The Class of 83 — There can never be a Dark Knight, nor a White one.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." - Friedrich Nietzsche
A viral breaking news ran on every news channel's ticker exactly two years ago. A bomb scare in the city of Mumbai accompanied with a threatening note. Hardly a breaking news, right? This is Mumbai we are talking about afterall. But the February, 2021 bomb case exploded infront of me in form of an epilogue to the book "The Class of 83" and now I didn't know what to make of it.
Indian cinema is known to humanize and glorify gangsters, be it Bhiku Mhatre, Maya Dolas or Manya Surve. With big Bolly names competing to play gun flaunting mafia with 6 pack abs and item girls twirling around them, consciously projecting the thugs as protagonists whose "chaal" every unemployed undereducated gully boy wishes to replicate. But what about the policemen who work 24 x 7 to get to the Surves and execute the otherwise ruthless criminal?
PI Pradeep Sharma, Vijay Salaskar, Ravindra Angre, Praful Bhosale were among the few cadets who passed out of Nashik's Maharashtra police academy in 1983. By sheer coincidence the bravehearts of this batch were posted in Mumbai where the underworld had already spread its roots in every nook and cranny. The gangwar was at such a peak that dead bodies of foot soldiers and gang leaders stared back from every page of newspapers. By 1995, Mumbai police went into damage control mode with the orders to "shoot first, talk later".
Practically handed the license to kill, now the police weapons didn't stay in their holsters any longer. The hit squad of Mumbai police, which primarily consisted of the '83 passouts and particularly Vijay Salaskar and Pradeep Sharma rained down on the mafia with vengeance. Salaskar caused mayhem for the Arun Gawali gang while Sharma single handedly eliminated the D-company. The papers which earlier featured gang wars on daily basis now were flooded with encounters of lieutenants to foot soldiers to leaders way up in the hierarchy.
Though the encounter strategy might look like an easier way to deal with the organized crime, it is a tedious process involving months' long investigation, surveillance, keeping tabs with the khabri (Humint) network, protocols to be followed and a hell lot of paper work. This book tries to explain all the nitty-gritty that went behind some of the major cases like Abdul Latif (the mastermind behind the IC 814 hijack), encounter of Shrikant Mama (second in command of the D-company), the shootout of the 2003 bomb blasts terrorists and the arrest of Dr. Imtiaz Sheikh (India's very own Walter White) to name a few. The culprits were pinpointed, nabbed, at some time shot at point blank range but many a times gunned down in crossfires. The book paints the entire career arc of Salaskar and focuses mainly on Sharma's, which was dotted with arrests and encounters.
The MCU world has a quote "With great power, comes great responsibility". It wasn't an easy job and at first these weren't trigger happy gentlemen itching to improve their body count, but it gradually came to it. As the body tally increased so did the individual tally of encounters. Media started keeping tabs of each encounter specialist. Ravindra Angre with his 40+ kills and Salaskar with 80+ bodies to his name, it was Sharma who stood at the number one spot with 111 encounters. The taste of blood became as irresistible as the taste of power. Sharma and Salaskar thought they were invincible and the system came to this realisation a little too late.
Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain. Sadly this couldn't have been truer for Salaskar and Sharma. Salaskar died a hero when he was gunned down by the terrorists on the night of 26th November 2009.
What Sharma faced was a lifelong nightmare. He became too big and brandishing an AK47 became a norm, so did pulling the trigger. Money flowed as bullet casings rained. He took law in his own hands because he was asked to do so by his very own superiors. To turn your back on the green cheddar and sleep soundly while others slumber in luxurious beds under imported duvets is easier said than done. Ultimately power and money caught up to Sharma.
One might think a person who took hundreds of lives would know the worth of a human life. The system that went into full drive for damage control in '95, was forced to do the same but this time against their very own kind. Transfers were imposed, cases were filed, cops were remanded to prison time, suspensions invoked then revoked, Sharma got reinstated after a 3 year stint in jail.
But was the lesson learnt?
I didn't expect a non fic book revolving around mafia, gangwars, blazing guns and ruthless cops could touch me to my core and break my heart. The aftermath of it all let me down, to say the least. It was unfathomable. Something I didn't want to believe.
It's common knowledge what became of Pradeep Sharma. The realisation of it at the end of the book was disheartening to me personally. It's not easy to witness a hero go the Harvey Dent way. Is he a hero? He was. He definitely was. Until things spiralled down at exponential speed he became his own undoing.
Have I lost respect for him? .... No.
Have I lost trust? Definitely.
His biggest crime was that he broke trust of thousands who looked upto him and the innocent victims who lost their lives due to him.
This one has left me with a plethora of unanswerable questions. Zaidi chalked up a picture and then swiftly had to wipe it out. It's evident from his stance in the Netflix documentary which is in complete contrast to his tone in this book.
So what is the way forward? What's the solution?Maybe shoot to kill only when you are standing on a concrete plinth backed by the same system which gave you the green light. Maybe there are ways to crack down a criminal without literally cracking down his spine. Indian judicial system needs to grow a stubborn, callous spine so the pressure doesn't befall on the investigators alone.
But who are we to judge? We, with the bird's eye view sitting at a safe distance with no need to dirty our hands nor our hearts. Unblemished.
Shamelessly passing judgement while expecting every policeman, working overtime and underpaid, to be an unblemished Singham.
Zaroori nahi Singham ki satak jaaye toh woh kanoon ko haath me lekar sabko sahi rah par le aaye. Satakti hai toh raah bhatakne ka khatra jyada hota hai. Magar aise Singham ke liye sittiyan nahi bajati. Ek galat vichar, ek galat kadam, galat faisla aur sitiyaan bajaate honth gaaliyan dene par aamaada ho jate hai. Khair! Ek hi jaan hai Pradeep Sharma ki, yaa toh Allah lega yaa mohalla. Indian judiciary toh line me hai hi.
Salaskar didn't deserve the end he met.
And so doesn't Sharma. For him, there are still pages left in his story.
