Indian mafiosi: The story of ‘Cleopatra’, once crime boss Varadarajan Mudaliar’s trusted aide

Jaya tore through bloodlines for power. Iqra built an empire on powder and lies. Saira ruled the trade of flesh without a crown. But even as their names filled my notes, one voice lingered in my head, louder than the rest: the woman in Tirthala, wrapped in quiet. The story had begun with a bowl of rasam, a hidden house, and a name I couldn’t forget. Cleopatra. Her story wasn’t finished.

“So, you met Irfani?” she asked.

“Before our first meeting, yes,” I said.

“How did he seem?”

“Proud. That people still whisper your name in Dharavi like it’s a prayer. Or a curse.”

She chuckled. “Both are useful, no?”

This was our second meeting, this time in Thrissur, a decade after our first encounter. She was residing in a hospice, confronting the final stages of cancer. Though illness had rendered her more delicate, she retained an undeniable elegance.

“I’m only here for a few weeks,” she said, her voice steady. I knew that by “here”, she meant this world, and not the city.

I asked again if I could write about her life.

“Only if you never reveal my name, or Irfani’s. There are some confidences that need to be respected,” she replied.

The conversation soon went back to Papamani, the drug peddler with ambitions to challenge the Afghans. “Because I was alone in this world, she made me her Number Two,” she said. “She told me to use the same intellect I had employed to help Varada grow.”

“Did you?” I asked.

She nodded. “But I never liked her. I only wanted to hold on to Dharavi, see Varada’s kids grow, see his legacy remain. Papamani was my only logical reason to stay in Dharavi.”

Papamani was embroiled in conflicts with the Nigerians. Drawing inspiration from Cleopatra, she believed in making adversaries realise they had stakes in the game. “Take pure cocaine from Afghans and make Nigerians the distributors,” she explained. “They can’t speak the language, won’t reveal much about you.”

This strategy led to the settlement of Nigerians in Dharavi, right in the heart of the city, and Mira Road, a far-flung suburb back then. By 1995, Varada had retired to Chennai. She remained in Dharavi until 2004, all the time hearing of plots against her. The eventual fallout with Papamani was inevitable.

Finally, Irfani, then in jail, warned her, “Papamani has given a five-lakh supari, and at least four shooters are looking for you. You know too much.”

Contemplating her next move, someone suggested converting to Islam and going to Mecca, believing Papamani’s reach wouldn’t extend there. She considered it but felt it would be a deception. Instead, she fled to Rajasthan, to the shrine at Taragarh near Ajmer, living anonymously in a hijab. The mountaintop has a shrine and a population of some 2000 Muslims centred around it. Hijab gave her anonymity and she learnt a lot about Islam living in that area.

After years of stay in Taragarh, she moved to Tirthala in Kerala, thinking Tamilians wouldn’t pursue her in Kerala due to existing enmities. She took up farming and observed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism influenced by Salafi teachings. Using the knowledge she had gathered from Taragarh, she transformed and dissuaded around 150 people from extremist thought.

When asked where she met them, she said, “I would put on a hijab and go to a mosque in Cherumal. When the Holy Prophet was alive, some Keralites had gone to meet him and came back to build a mosque there.”

It was the oldest mosque built near the coast of Thrissur. Cleopatra believed that Muslims of Kerala are not well read and generally influenced by Gulf money. Thus, they accepted their doctrine without research. The people of Kerala are by and large very ignorant about the real tenets of Islam. She felt that the Indian government should check the Salafi brand of Islam which is totally funded by Saudi Arabia. Malayalis are a diligent but gullible race. It was easy to convince them.

“The Malayalis revere the last prophet of Islam,” she said, “but don’t know how to emulate his sterling character.” She sat back, the tiredness showing on her face. “You know, Zaidi sahab,” she mused, “A bad man is easily dealt with. Amar Naik was killed. Haji Mastan was tamed. Even Varada ran off to Chennai. But a bad woman… now that’s a different matter altogether.”

“How so?” I asked.

She spoke of Anaq, the daughter of Adam, considered the first witch in Islamic tradition. I was surprised that she knew the story.

“Killing her was so difficult,” she said, “that God had to create three huge beasts to kill her. A lion of the size of an elephant, a wolf of the size of a camel and an eagle of the size of a donkey to overpower her. Anaq had two heads, twenty fingers. Her son was named Ouj. The giant who survived the Great Flood of Noah. Moses finally struck him down.”

I was dumbfounded by her knowledge of Islamic history.

“Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships,” she said. “Draupadi made two factions of the same family fight. Socrates’ teacher was a woman but no one remembers her name. While it was Aspasia who revolutionized Greek philosophy through her teachings. Women have always created chaos. But that’s not all. We also create change.”

I could see she was drifting off. I stood up to take my leave.

As we parted, she reminded me, “Wait for me to leave this world before you start writing it. And never use my real name or my lover’s. I don’t want his family to be affected.”

That night, I dug into my notes again. Up to this point, I was grappling with several ethical or moral dilemmas about “glorifying” bad women. But the Anaqs of the world deserved their own place in the annals of history. The conversation with Akka had strengthened my resolve.

Merely writing about someone does not glorify them. Had that been the case, every prophet who described the rebellion of Satan who was named Iblees would have been a sinner. For now, there was no scarcity of women who had sinned.

There was one who ruled from the ravines.

Another promised to turn everything she touched into gold.

Yet another headed one of the largest prostitution rings in the country.

And the last had a penchant for thugging cops.

Such women, I’d seen, spared no one.

Excerpted with permission from Mafia Queens of India, S Hussain Zaidi with Velly Thevar, Simon and Schuster India.