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His Law Of The Land

Kabhai Chauhan is not only the richest police inspector in the country but a king of scams

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His Law Of The Land
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In Gujarat, the colour of money is khaki. It's a story that has all the ingredients of a Hindi potboiler and is yet all flesh and blood. Nothing about it is unreal or fantastic. That petty and junior police officials of the state make it big after trawling through the unholy worlds of politics and ill-gotten wealth is no rare occurrence - especially in a state known for its prosperity and enterprise. But even in this ongoing play of many acts, with its lavish standards, the story of Inspector Kabhai Chauhan is fantastic enough to flabbergast the most hardened of cynics. The man, alleged to have amassed a fortune of Rs 400 crore, is reputedly the richest inspector in India today. Listen to the state's director general of police (intelligence), R.N. Bhattacharya, talk, mock-indulgently, like a loving father, when asked about Chauhan: "He'll be the revenue minister of Gujarat one day," he predicts.

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The dig is, in all likelihood, taking an ironical dig at the system. But it's his subordinate Chauhan who has actually mocked it in full glory. Using his uniform, his intrinsically astute Gujarati brain for business and, of course, his political clout to create a saga which would match any crime thriller of standing in its nail-biting narrative and juicy content. His fortune is a millionaire's dream, but a lawman's nightmare.

As superintendent of police, Baroda (rural), Vivek Shrivastava is in the process of discovering. None of the eight petrol pumps, one chemical plant, five cars, two luxury apartments, one bungalow, one housing scheme and several hundred hectares of land is directly in the name of Chauhan or his three sons. Therefore, Shrivastava has to qualify all his findings with the usual adjectives: alleged, allegedly owned by, etc. The Indian Evidence Act sometimes comes in the way of proving anything because no circumstantial evidence or hearsay is admissible in a court of law. Chauhan's son Brijesh is in Surat jail for his alleged involvement in the solvent scam - where petrol pump owners have been accused of mixing naphtha in petrol. Chauhan had been arrested for forging a will bequeathing him some land near Baroda but is currently out on bail. And though the income tax authorities have begun their belated investigation, no notice has been issued as yet.

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But what is the story behind the 'irresistible rise' of Kabhai Chauhan? Son of a reasonably well-to-do farmer in Mithapur village near Limdi, Chauhan inherited some 80 acres of land after his father's death. But by then - that is in 1977 - he had already joined the Gujarat police as a sub-inspector. The two stars on the shoulders of this six-foot tall and handsome Rajput were hardly any measure of his abilities. He was capable of much more and he obviously knew it. With his luck, he landed straight in late chief minister Chimanbhai Patel's lap, who indulged him and nurtured him for bigger things. It ignited in the lowly police officer a latent desire to succeed beyond his means.

The story is shrouded in grey, but officials say it may have all begun with bootlegging. That, ironically, is the bottomline of every success story in Mahatma Gandhi's 'dry' state. Providing protection to bootleggers is one of the biggest money-spinners for all kinds of law enforcement authorities. Shrivastava feels that Chauhan probably accumulated enough wealth over the years that enabled him to swim further up the creek of slush money.

The next rung of the crime ladder in Gujarat, as elsewhere, is land. Protect the land sharks, evict unauthorised tenants for them or simply grab it with the force of uniform. Real estate prices in the state kiss the sky and owning plots of land in any town - particularly Baroda - can rake in the moolah faster than anything else here.

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The modus operandi is simple. Builders buy only disputed property or property with squatters on it. They pay a fraction of the actual price of the land (it's otherwise unsaleable) and thanks to a well-oiled graft machine they manage to get the land vacated - bribing the politicians and the police all along the way. Then comes that familiar cancer - multi-storeyed shopping complexes and housing schemes - bringing in serious money.

