Someone’s Gunning For Anil Ambani

There is a sinister, little-known precursor to the chopper sabotage incident. SHANTANU GUHA RAY and RANA AYYUB unravel the mystery

Illustration: SUDEEP CHAUDHURI

WHEN MUMBAI Police Commissioner AN Roy walked into Anil Dhirubhai Ambani’s office without an appointment on Friday, June 10, 2005 — just days before the settlement between him and warring elder brother Mukesh — the younger of the Ambani brothers was certainly surprised, as was his staff. The commissioner certainly needed no appointment, but his reason for the unannounced visit was a complete mystery.

In the precisely 21 minutes Roy spent with the junior Ambani, he apprised him of a sinister plot — between Dubai’s second- most-sought-after underworld don Iqbal Mirchi and three people in Mumbai — to eliminate him. Roy said that his officers, as well as those in the intelligence agencies, had intercepted traces of conversations that had convinced them someone was trying to offer the don, rumoured to be close to Dawood Ibrahim, an undisclosed sum for the hit. Roy said that a Mumbai-based lawyer, who had often represented the criminal, was also on the three-way conference call, with two other people. “We could offer you protection round the clock,” Roy told a stunned Ambani.

Although there was no one present in Anil’s third floor office in Ballard Estate’s plush Reliance Centre, overlooking the Mumbai Port, a confidant who later heard what had transpired between the two, said that Ambani nodded his head — but in sheer disbelief.

The story of that possible plot has never really been told, but then, the most dramatic of corporate India’s rivalries, real boardroom dramas and high jinks like an assassination plot rarely make it to the headlines. This story, too, was no exception to the rule.

Now, the story needs to be highlighted in the context of the current imbroglio over pebbles and mud being discovered in the fuel tank of Anil Ambani’s chopper last fortnight, the tragic alleged suicide of the technician who discovered the sabotage and last week’s arrest of two junior employees of Air Works, the maintenance company in charge of looking after the helicopter.

After Roy left, a distraught Ambani called four people — his mother, Kokilaben; wife Tina; and two of his most trusted aides, one of whom was Amitabh Jhunjhunwala. No one knows what transpired between Ambani and his family members and whether the mother had reassuring words for her younger son, because those were the days of troubled, bitter rivalry between the two brothers. But the timing seemed crucial: This occurred just 10 days before the mega-settlement between the brothers was brokered by the mother, with help from a select few family members and top banker and ICICI boss Kundapur Vaman Kamath.

One of Anil’s top advisors, who got the panic call while holidaying in the US, wanted to rush back home but was dissuaded by Tina. Informed sources told TEHELKA that Tina persuaded her husband’s confidant to enjoy his holiday, ostensibly because her husband had overcome the initial trauma.

Troubled spot The spot near Ville Parle where Bharat Borge’s body was found

BUT ONCE he returned from New York, the official found out that within 48 hours of Roy meeting Ambani, the tape and the entire transcript of the conference call that some of his officers had heard and taped, went missing from police records. In fact, no one knows whether the Mumbai Police records have any evidence of the tapes and transcripts of the conversation. And so, the first plot to allegedly kill Anil just before the asset settlement between him and elder brother Mukesh, remains unresolved. “He was a target. We never felt it necessary to hype the issue in the media because of the sensitivities involved,” Roy told TEHELKA, adding: “The special protection, in fact, automatically increased after he became a member of the upper house in Parliament.”

Another fact that also went unreported was that Dhananjay Kamlakar, the man who had listened to the call and taped certain portions, was mysteriously moved out on another assignment. Currently Joint Commissioner of Police, Pune, Kamlakar told TEHELKA that he could not speak about the transcripts because he wasn’t part of Mumbai Police and that the transcripts were part of official secrecy. Does that mean the papers still exist in some corner of the imposing Mumbai Police headquarters in the city? Kamlakar, DCP crime when the intercept occurred, would not answer this one. In fact, he had earned a reputation for keeping a close watch on the activities of the underworld and also groomed Vijay Salaskar, the encounter specialist, who died last year on 26/11.

Four years later, a new alleged attempt on Ambani junior’s life, this time by sabotaging his helicopter, has developed into a full-blown murder mystery after Bharat Borge, the technician who discovered the sabotage, was found dead along the Vile Parle train tracks, adding another layer of intrigue to what is already a gripping mystery.

