With several voices in recent times criticising the Indian government for hanging Yakub Memon as a sort of replacement to his brother Tiger Memon, a shocker has emerged that has brought the latter quite literally back into play.
On July 30, just an hour and a half before his brother was hanged, Tiger Memon (one of the primary accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case) rang up the Memon household on the family landline.
Tiger Memon Talks of Revenge, but Does Not Grieve
Economic Times has managed to access a copy of the transcript of that conversation which has now gotten police and security agencies in a flutter. According to the transcript – carried by ET – Tiger, during the course of the conversation, is heard talking about revenge with his mother and another family member on the phone. No words of grief are heard from him at all for his brother.
“The fact that a call from Tiger was intercepted was confirmed by officials from security agencies in Mumbai and Delhi”. However, it must be noted that Additional Chief Secretary (Home) KP Bakshi insisted to ET that he was not aware of any such call taking place at all. He stated:
Neither the Maharashtra DGP (director general of police) nor the central agencies have given us any such report.
– Additional Chief Secretary (Home) KP Bakshi to ET
Even the crime branch denied any knowledge of the intercepted conversation.
Don’t have any such intercepted conversation which a newspaper claims.
— Dhananjay Kulkarni, DCP, Crime Branch, Mumbai
“Main Unko Chukwaonga” (I Will Make Them Pay): Tiger Memon
According to the ET report, the phone rang at about 5.35 am in the Memon household at the Al Husseini building in Mahim – just 40 minutes, incidentally, after the Supreme Court upheld the decision to hang Yakub.
The report goes on to state how an identified man answered the phone and there were no introductory questions asked on either side – an indication of the fact that both parties had communicated regularly before. Soon after the greeting of ‘salaam walaikum’ though, Tiger Memon is heard telling the person to hand over the phone to his mother, Hanifa.
The transcript – a copy of which ET has accessed – also records his mother as being initially “reluctant” to talk to her son. However, on the insistence of the unidentified man, she takes the phone. Tiger then proceeds to tell her that he will “make them pay” (“Main unko chukwaonga’) hinting explicitly at revenge.
A distraught Hanifa is heard sobbing on the phone and asks Tiger to stop the violence. She says, ‘Bas ho gaya. Pehle ke vajah se mera Yakub gaya ab aur nahi main dekh sakti. (Stop this, due to the first incident, I have lost Yakub. Now I can’t bear to see any more people dying).’ Hanifa Memon’s appeal, however, falls on deaf ears as Tiger repeats his revenge message. When Hanifa hands the phone over to the unidentified family member, Tiger promises him that the ‘tears of the family will not go waste’.
– Transcript of the conversation, as reported by ET
Mumbai Police Bracing for “Possible Terror Attacks”
According to Mumbai Police officials, the call was made using voice over internet protocol (VOIP) facilities but they could not identify the IP address as “the source of the call kept ‘bouncing’ from one IP address to another.”
The call barely lasted three minutes – which the police believe may have something to do with Tiger not wanting his location to be traced. The timing of the call and the sinister threats have put Maharashtra police and central intelligence agencies into “high-alert mode”, with the latter revealing to ET that they are now bracing for possible terror attacks.
Even before Yakub’s hanging, we knew there would be repercussions. But after the phone call, there is an imminent threat. There will be a terror attack either in the state or in some other part of the country.
– An Official to ET
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