Chauhan, however, went a step further. With his initial corpus he allegedly went into lucrative partnerships to buy benami land at throw-away prices and resold it or built complexes. There is also a Bombay Tenancy Act in force in Gujarat which till two years ago prohibited sale or purchase of any land by anybody except the farmers. The farmers could also buy land only within an eight-km radius of their holding. This latter provision has now been scrapped by the Keshubhai Patel government because it severely restricted the number of buyers for a plot of land and kept the land prices down by using artificial mechanisms.

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Police say that in 1989, to get round the then existing provisions of the Act, Chauhan forged a will in which a Muslim family near Baroda 'gifted' him some land. This enabled him to buy more of it within an eight-km radius and he intelligently invested in agricultural land closest to Baroda city. Later, with his political clout, this land was converted from farm land to commercial plots.

Once he managed to do that, it was unbridled prosperity and unaccounted for wealth all the way. So much so that he is now allegedly the richest police inspector in the country who sits pretty in the middle of, well, a thick plot. But Chauhan was hardly the man to get stars in his eyes because of all this. He proceeded in a very meticulous fashion to get some petrol pump licenses. And that was followed by the setting up of a chemical plant that produced naphtha which he used to adulterate the petrol being sold at his pumps.

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It was liquid gold indeed and Chauhan's petrol pumps quadrupled his income. At any rate his fortune, estimated at Rs 400 crore by the local media and at Rs 200 crore by Shrivastava, has grown around his murky real estate dealings and his eight petrol pumps, none of which are owned directly by him or his family. For instance, the Jalaram petrol pump on the main Baroda-Mumbai highway is owned by one Jhulaji Damor, a tribal from Panchmahal district who - if you haven't already guessed - works as a service attendant at the pump. The land on which the pump is built is owned by Chauhan's son Brijesh and that is the only link the police have been able to establish.

Somewhere along the way, Chauhan became a close confidant of Chimanbhai Patel, the powerful chief minister in the early 1990s. Senior police officers reckon that this was the time when the lowly inspector's political clout grew immensely. They say that even as a lowly sub-inspector he had a say in the posting of the superintendents of police of the district.

There's more. In 1987, Chauhan's wife died under mysterious circumstances and he was arrested on charges of murder. He remained suspended for four years before being exonerated by the court for lack of evidence. Many believe Patel may have had a hand in his acquittal.

However, all things, good or bad, must come to an end. It's widely believed that the clout Chauhan enjoyed under Patel is backfiring now as home minister Haren Pandya is reportedly taking more than a keen interest in his case. Chauhan's close associate Prakashbhai alleges that his friend is being victimised because of political rivalries and the politicking within the police force. Former chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhary has charged Keshubhai and his relatives with protecting Chauhan while Pandya says: "It's the successive Congress governments who protected and encouraged people like Chauhan. "

But would it be fair to blame Chauhan alone? He is only one of the 10 police inspectors under investigation for disproportionate income-assets ratio. And this perhaps points to the fact that in Gujarat, the most coveted and cushy job is that of a low-ranking police officer. Chauhan's daughter has married the son of his colleague, inspector Aswar, who some say is even richer than Chauhan. Again, it's all benami and the long arm of the law stops well short of touching their own. Says a senior police officer: "There are at least 200 police inspectors in the state who own more than Rs 5 crore worth of property." Some of the booty is definitely shared. In spite of all the cases and the bad press, dig C.P. Singh is yet to suspend Chauhan and has refused to comment on his case.

So, what does one make of all this now? No wonder that Gujarat has managed to build a tradition of dismissed police constables who invariably land up in politics. One of them from Bhavnagar has also been a deputy minister and another, Jethabhai Dharwad, is currently a sitting bjp mla.

Prakashbhai, who spoke on behalf of Chauhan, insisted that the will forgery case is bogus. He also said that he is surprised at the figures being bandied about in the press. "If he owned that much, why would he want to remain an inspector anymore? Wouldn't he get into politics?"

But politics is at the back of Chauhan's mind for sure. He would like to follow in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors in the police force. Officers like Shrivastava, meanwhile, may do well to be a bit more circumspect in the case. After all, they will have to wait upon and salute the same man when he dons the "revenue minister's" mantle tomorrow.

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