abuses from inside the building, while the real bullets were being pumped by Buwa:
The fugitive underworld don Chotta Rajan was also extremely vocal in criticizing the police operation as a "fake encounter". According to Chotta Rajan, the encounter was planned by his former boss Dawood Ibrahim, when they were allies, as part of a campaign to downsize Rajan's gang and curtail his power. He further claimed that the ground level co-ordination for the operation was conducted by a Dawood Ibrahim subordinate, Samir Shah. He stated that Maya Dolas had expressed his willingness to surrender, but the police insisted on eliminating him.
Khan dismissed the allegations as ridiculous, claiming that Dolas and the others were in no mood to surrender. He asserted that the operation was videographed and it was conducted in full view of the public. He further stated that a public interest litigation
claiming that the encounter was stage-managed was dismissed by the Bombay high court. The court even dubbed it "vexatious litigation". He also justified the shootout, by stating that it had a demoralising effect on the Bombay underworld. In the aftermath of the Lokhandwala encounter, three dreaded shooters fled the city. While Subash Sawant and Subash Singh Thakur fled to Nepal
, Anil Parab fled to Dubai.
While the Lokhandwala shootout made Khan famous, he later faced criticism about the way he handled the Bombay Riots
under his jurisdiction. The Bharatiya Janata Party
and the Shiv Sena
protested his alleged partisan attitude towards their workers in the riots. In 1995, when the BJP-Shiv Sena government came to power in Maharashtra, Khan promotion to the rank of Additional Director General of Police was stalled and he was transferred to Nagpur
. Frustrated at this insignificant posting, Khan retired and set up a security agency in 1996, which his son now runs. He also became a politician and joined the Janata Dal
, with whom he stood elections in the Mumbai North-west constituency in 1998.
Gopal Rajwani, the gangster who had inadvertently managed to avoid being caught in the crossfire, returned to Ulhasnagar and joined politics as a Shiv Sena member in 1995. He was eventually shot dead by four of rival mobster Pappu Kalani
's henchmen on 24 January 2000 in the premises of the First Class Magistrate's court there.
as ACP Aftab Ahmed Khan, Vivek Oberoi
as Maya Dolas, Tushar Kapoor as Dilip Buwa and Amrita Singh
as Maya's mother Ratnaprabha Dolas. Ironically, the movie also featured the real-life former ACP Aftab Ahmed Khan in a cameo role as his superior, the police commissioner S. Ramamurthy.
The film was however, criticised by underworld don Chotta Rajan on grounds that it grossly distorted the facts. In a May 2007 interview, he told the Times of India newspaper that the encounter was fake, while the film sought to depict it as an actual event. He stated that he would take it to the film's producer Sanjay Gupta
, although when questioned, Gupta refused to pass any comment. The film makers were unable to film the shootout scene in the real Swati building, a set worth 50 lakhs was constructed in Film City
which consisted of seven buildings and roads and trees and made it look exactly like how Swati building was in 1991.
Shootout
A shootout is a gun battle between armed groups. A shootout often, but not necessarily, pits law enforcement against criminal elements; it could also involve two groups outside of law enforcement, such as rival gangs. A shootout in a military context A shootout is a gun battle between armed groups....
that occurred on 16 November 1991 at the Lokhandwala Complex
Lokhandwala Complex
Lokhandwala Complex Andheri, also known as Lokhandwala, is a large residential and commercial area in Oshiwara village of Andheri, Mumbai, India. It is approximately 8 km from Andheri station. The name Lokhandwala comes from the name of the developer with the construction firm of Lokhandwala...
, Bombay (now Mumbai), between seven gangsters led by Maya Dolas and members of the Mumbai police
Mumbai Police
The Mumbai Police is the police force of the city of Mumbai, India. It has the primary responsibilities of law enforcement and investigation within the limits of Mumbai. The department's motto is ""...
and the ATS led by the then Additional Commissioner of Police, Aftab Ahmed Khan
Aftab Ahmed Khan
Aftab Ahmed Khan is a former Indian Police Service officer, turned politician from Mumbai, India, noted for his encounter killings of gangsters from the Mumbai organized crime syndicates....
. The four hour long shootout was termed as India's "first daylight encounter
Encounter killings
An encounter is a euphemism used in South Asia to describe extrajudicial killings in which police or armed forces shoot down suspected gangsters and terrorists in gun battles....
