“Devil Wears ‘Khaadi’ (The Unmasking of Romesh Sharma)”

It was sometime in the summer of 1998 when Suparna Sharma, a young reporter from the Indian Express, walked into my office at Yashwant Place, located in the diplomatic area of New Delhi. I was then a Deputy Inspector General of Police in the Special Task Force of the CBI. She had occasionally visited me earlier too for news stories on the Mumbai underworld of which I had gained some knowledge while investigating the Bombay Bomb Blast Case of 1993. But, on this occasion, it was she who had information to give me, knowing little that her input would lead to the undoing of, arguably, one of the most important members of the Mumbai underworld, who behind the veneer of being a Delhi-based politician, covertly provided succour and support to the notorious Dawood Ibrahim gang. If ever there existed a personification of the nexus between Indian politics and the Mafiosi, it was this man.

The intrepid reporter told me that she had gone to interview one Romesh Sharma at his farm in Chhatarpur in South Delhi as someone had given her few incriminating documents about his criminal activities. She was surprised to see a helicopter parked in the lawns of the farm. I had vaguely heard of Romesh Sharma during my stint as the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), South Delhi between 1989 and 1992. He lived at Mayfair Gardens, not very far from my office, and was reportedly a dubious character. However, the local police had never received a formal complaint against him. In the garb of a ‘neta’, he made sure that he kept the cops at bay. But I was totally ignorant that since my days as DCP/South District the man had grown big and owned a sprawling farm in Chhatarpur with a helicopter parked in its lawns. Surely, one could have a Mercedes or a Ferrari parked at one’s farm but keeping a helicopter was out of the ordinary and warranted looking into. The reporter also gave me the landline numbers of Romesh, both of the farm and his Mayfair residence.

To be continued…