Not many are willing to listen, even if Nikhalje is doing the once unthinkable of handling mob moolah. But Rajan is not the first gangster to fall back on the family. His one time crony, gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli, actually started the trend. In the past five years, Arun Gawli, the only don to have stayed put in Mumbai and capped a career of crime with a seat in the Maharashtra Assembly, kept exhorting his wife to come out in public as a singer. Asha Gawli, heeding his advice, launched a music company and dished out several albums of paeans to her deity. Despite the songs having no takers, Aai Music Service, her company, has raked in big profits according to Arun Gawli’s account books. And when the Income Tax Department announced an amnesty under the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) a couple of years ago, the don admitted to an annual income of over Rs 1 crore. By last year, when he filed the statutory income statement before fighting the state elections, his income had swelled to Rs 2 crore.

In Mumbai’s underworld, most gangsters have opted for love marriages. Inter-faith marriages are also very common. Asha Gawli was a Muslim before she got married to Arun Gawli. Except for one marriage that fell apart (Ashwin Naik, a Maharashtrian, killed his Gujarati wife Neeta Naik who was a city corporator for cheating on him), most mafia marriages seem to survive the test of time and trials and separation.

The longevity of mob marriages is suddenly a topic of concern. The Mumbai police have now discovered to their chagrin that the mafia wives—either tutored in the mafia ways or picking them up by assimilation—are money-savvy, smarter and clever. So while Nikhalje was handling the big sums remitted in the name of her three daughters, other gangsters too were using their wives to launder their illegal earnings and even to manage their funds.

... contd.