Sukur Narayan Bakhia was a notorious Gujarat-based smuggler in the 1970s and ‘80s. Politically well connected, he controlled a large operation that brought in gold, watches and other contraband into the country. He also started a crossword contest that was a cover to convert black money into white.
Bakhia was eventually caught by the law and order authorities but managed to escape from Aguadaa jail in Goa.
In this excerpt from The Most Notorious Jailbreakers, Abeer Kapoor recounts how the smuggler slipped out of the hands of the police.
The past few years had been tumultuous for Bakhia, as he had to leave the country during and after the Emergency. He refused to give up smuggling even despite Jayaprakash Narayan asking all Indian smugglers to stop in the aftermath of the Emergency. His closeness with the INC was something he took for granted and thought it would give him political cover, but that was not the case.
In May 1982, Bakhia’s appetite for his vices got the better of him. He began to prey on young girls but made the folly of hunting in Daman. The family of the girl he had tried to act fresh with ratted out the entirety of Bakhia’s operation to the authorities, who seized his incoming shipments and arrested his son-in-law. What followed was a miraculous game of cat and mouse.
The man, who had been on the run from the customs department for more than a decade, was finally caught after four months of painstaking sleuthing. The tip from the family had opened a pandora’s box. Now, as the investigation began to take shape, the layers of secrecy and security that were required to arrest him were watertight. Police officers working on the case kept the facts of the investigation to themselves. Only a handful of cops knew what was happening, and when and where he would finally be caught. Bakhia was lodged at Fort Aguada Jail.
Bakhia began plotting his escape the moment he entered the prison. He had worked too hard to be put away with such ease and permanence. It only took him two months to free himself from within the walls of the jail.
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According to a report by Ramakant Khalap of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, a regional political party from Goa, the smuggler enjoyed immense freedom and limitless perquisites inside the jail. Much to everyone’s surprise, he had written that ‘Sukur Bakhia seems happy’, and when he escaped from prison, Khalap went hammer and tongs against his political rivals, the INC (I), with a massive ‘I told you so’.
Abeer Kapoor’s ‘The Most Notorious Jailbreakers: Untold Stories of Escaped Convicts’ (Rupa, September 2020)
After one of his jail visits, Khalap was of the opinion that the prison would not be able to hold Bakhia much longer. There was also growing evidence that the don had begun to spend lavishly in prison, giving out money to the jail officials. Favours and privileges can be bought in jail, even from the prison guards who are as impoverished, underpaid and desperate as the prisoners. The leader of the regional party was not wrong in assuming that there was collusion even in the Goa Assembly, and in the Parliament, there was a standoff. MPs wanted answers to how smugglers of repute were waltzing out of prison if there was no patronage. He had been a beneficiary of political patronage; his family was also linked to the INC from Daman to Goa.
The Bombay High Court, after one of his several pleas, said that there was little or no ground on which he could be detained. And the police and the customs department were not ready or willing to release him from custody just yet. The enforcement and customs authorities were afraid that once out, he would go right back to smuggling.
As a remedy, they decided that Bakhia should be transferred to Gujarat and interned at a prison there. As the case proceeded in his time, the man known as Ganpati grew restless in prison. He even sent his brother-in-law, Haribhai Tandel, who was also a local politician, to request for his release.
On the morning of May 29, 1982, two police officers from the Gujarat State Police came with an arrest warrant in the name of Bakhia. When they reached the jail, they realized that they could not re-arrest Bakhia till the time he was released from prison. A quick fix was sought. They rushed to the lieutenant governor, who signed the order on the night of the 29th. Then, the police officers from Ahmedabad went to the jail, where the superintendent of the jail, S.U. Kamat, met them. They made Bakhia read the order, who claimed he could not read it due to poor light in the cell.
The next morning, they reached the gates of the jail but were not permitted to enter by Kamat. He flatly refused to let them in and said that Bakhia would be brought out to them.
The police officers waited, and few minutes turned to half an hour and then eventually an hour when they realized that Bakhia was not coming. The police officers were furious and made their way into the jail, and to their utter shock, found that Bakhia had fled from the backdoor as they had been waiting outside! It turned out that the mafia don was led out of a tiny side gate, to get to which he walked past Cell 16. From there, he climbed a ladder that was placed just for him. He climbed up the stairs and onto the other side of the wall to freedom, where allegedly two cars were waiting to drive him away.
There was another theory that said that there could be a high chance of Bakhia escaping from the country in an Arab dhow.
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Investigations into how Bakhia flew the coop revealed that he had found a willing ally in Kamat, a man he had known for years. Kamat was the assistant motor vehicle inspector in the department in Daman, and an old associate of Bakhia. He was known as a man who advanced his career by usurping authority and was seemingly very comfortable with being corrupt. This was a known fact! Kamat was transferred to Goa after the government changed in 1980. He was posted here previously as part of the education department. He, in a power bid, claimed seniority, and he was made in-charge of Fort Aguada Jail.
When his old friend was interned in the same prison as the one he served in, it should have been a foregone conclusion that an escape was imminent.
In the aftermath of Bakhia waltzing out of Fort Aguada Jail, Kamat’s and his assistant Fernandes’s houses were raided. In these raids, they found gold ornaments worth ₹2 lakh, fixed deposits worth ₹99,000. Kamat refuted these allegations of corruption and claimed that whatever was found were his life’s earnings. Despite Kamat’s protests, he was arrested for colluding with Bakhia. It became quite obvious that there was no other way that the smuggler could have made it out of prison without some help from an insider. And in this case it was quite apparent that the help came from an old friend. In a spate of arrests, 12 people were put behind bars. Things got a bit murky with the sudden disappearance and death of Sadanand Apa Parab Salcar, the jailer, whose body was found on a beach two days later.
However, a few months later, Bakhia decided to turn himself in, but not after carefully playing his cards. He got his wife, Manekben, who was expecting their child, to file a writ petition to the court of G.F. Cuoto, the judicial commissioner of Goa. The judicial commissioner stayed the detention order and gave Bakhia strict orders to visit the police every Monday till he appeared in court on 31 July 1982. In the interim, the income tax department wrote to the Daman police demanding the arrest of Bakhia on the variety of bailable and non-bailable offences against him, but they did not respond.
He was finally going to be tried for the crossword scheme of 1969.
Abeer Kapoor is a reporter, data visualiser and his interests are agrarian issues, politics and foreign policy. He has a masters in development studies and loves food.