No wonder then that Mumbai, a city where dreams can become reality and often reality has a dream-like quality, has been transfixed by the high-voltage sabotage drama. “Events this week in Mumbai could rival the plot of the Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger or Oscarwinning Slumdog Millionaire. An alleged unidentified saboteur attempts to take the life of one of India’s best-known tycoons, Anil Ambani, by pouring pebbles into his helicopter’s fuel tank. A few days later, the man who discovered the crime, the helicopter’s mechanic, turns up dead on Mumbai’s rail tracks,” wrote The Financial Times of London.

Fuelling the speculative mills further is the fabled rivalry between the world’s richest quarreling brothers, sons of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, India’s most successful rags-to-riches tycoon. Elder brother Mukesh is India’s richest resident Indian, with a net worth of $20.8bn; Anil is the second richest, with $12.5bn.

Officials from the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) said the discovery was evidence of an attempt to kill him by industrial rivals, though they did not specify anyone in particular. They said Ambani was due to fly in the helicopter the next day: he had begun using a helicopter to get to his office to avoid Mumbai's traffic snarls. In a letter to the police and to Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, Captain RN Joshi, a senior pilot at Reliance Transport and Travels, an ADAG company, wrote: “Business rivals are attempting to take away the life of Anil Ambani and senior officials of Reliance. This is clearly an attempt to murder. [Had the helicopter taken off, the gravel] would have entered the gearbox, thereby leading to loss of power and a resultant crash.”

And as before, once again crucial links are missing in this Ambani saga. Borge, a 45 year-old engineer who formerly served in the Indian army before being employed by Air Works, an engineering company contracted to work on the helicopter, was found dead just days after the sabotage was discovered. A post-mortem examination concluded that he had died from multiple injuries after being struck by a train in the morning. Both his legs were severed from the body that was dragged by the train for nearly 22 yards.

Borge had found mud and gravel during a routine inspection of the fuel tank of the chopper. Police had questioned him and other Air Works employees, but detectives of the Crime Branch said there was no suspicion that he was responsible. Still, there seems to have been a consensus that Borge — in all probability — did know the identity of those responsible.

Two suspects

But before he could speak further, his blood-soaked body was found, and a note was discovered in his pocket addressed to the detective leading the investigation. In the message, handwritten in Marathi, Borge claimed that Reliance officials had visited him a day before. “My parents have brought me up with the right values and I would never get involved in any wrong activity,” he wrote. “After you questioned me and left, Reliance officials visited me. They asked me some questions but I didn’t tell them anything. One of them took my number and said they would talk to me again the next day. I got scared that I would be used.” ADAG officials agreed that they had met Borge when they had gone to check out their chopper but they did not question him. A few days later, the Mumbai Police gave those officials a clean chit.

But those following the case were unanimous that some vital links were missing from the case and that both the letter and Borge’s signature were faked by someone. “This is where the first hole can be drilled into the suicide theory. Why would be a man — who has served the army for more than two decades — be scared of questioning? His family has disputed his handwriting on the note and also questioned why it did not have any blood on it when the whole body was soaked. After all, the train dragged him,” says a senior private detective hired by ADAG to look into the case. The suicide note, found in the Borge’s pocket, looked exceptionally clean and crisp to all those who attended the Crime Branch presser. “In such cases, the note is either crumpled or torn and has stains of blood on it. This one was absolutely spotless,” the person added.

BORGE’S FAMILY, which moved out of Mumbai to their ancestral hometown in Satara, say they think there is something “fishy” about his death and have demanded that an investigation be carried out by the Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI). “There is something fishy. I want a proper investigation so that the real story comes out and people know the facts,” Borge’s cousin, Sambhaji Botre, told TEHELKA. “I am finding this very, very strange. He was in the army for 20 years and he was strong. He never got depressed. We don’t believe it was suicide. We are convinced someone killed him and threw his body before a speeding train to make it look like a suicide. Besides, I have serious doubts about the note; it is certainly not his handwriting.”

former Mumbai police chief AN Roy

Botre points out that if Borge was indeed terrified — the police version is that is why he committed suicide — he “would have at least got a hint of it as he spoke to me and his wife just two hours before the incident... He hid nothing from his wife. If not me, he would have at least confided in her. He did not tell her anything and was absolutely fine. There was, in fact, no trace of fear or depression,” says Botre, who also wants to know why Borge choose to alight at Vile Parle Station to commit suicide and not Santa Cruz, his local station. “If you are going to your office, you follow a route and do not change that suddenly.”

