I called Manisha, got her guard beaten up, Abu Salem told Romesh Sharma

The breakthrough, the police say, came when they got hold of his cellphone number. In over two months, they claim to have recorded around 50 conversations he had with his contacts in Dubai – mainly with Salem, Dawood Ibrahim’s extortionist – and some with Dawood’s brother, Anees. The calls were mostly from Dubai.

The tapping continued until his arrest on October 20. Transcripts of the conversations show that Romesh’s fledgling party, the All India Bharatiya Congress Party, was poised to take off during the Assembly polls. But Sharma was facing a paucity of funds, as he himself told Salem on phone two days before his arrest:

* Sharma: “Tangi hai. Maine 70 candidate laganein hain. Sixty crore chahiyein (There is a squeeze on money. I have to field 70 candidates in the elections and I need Rs 60 crore).”

* Salem: Nahin nahin, par tum baat kar lena (No, no, but you talk about this.)

But the information that could prove vital in establishing Romesh’s role in the Dubai mafia’s extortion and mugging rackets came in conversations on and around October 1.

On October 1, Salem told Sharma about their bid to extort money from Manisha Koirala. Koirala had by then filed a complaint with the Mumbai police about the threatening calls she was receiving.

* Said Salem: “Maine phone kiya tha Manisha Koirala ko. Woh milee nahin. Maine kal chaar-paanch ladke bheje. Uske driver aur chowkidaar ko peet diya. (I had phoned Manisha Koirala but she was not there. Then I sent three-four boys to her house. They beat up her driver and guard.)”

Another exchange revealed that Sharma and Salem were planning to kill Babloo Srivastava, who was lodged in Naini Jail, Allahabad. This was to avenge the killing of Mirza Dilshad Beg in Nepal.

* Salem said: “Ek doosra kaam honein waala hai. Uska naam bataunga. (One more job has to be done. I will tell you about it.)”

Sharma: “Kiska? (whose?)”

Salem: “Mirza ka Babloo se milke kaam karaya tha. Uska badla lena hai. (Mirza was killed with the help of Babloo. We have to take revenge.)”

Sharma: “Uska kaam main karaa doonga UP Police se..(I will get the job done through the UP Police…”)

The tapes of such conversations – at least six – have been sealed and will be played in court. There is also a pile of tapes with relatively innocuous conversations as well as a sheaf of hand-written transcripts, prepared either when the Crime Branch sleuths did not care to switch on the recorder or when they ran out of cassettes. Crime Branch chief Karnal Singh says the conversations were useful “corroborative” evidence and they would be going for a voice-matching test. According to Romesh’s interrogators, he had tried to explain that someone by the name of “Khan” was speaking to Salem.

The Crime Branch has, however, confirmed that the mobile phone on which the Dubai talks were recorded belonged to Sharma and that several persons, including journalists, responded to his SOS on the same line, minutes after his arrest. The police say that apprehending that the instrument might expose his Dubai link, Sharma had disposed of his SIM card.