The Waning Influence of Mumbai’s Police Informants

Until two decades ago, police informants known as khabris were a vital part of almost any investigation for the Mumbai Police. However, with the advent of technology, the increasing complexity of the cases to be solved and a heightened public awareness about corruption, their influence has considerably reduced. Hindustan Times
23 May, 2015

In May 2011, a khabri—informant—tipped off a sub-inspector from the Bandra police station in Mumbai, about an armed assailant called Riyaz Kashmiri, a high-school dropout from Mumbai who had a few run ins with the law in the past for petty crimes and was allegedly on his way to bump off two Bandra-based property dealers. Based on the tip off, the police arrested Kashmiri at Bandstand in Bandra. Upon frisking him, the police found a revolver, photographs of the alleged targets and a piece of paper containing names of the person who presumably gave him the contract. It was as smooth as an operation could be. The only thing was that it was too good to be true. A policeman’s instinct, one of his most lethal weapons, told the cops that something was amiss. On further interrogation at the station, Kashmiri told them how his being arrested was a part of a grand plan. He claimed then that a top level informer, Afzal Khan, had paid Kashmiri to get arrested and blame the hit on the two Kutch-based builders whose names were duly mentioned on the chit. Khan hatched the plan at the behest of rival builders who wanted the two Kutch-based builders behind bars.

Khabris or “zero dials”—called so because of the famous trope of a gangster who makes a circle, or a zero, with his hand to warn his peers about a possible informant—have always been slippery customers. But the Mumbai police turned to them unerringly, in the 1980s for the pickpockets and in the 1990s to wade through the grime that was the Mumbai underworld. In the past two decades, however, the famed khabri network of the Mumbai police has slowly been sidelined like the public telephone booths they once rushed to, before mobile phones became easily accessible, when some piping hot khabar—news—came their way.

While the waning influence of the khabris could be written off as yet another sacrifice at the altar of technology, scratch the surface and you find that the lack of extra income for policemen, inherent risks of the job, reduction in the number of old school policemen, end of gang wars that once bloodied the streets of Mumbai and the change that the city itself has undergone have all played a part in khabris being pushed to the margins as an investigation tool.

Of the eight policemen that I spoke to for this story, ranging from senior IPS officers to the lower rungs that have their ears to the ground, many concurred that technology has been an important reason for the reduced use of khabris as a source of information. Retired assistant police commissioner Prabhakar Satam, who began his career in early ’80s and retired last year, told me that the police preferred to depend on tracking mobile phones and checking call records or footage from CCTV cameras and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), which have now become the prime tools of investigation in several cases. In June 2012, for instance, the DB Marg police in south Mumbai arrested a 24-year-old alleged thief by creating a fake Facebook profile in the name of a woman and convincing the accused, Karan Patel, to meet her. Patel, who had stolen Rs 6 lakh from his employer, was greeted by police at the spot and arrested. An assistant inspector from Dongri police station in south Mumbai, which is known to be a hotbed for khabris, corroborated this perspective and told me that the police had started using networking sites like Facebook to nab suspects.

In the same vein, a police inspector (PI) level officer from the Mumbai crime branch unit 5 located near Kurla railway station in central Mumbai explained to me that after using preliminary tactics such as the interrogation of suspects, the first route that most investigations tend to take is the use of technology for additional clues. Even while questioning suspects, he said, they would check the location of the suspects on the day of the crime by accessing their mobile records.

A case in point, he added, is how the crime branch of the Mumbai Police solved the murder of Esther Anuhya—a 23-year-old techie whose body was found in Mumbai in December 2013. “We had the CCTV footage of a man leaving with Anuhya at LTT (Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) railway station, where she was last seen. We got call details of all mobile phones in that area and found the mobile number he was using,” the officer told me. After taking a look at the footage, the police approached several service providers for a data dump through which they were able to gain access to all the calls that were made or received during time period that they had requested for.

Even though his number was switched off, the police used the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number of the mobile handset to identify the numbers that had been contacted through the handset. “Based on several permutations and combinations and reams of data, we could confirm the role of the accused and subsequently arrest him,” the officer said, adding that the arrest, which was the result of an investigation that took around three to four weeks, was possible only because of technical intelligence.

The officer was, however, quick to add that the tools of investigation tend to change with the type of crime: “When it comes to crimes like pickpocketing or bag-snatching, we take the help of khabris as they normally know which criminal is active in which area and the kind of crime he is involved in.” He went on to say, “Criminals are particular about the type of crime they commit. A chain snatcher will not snatch a bag and vice versa. So if there has been a robbery at Dadar (in central Mumbai), a khabri would know the people who are active as robbers in that particular area.”

Another PI level officer from unit 5 at Kurla explained that, a lot of times, human and technical intelligence go hand in hand. “If a khabri tells us a particular person was involved in a crime, we check the mobile location of the suspect on the day of the crime. If it matches we may go ahead and follow-up on the tip off,” he said. Satam had also said, “There are deeper pockets in the city like slums where technology cannot infiltrate and where your only source of information is a khabri.”

