For the past two days, industrialist Nusli Wadia has been worked up by a series of phone calls and text messages that his employees received, allegedly from underworld don Ravi Pujari, warning him not to get involved with the ongoing case between actor Preity Zinta and his son Ness Wadia.
The police is investigating the calls and has given Nusli Wadia security, but this is not the textile tycoon’s first brush with underworld threats. Back in 1989, Wadia was almost murdered by contract killers, but the plot was uncovered by the Mumbai police before the act could be executed.
One of the prime accused in the case was Kirti Ambani, the head of public relations at Reliance Industries, and the case soon came to epitomise the cut-throat textile war between Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance and the Wadias, who own the Bombay Dyeing textile company.
On June 30, Nusli Wadia will finally depose before a Central Bureau of Investigation court, 25 years after the case started.
“It has been 25 long years and the trial is mostly over, except for Wadia’s deposing,” said Mahesh Jethmalani, Wadia’s advocate. Although the Central Bureau of Investigation initially felt that it did not need Wadia as their prosecution witness, Jethmalani spent a long time convincing the court that his statement would be important.
In the last hearing of the case on April 30, the court finally granted Wadia the permission to depose. “I don’t expect his testimony to take very long – he will depose for two hours at the most,” said Jethmalani.
In the 1980s, Nusli Wadia was already known as heir to the Wadia family businesses, of which Bombay Dyeing textiles was the most prominent. Dhirubhai Ambani, on the other hand, had grown from a modest entrepreneur to one of the biggest industrial tycoons in the country who made it big in, among other things, synthetic textiles.
In mid-1989, senior officials in the Mumbai Crime Branch got wind of a conspiracy in the underworld to kill Wadia. Their leads led them to Arjun Babaria, a musician who called himself Prince Babaria and ran a band called Prince Babaria and his Orchestra. He was also known to the police as a "fixer", or arranger of contract killings. Babaria had allegedly appointed Ivan Sequeira, a relatively inexperienced killer, to do the job.
What shocked the business world, however, was the arrest of Kirti Ambani, who is not related to Mukesh's branch of the family, in the murky case. Kirti Ambani was arrested, along with Babaria, in August 1989. He was charged with hiring Babaria to murder Reliance’s rival.
A fourth suspect, Ramesh Jagothia, was also arrested and in 2003, the sessions court formally charged all four with criminal conspiracy to murder Nusli Wadia, which could lead to a death sentence if they were convicted.
In their investigations, the police are said to have found several photographs of Kirti Ambani with Babaria, as well as pictures of Wadia and his car. According to author Hamish McDonald, in his book Ambani and Sons, Babaria had allegedly asked for Rs 50 lakh to kill Wadia, but he ended up being paid just Rs 13 lakh.
“Textile wars in the 1980s could get very violent because the stakes were very high,” said Darryl D’Monte, author of the book Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills. “The Nusli Wadia case, however, was never very clear cut, because the alleged assailant was also rather inexperienced.”
For defenders of the Ambanis, this was a key aspect of the case: why would anyone hire a novice killer?
Wadia’s testimony on June 30 might now help take the case forward, as he is likely to talk about the possible motivations and larger conspiracy behind the murder attempt.
The police is investigating the calls and has given Nusli Wadia security, but this is not the textile tycoon’s first brush with underworld threats. Back in 1989, Wadia was almost murdered by contract killers, but the plot was uncovered by the Mumbai police before the act could be executed.
One of the prime accused in the case was Kirti Ambani, the head of public relations at Reliance Industries, and the case soon came to epitomise the cut-throat textile war between Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance and the Wadias, who own the Bombay Dyeing textile company.
On June 30, Nusli Wadia will finally depose before a Central Bureau of Investigation court, 25 years after the case started.
“It has been 25 long years and the trial is mostly over, except for Wadia’s deposing,” said Mahesh Jethmalani, Wadia’s advocate. Although the Central Bureau of Investigation initially felt that it did not need Wadia as their prosecution witness, Jethmalani spent a long time convincing the court that his statement would be important.
In the last hearing of the case on April 30, the court finally granted Wadia the permission to depose. “I don’t expect his testimony to take very long – he will depose for two hours at the most,” said Jethmalani.
In the 1980s, Nusli Wadia was already known as heir to the Wadia family businesses, of which Bombay Dyeing textiles was the most prominent. Dhirubhai Ambani, on the other hand, had grown from a modest entrepreneur to one of the biggest industrial tycoons in the country who made it big in, among other things, synthetic textiles.
In mid-1989, senior officials in the Mumbai Crime Branch got wind of a conspiracy in the underworld to kill Wadia. Their leads led them to Arjun Babaria, a musician who called himself Prince Babaria and ran a band called Prince Babaria and his Orchestra. He was also known to the police as a "fixer", or arranger of contract killings. Babaria had allegedly appointed Ivan Sequeira, a relatively inexperienced killer, to do the job.
What shocked the business world, however, was the arrest of Kirti Ambani, who is not related to Mukesh's branch of the family, in the murky case. Kirti Ambani was arrested, along with Babaria, in August 1989. He was charged with hiring Babaria to murder Reliance’s rival.
A fourth suspect, Ramesh Jagothia, was also arrested and in 2003, the sessions court formally charged all four with criminal conspiracy to murder Nusli Wadia, which could lead to a death sentence if they were convicted.
In their investigations, the police are said to have found several photographs of Kirti Ambani with Babaria, as well as pictures of Wadia and his car. According to author Hamish McDonald, in his book Ambani and Sons, Babaria had allegedly asked for Rs 50 lakh to kill Wadia, but he ended up being paid just Rs 13 lakh.
“Textile wars in the 1980s could get very violent because the stakes were very high,” said Darryl D’Monte, author of the book Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills. “The Nusli Wadia case, however, was never very clear cut, because the alleged assailant was also rather inexperienced.”
For defenders of the Ambanis, this was a key aspect of the case: why would anyone hire a novice killer?
Wadia’s testimony on June 30 might now help take the case forward, as he is likely to talk about the possible motivations and larger conspiracy behind the murder attempt.
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