When it comes to money, the mafia contemplates everyone with suspicion, except perhaps the don’s other half. At a time when both the Indian and international police are closing in on the Mumbai Mafiosi, the big daddies of crime are being forced to look, not at trusted sidekicks, but homewards for the support to prop up their financial empires.

Stepping back from the unwritten, old-world mob commandment that women and immediate family be kept at an arm’s length from the murky operations of the syndicate, the gangsters from Mumbai rely and trust only their women to handle the key to the safety lockers. And today, it is the wives of the bhais who are funneling the ill-gotten money accumulated from extortion, real estate, smuggling and drugs back into circulation.

The police say don Chhota Rajan’s wife Sujata Nikhalje was his business and financial manager and she adroitly kept track of 37 accounts in various banks, including Standard Chartered, State Bank of India, Sangli Bank, Canara Bank and the Union Bank of India. Nikhalje apparently received lakhs of rupees by way of remittances from foreign banks. The Mumbai Police eventually caught on to the game and in 2006 Sujata Nikhalje became the first mafia-missus to be booked under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). She was charge-sheeted last year along with eight other Rajan aides who are now facing trial.

“She is a housewife and running legitimate businesses like any other woman entrepreneur,” says advocate Satish Maneshinde, her defence counsel. “If she wanted to support her husband in his activities, she would not have stayed in India and suffered for 17 long years.”

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