Manya Surve

Photo of Manya Surve

Manohar (1944 – 11 January 1982), was an infamous Indian urban dacoit and gangster in the Mumbai underworld. His death in 1982 during an encounter with the Maharashtra police became known as the city's first recorded encounter killing. However, the spate of encounter killings only increased in the late 1980s and further rose after the 1993 Mumbai bombings; a total of 622 alleged criminals were killed in police encounters from 1982 to 2004.

Early years

Born in 1944, Manya Surve moved to Mumbai with his mother and stepfather. He was a B. A. graduate from Kirti College and formed a gang of students during his years there, due to the influence of his stepbrother Bhargav Dada. Bhargav was a feared thug from Agar Bazar in Dadar. He also won "Mumbai Shri" title in body building. In 1969, Surve was involved in the murder of a man named Dandekar, with him and an associate, Manya Podhkar. The trio were soon arrested by Police Inspector E.S. Dabholkar and were subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment.

Imprisonment and escape

While incarcerated at the Yerwada Central Jail in Pune, Manya Surve developed a fierce rivalry with another gangster, Suhas Bhatkar a.k.a. "Potya Bhai". Annoyed by Surve’s terror tactics, the prison authorities had him transferred to Ratnagiri jail. There, he took part in a hunger strike and lost almost 20 kg, before being shifted to the local civil hospital. Surve utilised this opportunity to successfully evade custody on 14 November 1979, and returned to Mumbai, having served over nine years of his sentence.

Mumbai underworld

After his return to Mumbai, Surve formed a gang of robbers and recruited his two trusted lieutenants, Sheikh Munir from Dharavi and Vishnu Patil from Dombivili. They were soon joined by another hood, Uday Shetty in March, 1980.

The gang's first robbery took place on 5 April 1980, in which they stole an Ambassador car. The vehicle was later used to loot Rs 5,700 from Laxmi Trading Company near Currey Road. On 15 April, the gang savagely assaulted and almost killed Sheikh Aziz, an enemy of Sheikh Munir, near Kala Killa in the Dharavi slum. On 30 April, they stabbed two police constables when they were escorting gang rival, Vijay Ghadge to a police station in Dadar. The motive of attack was that these cops were enemies of Prakash Misal, associate of Manya.

Borrowing the plot from a James Hadley Chase novel which he had read in prison, Surve decided to loot money from the government milk scheme in a bid to gain recognition from the leaders of the Mumbai underworld. The gang with the addition of Dayanand Shetty, Parshuram Katkar, Moreshwar Narvekar, and Kishore Sawant stole a car near Badal Bijlee Barkha in Mahim, and went on to execute a heist of Rs 1.26 lakh near Govandi. The stolen vehicle was later found abandoned near National College in Bandra, exactly as penned in the Chase novel.

Another famous robbery undertaken by Manya Surve's gang included Rs 1.6 lakh from Canara Bank’s branch on Sion-Trombay road and Duke and Sons Company at Deonar. Manya Surve's criminal activities was not only confined to heists and robberies. He was also involved in narcotics trafficking, as he saw that the profits derived from it was considerable.

Manya’s invincible notoriety had started giving an indication to the already organized gangsters of the city that the urban dacoit would soon emerge to become an influential figure in Mumbai’s underworld, if there was no one to stop him.

Rivalry with Dawood Ibrahim

Shabir Kaskar, elder brother of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, who was enamoured by a dancer called Chitra from Congress House near Mumbai Central, was out with her in a Fiat heading towards Bandra, unaware that they were being followed by members of the Dongri-based Pathan gang who had crossed swords with Dawood.

The chase began at Haji Ali and the Pathans closed in on their target when the Fiat halted at a petrol station opposite the Siddhi Vinayak temple in Prabhadevi. It was around 1.30 am and Shabbir was aghast to see Manya Surve, Amirzada, his cousin Alamzeb Jangrez Khan, Siddique and two others standing outside his car.

Amirzada asked Chitra to step out of the car and leave the scene. The four men then pumped five bullets into Shabir, leaving him lifeless in the car. An hour later the Pathans were at Pakmodia Street. The plan was to take Dawood by surprise even before the news of his brother’s death could reach him.

But Dawood’s key associate Khalid Pehalwan and a few others were guarding Pakmodia Street and recognised the vehicle used by the Pathans. The huge steel door to Dawood’s house was shut seconds before the rival gang resorted to indiscriminate firing. Gunshots rent the neighbourhood as both gangs engaged in gunfire and abuse. Amirzada was injured in the exchange of fire but managed to escape.

Police crackdown

The gang's various successful heists and robberies brought a tremendous amount of heat on Manya Surve and his gang. As a result, the police were put under great pressure and they launched Operation Manya Surve to capture Surve and curb his gang's activities.

On 22 June 1981, Sheikh Munir was picked up from a chemical company near Kalyan. A few days later, Dayanand Shetty and Parshuram Katkar were arrested at a lodge in Goregoan. Anticipating his capture, Surve slipped into an aide’s hideout in Bhiwandi on 19 November 1981. When police squads finally broke into the apartment, they recovered a hand grenade, a country-made revolver and some live ammunition.

Surve was finished after systematic police operations led to a breakdown of his gang's activities. After the arrest of his cohort Uday Shetty, he was the only remaining member of the gang who was not in prison.

Encounter

On 11 January 1982, Mumbai police received a tip off from Varadarajan Mudaliar that Manya Surve would be arriving at a garden near the Ambedkar College junction in Wadala in a taxi. At around 12.30 pm, 18 Crime Branch officers split into three crack teams and waited for him to arrive. After twenty minutes, Surve was spotted coming out a taxi to pick up his girlfriend, Vidya a widow with two children.

After noticing the squad closed in and took positions, Surve took out his Thompson sub-machine gun. However, before he could squeeze the trigger, Surve was mortally wounded by two police officers Raja Tambat and Isaque Bagwan, who fired twenty-five bullets into his chest and shoulder but he was alive.

Surve was dragged from the scene and put on an ambulance. While on the way to KEM Hospital, he kept crying and whining that the police had not given him a fair chance to defend himself and he spat on face of one of the officer. He succumbed to his injuries a few minutes later. This encounter was the end of Surve's two year spree of urban dacoity and crime. It is generally believed that it was the underworld don Varadarajan Mudaliar who tipped off the police about his whereabouts, after finding his position being challenged by Surve.

A former Crime Branch officer points out that police operations in the past were fewer. But inexperience notwithstanding, Bagwan's team methodically isolated Surve from his associates before closing in.

Bagwan later eliminated Surve's key associate Sheikh Munir at Versova in February 1983. Munir had crossed swords with Tamil don Vardharajan Mudaliar alias Vardhabhai in Dharavi and wanted to corner the lion's share of the income from the illicit liquor trade.

In popular culture

• Shootout at Wadala, a Bollywood film starring John Abraham, is loosely based on the death of Manya Surve.