IF THIS is one aspect of the investigation that raises more questions than answers, there are other questions that are bothering many in Mumbai. For instance, the manner in which the state Home Minister, Jayant Patil, downplayed the corporate rivalry angle, even before the police authenticated a similar theory, raised many eyebrows. Was the minister trying to jump the gun even before investigations in the case were complete? Otherwise, how would he know there was no corporate rivalry? In fact, he did not even talk about the trade union slugfest with Air Works management that the Crime Branch highlighted during a press conference. Second, the Mumbai Police did not obtain any fingerprints from the gearbox of the chopper, something which is absolutely mandatory in cases like these. And third, results of the forensic examination of the gravel found have not been submitted until now.

In fact, no one is talking. Consider the case of the officials of Air Works who maintained a stoic silence for days after Borge’s death and then — out of the blue — condemned two of its employees, Uday Warekar, 32, and Palraj Ganpat Tewar, 38, whom the police charged with tampering of the chopper’s gearbox. The police say that trade union trouble between the Air Works management and the labour was responsible for the alleged sabotage. But, on the other hand, Air Works never said it had such problems and that workers had never messed around with other aircrafts and choppers parked in the hangar, located on one side of Mumbai’s Santa Cruz airport.

There are other discrepancies as well. The Crime Branch made the two arrests on the basis of a statement given to the police by Borge and his colleague, also a witness in the case, but it never produced that statement as an evidence when arguing the case before prying journalists. In fact, the second witness has not been named by the police, which have also not said who it considers the mastermind behind the attempted sabotage. In a press conference to announce that the police had cracked the sabotage case and arrested the alleged culprits, Rakesh Maria, joint commissioner of police (crime), gave a graphic description of the crime committed by the two but had no details of the mastermind. “We are still working on it,” Maria told TEHELKA. Maria also mentioned a series of sabotage attempts the union had staged, ranging from setting off fireworks near parked aircrafts to throwing bricks and acid on choppers belonging to other industrialists, but none of these made any waves at the time the alleged attempts occurred.

There are few takers for Maria’s theory about trade union trouble at Air Works being responsible for the current mess. At the Mumbai offices of Air Works, a company set up in 1951 by aviation experts BG Menon and PS Menon, there are less than 120 employees — of which 60 are members of the helpers’ union, Maharashtra General Kamgar Mahasangh (MGKS). And MGKS has distanced itself from the entire episode. “Our members are not involved in the episode. They are not criminals,” Arun Jadhav, general secretary, MGKS, told TEHELKA.

Rakesh Maria, Mumbai top cop, addresses a presser

Of the remaining 60 employees, a handful have aligned themselves with MGKS ever since it took up the cause of the agitating employees in 2002. “But our members have not indulged in any violent act (like throwing a stone or acid on a jet aircraft or a chopper,” says Jadhav, adding: “We have sought reinstatement of five suspended employees and have submitted our charter of demands. Our disputes are pending before the industrial and labour courts and in most of the cases, the verdict is in our favour. We have never resorted to any violent act.”

WHO DID throw acid, as claimed by the Crime Branch? Who threw bricks at another aircraft last year? Air Works officials refused to answer a questionnaire mailed by TEHELKA. A top Crime Branch official told TEHELKA that Air Works had given them the names of 13 people the company suspected could have messed around with Ambani’s chopper. In fact, the Mumbai-based Mid Day newspaper also hinted that an aviation expert could have instigated the whole episode.

If speculation is rife, facts seem to be rather more thin on the ground. And the man who could have offered the best clues is dead. The crime branch has refused to name a mastermind, and is busy patting itself on the back, saying it has cracked the case. Clearly, there will be little or no more investigation to follow. In fact, a senior crime branch detective has already lamented — in private — to his colleagues that the case was going nowhere because of a number of missing links. “He is, actually, exasperated because a number of vital clues (the most important being Borge’s death) are missing,” a top source told TEHELKA.

While Mumbaikars wonder and surmise, seasoned Ambani watchers point out that no event in the family shenanigans has ever had anything laid out in black and white. There are only obscure hints — and plenty of grey areas. The truth behind what could be a major corporate conspiracy may never really be known, so people may just have to rely on their own powers of deductive reasoning to resolve the conundrum.