Khabris, however, have their share of doubts about the efficacy of technical surveillance. Last month, I met a 32-year-old informant who has been in the profession for over a decade, and claimed to have been pivotal in helping the police solve cases such as the murder of Irfan Chindi, an informant who got murdered in Nagpada, in 2009. Sipping tea at a restaurant at Mohammad Ali Road in south Mumbai, his hands trembled as he lifted the saucer to his mouth. He explained to me that at one point he would carry 18 mobile phones—most police officers give a low-end mobile phone to trusted khabris to be used for talking to them exclusively—and its vibration impacted his health to the extent that doctors told him to use fewer phones. While he agreed that “Pehle jaisi baat nahin rahin” (It is not as good as it once was), when we veered to the topic of his profession, the informant seemed to believe that the khabri network still helped the police crack high profile cases. He pointed out the recent arrest of Mumbai-based alleged drug lord Shashikala, alias Baby Patankar, in April this year, in connection with her role in a cartel supplying mephrodrone, or Meow Meow, that saw a policeman being arrested, as an indicator of how important khabris were. However, Baby’s case was also one of those painfully familiar instances for the police when their own investigation tools turn against them. It is suspected that Baby herself tipped off the police about Dharmraj Kalokhe, a Marine Drive-based police constable who had stored 12 kilogrammes of mephedrone at a cupboard in the Marine Drive police station. Baby was reportedly having an affair with Kalokhe. It is alleged that over the year, Kalokhe who formed a part of this drug cartel, had reduced Baby’s share of the profits, thus incentivising her decision to give him away to the police.

“It is only these new cops who don’t realise our importance. The old timers are still in touch with us and fall back on our help often,” The informant told me. Appearing to almost echo this sentiment is Rakesh Maria, the current Mumbai police commissioner, who is known to have a vast network of khabris. A lot of the the officers I spoke to from the Mumbai Police Force told me that soon after taking charge last year, Maria asked his men to strengthen the khabri network and not rely too much on technical intelligence. He also asked seniors officers with a successful khabri network to give tips to their juniors on creating their own networks as well.

I met Afzal Khan, alias Afzal Pani, the informant who was reportedly involved in the set-up against the two Kutch-based builders and identifies himself as a social activist who helps the police with information—he is spoken of as a long time informer in police circles. He agreed: “While the police may have technical intelligence, there is a need human intelligence as a ‘hook’ to crack cases. Technology can only go an extent. Ultimately it is the information given by the khabri that helps the police solve a case.”

While some members that I spoke to from the police force ceded to this observation, they also said that maintaining khabris had become a problem. The officer from Dongri police station told me that earlier, there was both an “incoming and outgoing” income. Until the early 2000s, it was comparatively easy for the police to make “extra money” from illegal matka (gambling) parlours and liquor stores paying regular hafta—extortion money. “Now with the media scrutiny, things are not that easy. If we do not have extra money to shell out, how will we pay the khabris? We are not going to pay them from our pockets,” the officer said with a hint of frustration.

Maintaining a khabri, several officers explained to me, would include giving him money even when he does not have information and lands up at odd hours saying his son has to be admitted to the hospital, even though the fictional son has been admitted five times in two months. A family member being admitted or recharging the mobile phone are the kind of code words that both parties—the khabris and police— know stand for ‘maintaining’ a khabri.

“Whenever they need money they often come to meet us and we help them with a few thousands. Apart from this, for specific tip offs we pay them a good sum depending upon the nature of work,” said a PI level officer from the Vikhroli unit of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). Legend has it that Emmanuel Amoulik, a former encounter specialist who was involved in the encounter of Manva Surve in Mumbai, and was arrested in February 2013 for his alleged role in the murder of Navi Mumbai based builder Sunil Kumar Lohariya, had once gifted his khabri a Royal Enfield Bullet. I was told by a crime branch officer, that long-time khabris are also known to have received houses away from the city as gifts for tip offs. Those days however seem far.

There is actually a secret fund set up in the police department to pay for these expenses. But the standing joke in crime circles is that the fund is so secret that no officer on ground has ever felt its presence.

In August 2013, the Maharashtra state government had planned to recruit police informers as home guards, in response to a letter by Maharashtra Director General of Police Sanjeev Dayal that proposed the idea of permanent state government jobs for informers to help them with a steady flow of income. Dayal told me that the implementation of this programme has been initiated in the western suburbs of Mumbai. However, the khabris that I spoke to did not seem to have any knowledge of any such move.

Apart from this, the ban on dance bars by the Maharashtra government in 2005 has also impacted the police-khabri network. Dance bars in Mumbai were known for attracting several criminals; on some occasions they were favoured spots for meetings, and on others, a way to spend money after a particularly rewarding escapade. “If anyone was seen splurging too much money, waiters there would sometimes tip us off. A lot of khabris hung out there as it was a huge source of gathering information,” said an assistant police inspector from VP Road police station in south Mumbai. He added, “The shutting down of dance bars, however, shut this option for us.”

Finally, the relevance of informers also received a blow with the obliteration of gang wars that had spilled on the streets of Mumbai in the 1990s when their relevance to the police was at its peak. The 32-year-old informant told me that around 90 percent of the informants that he knew through his network do not want to work anymore. There is a huge chasm between the money they get and the risk involved in the job. A khabri, who operates out of Wadala and has been working as an informant for over 10 years, explained the stakes to me. “Agar kisi ne hamara naam phod diya to hamaara poora parivaar khatam ho jayega,” (If anyone reveals our identity, the person who makes a loss because of our information will kill my entire family).


Mohamed Thaver is a Mumbai based freelance journalist. He has reported on the crime and court beat for over six years at The Free Press Journal and Hindustan Times.