" and was videographed and conducted in full view of the public. It ended in the deaths of all seven gangsters, including Maya Dolas, Dilip Buwa and Anil Pawar.
Prelude
D-Company
D-Company is a term coined by the media for the criminal organization and terrorist group headed by wanted terrorist leader and crime boss Dawood Ibrahim....
, headed by Dawood Ibrahim
Dawood Ibrahim
Dawood Ibrahim , also known as Dawood Ebrahim, and Sheikh Dawood Hassan, is the head of the organized crime syndicate [[D-Company]] in Mumbai. He is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for organised crime and counterfeiting. He was No. 4 on the Forbes' World's Top 10 most dreaded criminals...
. From his base in Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
, Ibrahim controlled underworld activities through his various lieutenants. Among the most prominent was Mahindra Dolas, a gangster who known was more popularly by his nickname Maya. Dolas had got his start running several successful extortion rackets for the Indian National Congress
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
criminal-politician, Ashok Joshi's gang at Kanjurmarg
Kanjurmarg
Kanjur Marg is a suburb in east central Mumbai. Kanjurmarg railway station is the main access point for IIT Bombay, KV POWAI, NITIE, Hiranandani Gardens, and other locations in Powai...
. On 3 December 1988, Joshi was killed at the Bombay-Pune
Pune
Pune , is the eighth largest metropolis in India, the second largest in the state of Maharashtra after Mumbai, and the largest city in the Western Ghats. Once the centre of power of the Maratha Empire, it is situated 560 metres above sea level on the Deccan plateau at the confluence of the Mula ...
road near Panvel
Panvel
Panvel is city and a municipal council in Raigad district in the state of Maharashtra. Panvel is also known as the gateway of Konkan region. It adjoins Navi Mumbai, and is just after the Thane district border. Panvel is located on the Yashwantrao Chavan Expressway about 21 kilometres from...
by a 15-man hit squad led by Chhota Rajan
Chhota Rajan
Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje alias Chhota Rajan is the boss of a major crime syndicate based in India. He is a former key aide and lieutenant of Dawood Ibrahim. Starting as a petty thief and bootlegger working for Rajan Nair, also known as Bada Rajan . Chhota Rajan took over the reins of Bada Rajan's...
at Ibrahim's orders.
After Joshi's murder, Maya later broke out of the Ashok Joshi gang, and formed his own gang. He then convinced notorious Joshi gang sharpshooter Dilip Buwa
Dilip Buwa
Dilip Buwa was a notorious Indian gangster who used to work for the D-Company, an international crime syndicate of the Mumbai underworld led by the don, Dawood Ibrahim. He was killed in an encounter at the 1991 Lokhandwala Complex shootout with the then Additional Police Commissioner of Mumbai,...
to switch sides and together on 17 September 1989, they led a stealth attack against the Joshi gang in Kanjurmarg, in which five people were killed. This brought them into favour with Dawood Ibrahim, who was gunning for the Joshi gang after the killing of his pointman Satish Raje. Dolas and Buwa were a feared duo and soon began a steady rise within the ranks of the D-Company. They also conducted extortion activities on Ibrahim's behalf. However, they were also fugitives on the run, with ongoing arrest warrants for them. Maya Dolas, had in fact escaped from prison a few years prior to the shootout.
Shootout
A news reel of Star TV interview with ACP Aftab Ahmed KhanAftab Ahmed Khan
Aftab Ahmed Khan is a former Indian Police Service officer, turned politician from Mumbai, India, noted for his encounter killings of gangsters from the Mumbai organized crime syndicates....
shows parts of the shootout as captured in 1991. According to the former Additional Commissioner of Police Aftab Ahmed Khan
Aftab Ahmed Khan
Aftab Ahmed Khan is a former Indian Police Service officer, turned politician from Mumbai, India, noted for his encounter killings of gangsters from the Mumbai organized crime syndicates....
, the ATS received a tip-off from a police informer that Maya Dolas and his gang were hiding in the A wing, flats 002 and 003 in the Swati building at the Lokhandwala Complex, a posh upper middle class residential area. The informer reported that they were armed and were waiting for a few builders who would be coming in the evening. The apartment in which they were hiding belonged to Gopal Rajwani
Gopal Rajwani
Gopal Rajwani was a criminal-politician with the Shiv Sena party, from Ulhasnagar, Maharashtra . Formerly associated with the ganglord Dawood Ibrahim, he joined the Shiv Sena in 1996. He was killed as he was appearing in a court case at Ulhasnagar in January 2000.-Life:Rajwani began his life...
