In the summer of 1994, Danish Aslam Baig packed his bags in Lucknow and set off on a journey that would change the course of his life forever.

Thousands of semi-literate youths leave the shores of their land for better prospects. But Danish Baig was no ordinary man with stars in his eyes. On the contrary, the former chauffeur with a small-time politician in Delhi and petty criminal in Mumbai had already made it big when he fled India. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believes that he had assets worth a whopping Rs 400 crore when he left for Dubai.

The world knows Danish Baig as Abu Salem ? currently in prison in Mumbai. Ever since he was extradited from Portugal in November last year, Salem has been in the news. But a set of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) documents ? made exclusively available to The Telegraph ? explains how he ended up earning crores of rupees in a span of eight years. And the documents show how he went from one place to another, changing his identity and partner.

The money mostly came from extortions, but nobody quite knows where it has been parked. The CBI, which has been investigating Salem’s rise in the underworld, believes that he bumped off music magnate Gulshan Kumar, issued threats to filmmaker Rajiv Rai, killed builder Pradeep Jain and Manisha Koirala’s secretary Ajit Deewani to create an image of a man who meant business. Which is why the next time he placed a call for money, nobody ? from Bollywood bigwigs to rich Mumbai builders ? demurred.

Salem started making plans to flee the country once he felt the CBI was hot on his heels after the Mumbai blasts of 1993. And after leaving India, he successfully dodged the investigators for eight years, changing addresses, nationalities, continents and wives as he played the master forger.

“But the CBI kept tracking Abu Salem’s movements across various continents using Interpol and later the FBI and even global positioning technology to track his satellite phone movements,” says a deputy superintendent of police at CBI’s special task force.

Sometimes he travelled as an Indian, occasionally as a Pakistani national. He changed religions ? once he was a Hindu and often a Muslim. He used Botox to ward off age, shaved off his beard and moustache, got a new hair cut, discarded his pathani for an Armani and fez cap for a younger, smarter look. And most of this was done for Fauzia, aka Monica Bedi, the new woman in his life.

The investigators believe that it was Monica Bedi who engineered Abu Salem’s extortion career in Bollywood, supplying Salem with all the information on Bollywood

The CBI has now wrapped the formal charges against Abu Salem with a charge sheet in the Mumbai blasts case and the murder of builder Pradeep Jain. It is now building its case to show how Salem was Akil Ahmed Azmi in Dubai. He was Arsalan Mohsin Ali, holder of a Pakistani passport. And he was B. Ramesh Kumar with a US passport.

When he left India in 1994, it was as Danish Baig. And as Baig, he even managed to get a graduation certificate from Mumbai University ? though Salem had only studied up to class IV in Azamgarh, where his father was an advocate till he died in a road accident, leaving the family badly off.

It was as Danish Baig that Salem had first been arrested in Dubai. A month after the Gulshan Kumar murder in August 1997, Salem was caught and imprisoned. The Indian government tried to get Salem extradited, but the Dubai police said the man in its custody was Danish Baig and not Abu Salem. One month later, Abu Salem was out of prison. The CBI had by then got hold of papers to prove that Danish Baig and Abu Salem were the same ? but it was too late.

Salem, the papers indicate, then went on to assume a Pakistani identity. He metamorphosed into an Arsalan Mohsin Ali and married ?though only on paper ? a Pakistani called Sana Malik.

The CBI tracked down a Sana Malik in Hyderabad but discovered that she was not a Pakistani. By the time it had established that Arsalan Mohsin Ali was Abu Salem, he had fled to the US. And Monica Bedi, who had left India as Fauzia Baig, wife of Danish Baig, had, meanwhile, joined him.

The investigators believe that it was Bedi who had engineered Abu Salem’s extortion career in Bollywood. The papers say that she managed the racket, supplying Salem with all the information on Bollywood. It was, again, Bedi who decided that Salem should move to the US.

Once in the US, he was Arsalan Mohsin Ali, owner of a twin-screen cinema house and a gas station in Texas. Abu Salem had two houses where he lived with Bedi and his legally-married wife, Samira Jumaani, who continues to be in the US.

And then 9/11 happened, and Salem decided that a Hindu name would save him from alert airports. That is how Abu Salem got his new avatar as Ramesh Kumar.

But the duo slipped up. Monica had expressed a desire to visit Germany, and the newly-baptised B. Ramesh Kumar wrote a letter to the German consulate asking that his wife be granted a visa. The problem was that Ramesh Kumar gave his wife’s name as Monica Bedi.

The CBI was alerted. It was, after this, not difficult to keep tabs on him. For a while Salem kept changing his passport and his image, Bedi stuck to her name. This, the papers say, was a dead give away. Interpol alerted the FBI who in turn kept a watch on his movements. It was the FBI that alerted the Lisbon police after Ramesh Kumar, by then convinced that the US agencies were closing in on him, left with Monica for Portugal.

For a month after their arrival in Lisbon the local police kept a watch on their movements. They were finally arrested in September, 2002. A chartered cargo plane brought Abu Salem and Monica Bedi to India on November 11, 2005. And the rest is history.