Once upon a time, one line too far

He was second-in-command to Indian Ocean trafficker Anwar Juma Malik, and friend to alleged 1993 bombing gun-runner Mammumian Panjumian Bukhari.

Now he, along with the policeman who busted him — Wali Muhammad Haji, or saand (the bull) as Sangar called him when they played together as children — are leading the BJP’s efforts to draw in Porbandar’s Muslims into its ranks.

In the 1970s, helped along by Gujarat’s prohibition regime, Naran Mepa and his maternal uncle Naran Suda, leaders of what came to be called the Kharva gangs — so named for the caste group from which they drew their leadership — set up the first gangs, trafficking bootleg alcohol.

Each of Porbandar’s later gangs can trace their descent to to the Kharva gangs. There was Ikku Gagan, now a small-town Congress politician crippled by a stroke who smiles vacantly at passers-by. There were Santokhben Jadeja and her husband Sarman Moonja, made famous in the movie Godmother. And there was Mammumian Panjumian, accused of having ferried in explosives and assault rifles used in the Mumbai serial bombings in 1993.

Sangar, though, stuck with his friend ‘Anu Bhai’ or Anwar Malik. Malik, Sangar says, ran a string of gambling and home-brewed booze shacks in the Purana Kharpet area, along the now-stinking riverfront. Later, the men began ferrying in beer and whiskey from Ahmedabad, purchased from the state’s pre-eminent mafioso, Abdul Latif.

“It was fun,” Sangar recalls. “There was booze and gambling and cash — the last of which was a big deal for a child like me, who grew up in a home where my mother struggled to scrape up chilly powder to serve to her five kids with bajra rotis”.

“We used to pay the police anywhere between Rs 25 and Rs 1,500 a month to look the other way,” Sangar remembers, “which wasn’t a lot, because we’d sell 2,500 cases on Holi day alone”.

From the 1970s, though, things began to get more muddy. Sangar’s gang had begun jobs as transporters for Karachi-based ganglord Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar. Electronics, silver and gold would be brought by the cartel’s ships to just outside Indian waters, and then transferred to smaller boats to be landed onshore. Sangar’s job was to make sure the contraband landed safely, and was loaded on to the trucks that would deliver them to dealers in Gujarat’s cities.

“Honestly”, he says, “I never thought of this as something that was morally wrong. There were people who had things they wanted to buy, and things other people had to sell, and here was the government being bloody-minded and getting in the way of business”.

But in 1992, the inevitable happened: the police raided the gang as it was shifting 36 kilograms of silver from a boat on to their truck. Sangar says the raid was a set-up. “We’d paid the local police, as we always did, but they had a quota for arrests, too. I know the sub-inspector who sold us to the customs guys. That’s how this game goes, and I don’t hold grievances”.

The arrest proved a lucky break: just months after Sangar’s arrest, other gang members were picked up for landing the explosives used in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.

“Sitting inside jail,” he says, “I watched (television shows) Tipu Sultan and Mahabharat, the Babri Masjid coming down and Mumbai blowing up. I keep thinking, if I’d stayed free just a few more months, I might be facing the hangman today”.

In 1997, Sangar finally returned home, a broken man. “My wife told me that she had just Rs 4,000 left from the money I’d hidden away,” he recalls. “The rest was gone in legal fees, and paying off the police. For all my failings, I’d never cheated on my wife, and she stood by me too — but made it clear she didn’t want trouble to cross our threshold ever again.”

Local businessman Haji Sidiq, convinced Sangar wanted to go straight, gave him a job. In 1999, after he evicted gangsters from a property Sidiq owned, the community turned the building into a mosque. Sangar now became a prayer leader, a position he still holds, along with control of several local religious trusts. “Me, a man of god,” he chuckles, “who would have thought it, but that’s how life goes”.

Headed into the Lok Sabha elections, Sangar joined Porbandar MP Baburam Bokheria’s campaign. “We’ve known each other since we were kids,” Sangar explains. “Funny”, he says, “back in the day, when the BJP organised a rally in Porbandar, guys like me would keep our pistols cocked, just in case someone decided to set our homes on fire”.

“Look”, Sangar says, “this generation of Muslim kids love India, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. But they’re also angry about a whole bunch of things and angry people are easy to exploit”.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi is talking about inclusion and jobs,” Sangar ends, “which is what our children need. I wish someone had shown me there were roads leading to places better than the liquor-still”.