A little after midnight on 31 August 2008, as encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma waited in his Malad apartment, a team of police officers knocked at his door, bearing his dismissal orders. Sharma was expecting the papers. His friends in the police force had already tipped him off, just as they had derailed multiple previous inquiries against him. And then, only momentarily, as had always been the case, Sharma’s ‘luck’ ran out.
By then, Sharma had become a law unto himself, and his dismissal was the result of a protracted inquiry by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) over two years. There had been a horde of allegations against the encounter specialist at the time — that he had amassed Rs 300 crore from Mumbai's thriving underworld during his 25 years in service (some reports claimed disproportionate wealth of over Rs 3000 crore), that he was on the payroll of fugitive terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, that he had helped two real estate developers, both reportedly close to Dawood’s gang, take forceful possession of a 2,305-sq-m plot in Malad, and that he had linked deals with gangsters Abu Salem, Ejaz Lakdawala, and Hemant Poojari.