, a fugitive gangster from Ulhasnagar
Ulhasnagar
Ulhasnagar Ulhasnagar, also referred to as Sindhunagar, has an estimated population of 472,943 people .The name derives from the Ulhas river which flows through it. Kalyan is situated near Ulhasnagar. The city is home to many types of businesses....
and associate of Dawood Ibrahim. The ATS formed three teams for the task of arresting the fugitives and taking them into custody. One was for reconnaissance
Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....
, while the other two cordoned off the spot.
What happened next is subject to dispute and controversy. According to the official police version, Officer M.I. Qavi was the first to go there. Qavi spotted Gopal Rajwani at the main gate, but did not arrest him for fear of surprising the gangsters hidden inside the building. On the other hand, Rajwani did not recognise the police officers who were in their plain clothes and escaped without any incident. The ATS officers Sunil Deshmukh, Z.M. Gharal and Qavi were the first to walk into the ground floor apartment where seven of them were watching TV. When they burst into the apartment, six of the gangsters, including Dolas, raised their arms in surprise.
Dilip Buwa, who was armed with an AK-47
AK-47
The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known as Avtomat Kalashnikova . It is also known as a Kalashnikov, an "AK", or in Russian slang, Kalash.Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year...
assault rifle, opened fire on the officers. Officer Gharal, who was not wearing body armour, was shot in the chest twice, puncturing his lungs. Qavi was shot in the elbow. Buwa's brazen attack was soon followed by the others. The ground floor apartment had two doors, one opening into the compound and the other to the building's staircase. While the police officers came out from the front door, the gangsters escaped into the interiors using the stairs.
Khan used the loudspeakers to request residents to go to the kitchen and lie on the floor, to avoid accidentally getting hit by a stray bullet. He also asked the gangsters to surrender, even when half the force was surrounding the building. The gangsters refused to surrender and responded with bullets and profanities. In the ensuing shootout, the police used 450 rounds of ammo. Every other wall on all sides of the building was rained heavily with bullets. At the end, all seven gangsters were killed, with the last gangster being shot down at the terrace of Swati building. Although post shootout media coverage made out Maya Dolas to be the main shooter, according to Khan, in reality it was Dilip Buwa. Khan stated that Dolas just kept hurling abuses from inside the building, while the real bullets were being pumped by Buwa:
Aftermath
The shootout resulted in a great deal of controversy for the ATS. The ATS was suspected of staging a fake encounter and subsequently dragged to court. A magisterial inquiry was ordered as questions were raised on the use of 450 rounds of ammo and the need for a “daylight” encounter. The ATS was also charged with walking away with Rs 70 lakh which belonged to Maya Dolas. Petitions alleging corruption were also filed against Khan. However, the trial ended with Khan and other involving ATS officers acquittal.The fugitive underworld don Chotta Rajan was also extremely vocal in criticizing the police operation as a "fake encounter". According to Chotta Rajan, the encounter was planned by his former boss Dawood Ibrahim, when they were allies, as part of a campaign to downsize Rajan's gang and curtail his power. He further claimed that the ground level co-ordination for the operation was conducted by a Dawood Ibrahim subordinate, Samir Shah. He stated that Maya Dolas had expressed his willingness to surrender, but the police insisted on eliminating him.
Khan dismissed the allegations as ridiculous, claiming that Dolas and the others were in no mood to surrender. He asserted that the operation was videographed and it was conducted in full view of the public. He further stated that a public interest litigation
Public interest litigation
In Indian law, Public Interest Litigation OR जनहित याचिका means litigation for the protection of the public interest. It is litigation introduced in a court of law, not by the aggrieved party but by the court itself or by any other private party...
claiming that the encounter was stage-managed was dismissed by the Bombay high court. The court even dubbed it "vexatious litigation". He also justified the shootout, by stating that it had a demoralising effect on the Bombay underworld. In the aftermath of the Lokhandwala encounter, three dreaded shooters fled the city. While Subash Sawant and Subash Singh Thakur fled to Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, Anil Parab fled to Dubai.
