From garments to extortion

mumbai: abdul qayyum ansari alias abu salem began his career in the mid-eightes selling garments at manish market and is now in the most wanted list of the city police. currently operating from nairobi, abu salem is wanted by the city police in about 60 cases of extortion, kidnapping, attempt to murder and murder, the most sensational being the murder of music baron gulshan kumar at andheri on august 12, 1997 and the kidnapping of milton plastics ceo chiranjiv waghani in february, 2000.``in the last four years, he has targeted over 30 prominent film personalities for extortion,'' a crime branch officer said. among them are subhash ghai, rakesh roshan, j.p. dutta, rajiv rai and more recently, aamir khan. salem's interests are in the overseas distribution rights of hit hindi films. ``producers, who have been targeted by him, are those who have refused to give him the rights for overseas distribution of hit films,'' a senior police officer said. on saturday, the mumbai police shot dead four alleged salem gangsters in an encounter. they were reportedly planning to gun down aamir khan, director ashutosh gowarikar and financier jhamu sugandh. the killing of salem-aides, tanvir and sanjay singh, in the encounter is a big blow for the gang as they were the main collection agents. in the mid-eighties, salem had come to mumbai from azamgarh in u.p. and started a small business in ready made garments at manish market. said a crime branch officer : ``he started his second shop in andheri. later he came in contact with chhota shakeel, who lured him to work for the dawood gang. to begin with, he worked as a driver for shakeel and was entrusted with the task of supplying the shooters with weapons.'' he was then known as abu samaan (samaan refers to firearms). ``he was not easily acknowledged by dawood ibrahim initially,'' the officer said. ``under the tutelage of dawood's brother anees, abu salem thrived. he formed a small faction of extortionists, comprising illiterate and unemployed youths in dongri, pydhonie and nagpada. after the serial blasts in march 1993, he fled to dubai,'' the officer stated. he was arrested by the dubai police in 1997 for being involved in a bomb explosion in that country in 1995. but the uae government refused to deport him to india. he shot to notoriety in august that year after the killing of gulshan kumar. but this was the last major operation by his boys. almost every other operation he undertook in mumbai was messed up. he did not do his homework, hired boys who had never touched a weapon in their lives and also paid them very poorly (about rs 5,000) for a hit job. as a result several shooters bungled and found themselves behind bars. sources say that this was one of the reasons why he was not in the good books of shakeel and other dawood gangsters. by june 1999, he had a tiff with dawood over the sharing of power with chhota shakeel and reportedly parted ways. he is believed to have joined hands with bahrain based ali budeshi and the subhash singh thakur gang, police said. said a senior ips officer : ``salem mainly thrives on the fear psychosis he has created in the film industry. film personalities should not give in to his demands and approach us for protection.'' recently, salem was accused of threatening three leading actresses in the film industry. the interpol has issued a red corner alert for him.