Lady killers: Asha Gawli manages Arun Gawli’s gang and (top) Monica Bedi, who engineered Abu Salem’s extortion career

Dons have a certain image. You think of them as hard-boiled men in gold chains, designer shades and white, pointy boots — and surrounded by burly, shifty-eyed sharpshooters in safari suits.

There are some women behind them, though, who don’t quite fit the bill. They look like ordinary women who live their lives for their children and husbands. But there is a difference. These are women who are stepping into the domain of crime, and following in the footsteps of their husbands, sons or brothers.

Gujarat’s Godmother, Santokben Jadeja, looked like a busy hausfrau out to get her vegetables when she was escorted by the police to a thana for interrogation in a rape and murder case. Santokben is the widow of Sarman Munja Jadeja, who ruled the mafia world of Porbandar till he was killed in 1986.

Santokben is one of a kind in Gujarat. In neighbouring Maharashtra, however, women connected with crime is a veritable list of who’s-who. Police arc-lights, for instance, are on 47-year-old Haseena Parkar, sister of India’s most wanted mafia don, Dawood Ibrahim. But she is not the only one who’s had a brush with the law. The Mumbai police have started zeroing in on Mafia women — wives, mothers and sisters of members of the underworld.

Take Chhota Rajan’s wife, Sujata Nikhalje, who has been in jail for 18 months. Or consider former starlet Monica Bedi, Abu Salem’s wife, who is in prison in Bhopal. Then there is absconding gangster Ravi Poojary’s wife, Padma, who disappeared after the police turned the heat on her in a passport forgery case five months ago. Slain gangster Suresh Manchekar’s wife and mother are in police custody on charges of murder and extortion. Asha Gawli, wife of gangster-turned-MLA Arun Gawli, may be happy singing bhajans as of now, but the police are on high alert.

The Mumbai police say they are amazed at these women who are “unswervingly loyal” to their husbands despite their criminal record. Almost all the mafia wives married their men when they were gangsters.

For years the mafia in Mumbai followed an unwritten code of not allowing their women into the business. The situation changed when the police started zeroing in on several top criminals. With the dons in jail, or absconding, the wives and mothers stepped in, to take charge of their men’s empires.

That is what Sujata Nikhalje — referred to as Nani — did. She grew up in a sprawling lower middle class housing colony in Tilak Nagar in Chembur. Chhota Rajan, an established gangster in the area, fell in love with Sujata. In the Eighties, when Chhota Rajan followed his mentor, Dawood Ibrahim, to Dubai, he called his lady love there. They were married in a ceremony arranged by Dawood.

After Chhota Rajan broke up with Dawood in 1993, Sujata flew back home to India with her three children. And the police say that she lived and managed the show in lieu of her husband, who’s on the run, for years without anybody having the faintest clue.

Police sources admit that even until 2000, the mafia women were not kept under watch and frequently flitted in and out of the country to meet their spouses. But when Sujata returned to India, she was a different person — especially after Chhota Rajan decreed that his wife would take care of his business.

Tilak Nagar was where Sujata expanded her empire — and this was her nemesis as well. A real estate gold mine, this was a sprawling government colony, dotted with 60-year-old, two-storeyed buildings. The buildings, including the one she grew up in, were being redeveloped. When the builders faced a problem, they asked Sujata Nikhalje to intervene. She did so for a price.

She soon realised that there was more money to be made in construction than in arm-twisting. So she floated her own company, Khushi Developers Private Ltd, got it listed and began approaching tenants in the 150 buildings of the area. Khushi developers had five buildings under its wing when one man gingerly walked into a police station and filed a complaint about extortion. The police lost no time in getting Sujata to the police station.

“She is 5'2' and might weigh 62 kg, but she has the air of a queen. She thumbed her nose at us and refused to drink water or eat anything for 16 days. She lived on saline,” says an officer who has interacted with her.

Then there is 30-some- thing Padma Poojary. A Sikh by birth, she met gangster Ravi Poojary in Andheri when they were in school. The police say Poojary, a former Chhota Rajan gang member, is currently one of the top criminals of Mumbai and behind most extortion calls. His men fired at film-maker Mahesh Bhatt and, sometime ago, gunned down two people in a Bangalore office when the owner refused to give in to their extortion demands.

Ravi Poojary is holed up in some African country. His wife handled his “business”, keeping a low profile in the Sher-e-Punjab colony in Andheri east where she lived in a rented house. But the police got after Padma, who studied in a convent and speaks good English, when she submitted a fake school-leaving certificate for a passport. The police started checking out her financial transactions. “It was known that money was coming to her by hawala,” says a source.

Like Padma, Asha Gawli, wife of gangster-turned MLA, has been a busy woman. Known as Ayesha before her marriage, the police believe that she was the one who changed Gawli’s fortunes by pushing him into politics. Referred to as “Mummy” by Gawli’s associates, she is the one who manages the show. They live in a walled fortress in a chawl in south Mumbai. She practises both Islam and Hinduism and records devotional songs.

It is not always a wife who takes over from a criminal. Take Laxmi Manchekar, whose son, Suresh, grew up in the mill heartland of Mumbai in Parel. He worked with gangster Guru Satam, had a flourishing extortion racket and was a suspect in the murder of trade union leader Datta Samant. He was killed in Kolhapur in 2003 by a Thane police squad. His 72-year old mother tried to continue the son’s business of extortion. She is in jail now, undergoing life imprisonment for the murder of a builder who refused to meet an extortion demand.

Supriya, Manchekar’s 28-year-old-wife, had no criminal record. She fell in love with Suresh when he was a patient and she was a nurse at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in 1994. After her husband’s death she was persuaded by gang members to take charge. It didn’t last long — her very first attempt at extortion backfired. She had demanded Rs 25,000 from a meat shop owner. The police laid a trap and caught her in the act in July 2004.

If Asha Gawli gave her husband his new profile, it was Monica Bedi who gave Abu Salem a foothold in Bollywood. The police point out that Salem was not a gangster to reckon with until he met Monica. It is said that Monica engineered his extortion career in Bollywood. She gave him the names and contacts for extortion calls — which turned him into a millionaire. It was Monica’s idea to take Abu Salem to the US, away from Dawood’s sphere of influence. If 9/11 had not happened they would have been happily settled in the United States.

But then, you win some, and lose some.