While the Lokhandwala shootout made Khan famous, he later faced criticism about the way he handled the Bombay Riots
Bombay Riots
The Bombay Riots usually refers to the riots in Mumbai, in December 1992 and January 1993, in which around 900 people died. An estimated 575 Muslims and 275 Hindus died, and 2,000 people were injured in the riots. . An investigative commission was formed under Justice B.N. Srikrishna, but the...
under his jurisdiction. The Bharatiya Janata Party
Bharatiya Janata Party
The Bharatiya Janata Party ,; translation: Indian People's Party) is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Indian National Congress. Established in 1980, it is India's second largest political party in terms of representation in the parliament...
and the Shiv Sena
Shiv Sena
Shiv Sena , is a political party in India founded on 19 June 1966 by Balasaheb Thackeray. It is currently headed by Thackeray's son, Uddhav Thackeray...
protested his alleged partisan attitude towards their workers in the riots. In 1995, when the BJP-Shiv Sena government came to power in Maharashtra, Khan promotion to the rank of Additional Director General of Police was stalled and he was transferred to Nagpur
Nagpur
Nāgpur is a city and winter capital of the state of Maharashtra, the largest city in central India and third largest city in Maharashtra after Mumbai and Pune...
. Frustrated at this insignificant posting, Khan retired and set up a security agency in 1996, which his son now runs. He also became a politician and joined the Janata Dal
Janata Dal
Janata Dal is an Indian political party which was formed through the merger of Janata Party factions, the Lok Dal, Congress, and the Jan Morcha led by V. P...
, with whom he stood elections in the Mumbai North-west constituency in 1998.
Gopal Rajwani, the gangster who had inadvertently managed to avoid being caught in the crossfire, returned to Ulhasnagar and joined politics as a Shiv Sena member in 1995. He was eventually shot dead by four of rival mobster Pappu Kalani
Pappu Kalani
Pappu Kalani is an Indian criminal-politician from Ulhasnagar . After emerging as the leader of an organized crimesyndicate in the 1980s, he won elections for the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in...
's henchmen on 24 January 2000 in the premises of the First Class Magistrate's court there.
In popular culture
The infamous shootout was immortalised in the 2007 movie Shootout at Lokhandwala, starring Sanjay DuttSanjay Dutt
Sanjay Dutt is an Indian Hindi film actor and politician. Dutt, son of Hindi film actors Sunil and Nargis Dutt, made his acting debut in 1981.-Personal life:...
as ACP Aftab Ahmed Khan, Vivek Oberoi
Vivek Oberoi
Vivek Oberoi is an Indian actor. He is the son of Bollywood actor Suresh Oberoi and Yashodhara Oberoi.- Early life :Vivek attended Mayo college in Ajmer. At an actors' workshop in London he was spotted by the director of New York University who took Vivek off to New York, where he completed his...
as Maya Dolas, Tushar Kapoor as Dilip Buwa and Amrita Singh
Amrita Singh
Amrita Singh is an Indian film actress.-Early life:Amrita is the daughter of Rukhsana Sultana. Mohinder Kaur was the daughter of Sir Sobha Singh, who was a noted civil contractor, and made a substantial fortune during the building of New Delhi in the early decades of the 20th century...
as Maya's mother Ratnaprabha Dolas. Ironically, the movie also featured the real-life former ACP Aftab Ahmed Khan in a cameo role as his superior, the police commissioner S. Ramamurthy.
The film was however, criticised by underworld don Chotta Rajan on grounds that it grossly distorted the facts. In a May 2007 interview, he told the Times of India newspaper that the encounter was fake, while the film sought to depict it as an actual event. He stated that he would take it to the film's producer Sanjay Gupta
Sanjay Gupta
Sanjay Gupta is an American neurosurgeon and an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia....
, although when questioned, Gupta refused to pass any comment. The film makers were unable to film the shootout scene in the real Swati building, a set worth 50 lakhs was constructed in Film City
Film City
Film City is an integrated film studio complex situated near Sanjay Gandhi National Park at Goregaon, Mumbai in India. It has several recording rooms, gardens, lakes, theatres and grounds that serve as the venue of many Bollywood film shootings. It was built by the state government to provide...
which consisted of seven buildings and roads and trees and made it look exactly like how Swati building was in 1991.