Three Decades Later: Shadows of Mumbai underworld on JJ Hospital Shootout trial

The 1992 shootout at JJ Hospital, the largest public hospital in Mumbai, remains one of the most audacious attacks of the city’s underworld gang wars. Around 3.20 am on September 12, 1992, assailants entered the then 1,500-bed hospital with sophisticated weapons, including AK-47 rifles, pistols, revolvers, hand grenades, and dynamite. They opened fire inside a hospital ward where prisoner Shailesh Haldankar was undergoing treatment.

In the firing inside Ward Number 18, apart from Haldankar, who was handcuffed to his cot, two police constables guarding him, Head Constable Gajanan Javsen and Constable Kawalsingh Bhanawat, were also killed. Six others were injured, including another patient, a patient’s relative, a staff nurse, a watchman, and two police guards.

The police invoked the stringent (now repealed) Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), along with Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections, including murder, attempt to murder, and criminal conspiracy. Several people were arrested in the following days, and the attack was found to be the result of rivalry between underworld gangs.

The shootout and Dawood Ibrahim links

The police claimed that members of the international fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s gang hatched the conspiracy to kill Haldankar. Dawood’s sister Haseena was married to Ibrahim Parkar, a close aide of Dawood. Parkar was shot dead at his residence in Nagpada, South Mumbai, on July 26, 1992. The D Gang suspected that Haldankar, a member of rival gangster Arun Gawli’s gang, had helped the assailants identify Parkar. A conspiracy was then planned to avenge the killing.

In September 1992, Haldankar was arrested in a separate case of attempted murder. During the arrest, a scuffle broke out between members of the public and Haldankar, leaving him injured. He and a co-accused were taken to the state-run JJ Hospital for treatment. They were kept on the third floor of ward number 18 under police guard to prevent escape. The D Gang decided to kill Haldankar there.

On the night of the shootout, several people were assigned different roles. The police alleged that the assailants first needed to know the exact ward where Haldankar was admitted, as the hospital had many wings and departments. According to the police, a man and a woman entered the hospital around 1.30 am. asking for an accident victim.

When told that no such person had been admitted, they left, only to return an hour later and ask which wards usually housed accident victims. They then went upstairs to the wards they had been told about and identified where Haldankar was kept. The woman was later among those acquitted by the special court in 2000. Others posed as policemen, entered the hospital with weapons, and conducted a recce of the guards on duty.

Inside ward number 18, where Haldankar was handcuffed to the cot, the guards heard a voice say, “Hands up, do not move.”

One of the policemen tried to close the door, but it could not be fully shut. The policemen heard four shots fired at the door and responded with counterfire, identifying that the assailant was armed with an AK-47.

One policeman, who later deposed as a witness, told the court that Haldankar pleaded to be released, saying the men had come to kill him. Fearing he would escape, the guards did not remove his handcuffs.

As the policemen stepped out of the ward to fire back, they saw three to four more men. In the ensuing exchange, some of the assailants entered the ward, killing Haldankar and two constables. Another policeman sustained a bullet injury to his thigh.

The men behind the shootout

In the days following the shootout, the Mumbai police made several arrests. As many as 24 people, including Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel, were named as accused. Of them, ten were arrested and faced trial. In 2000, the special TADA court acquitted seven and convicted three.

Among those convicted was Subhashsingh Thakur, identified as one of the main assailants who shot at Haldankar. The special court sentenced him to death. Since the case was filed under the TADA, the appeal went directly to the Supreme Court.

The apex court held that it was not a mere gang rivalry but an act of terrorism, upholding Thakur’s conviction while commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment. The court relied on evidence, including confessional statements detailing the conspiracy.

Thakur, who reportedly came to Mumbai from Uttar Pradesh in search of work, later joined the D Gang. He is believed to have parted ways with the gang after the 1993 Bombay blasts. Even as he continues to serve life imprisonment, Thakur’s name and that of his associates have surfaced in other cases of alleged threats and extortion.

He was admitted to the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) hospital in 2019 for treatment and remained there until early 2025, when he was moved to a jail in Fatehgarh. Two others convicted by the trial court, Jaywant Suryarao and Shamkishor Garikapatti, were sentenced to seven and ten years, respectively.

In a second trial, the police arrested gangster Brijesh Singh in 2008 for his alleged role in the shootout, claiming that he too had fired inside the hospital. He was discharged the same year due to a lack of evidence.

The current trial is against Tribhuvan Singh and another accused, Farooq Mansuri, who is also facing trial in the 1993 Bombay blasts case. Singh, named in the case as Pradhan, has disputed his identity. He was arrested in 2024 by the Mumbai police crime branch after being traced to a Mirzapur jail, where he had been lodged for years.

According to evidence submitted earlier, Pradhan had sustained a bullet injury during the 1992 shootout and was treated at a hospital in Surat, Gujarat. The police claim the injuries found on Singh match those recorded for Pradhan, proving they are the same person, an assertion Singh disputes, having refused a DNA test.

Singh has also argued that any witness identification made after such a long time is unreliable. The court stated that these issues could be examined during the trial and denied him both discharge and bail. Mansuri, now a senior citizen, remains in custody in the case.

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