Hussain Zaidi

Tired of being bullied, a scrawny, impoverished Dawood Ibrahim is looking for a saviour, 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.

Dawood’s Mentor

Dongri to Dubai is the first ever attempt to chronicle the history of the Mumbai mafia. It is the story of notorious gangsters like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem, but above all, it is the story of a young man who went astray despite having a father in the police force. Dawood Ibrahim was initiated into crime as a pawn in the hands of the Mumbai police and went on to wipe out the competition and eventually became the Mumbai police’s own nemesis.The narrative encompasses several milestones in the history of crime in India, from the rise of the Pathans, formation of the Dawood gang, the first ever supari, mafia’s nefarious role in Bollywood, Dawood’s move to Karachi, and Pakistan’s subsequent alleged role in sheltering one of the most wanted persons in the world.This story is primarily about how a boy from Dongri became a don in Dubai, and captures his bravado, cunningness, focus, ambition, and lust for power in a gripping narrative. The meticulously researched book provides an in-depth and comprehensive account of the mafia’s games of supremacy and internecine warfare.

Dongri to Dubai - Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia

The high-stakes game of the underworld has new faces, working for and against Dawood Ibrahim - the shadowy, manipulative figure that pulls the strings. Dawood's own deputy turned arch-rival Chhota Rajan, thug-turned-politician Arun Gawli, Amar (Raavan) Naik and his engineer brother Ashwin Naik, and a host of other characters, big and small, walk the pages of this compelling history of the Maharashtrian mobsters who were once dubbed 'amchi muley', 'our boys', by Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray. Equally fascinating are the stories of the famous - and infamous - policemen and 'encounter specialists' who took the gangs on with great success and not too many scruples. Violence and deceit one expects to read of, but the strength of this book is also its ability to capture the mundane - almost naive - beginnings of what very quickly became the organized crime and brutal vendettas that held Mumbai to ransom through the last decades of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched and thrillingly told by the acknowledged expert on the underworld, this is faster-paced than Dongri to Dubai, and even more chilling in its implications for India and the subcontinent.

Hussain Zaidi

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