September, 1981. A Bombay courtroom impossibly crowded. Ceiling fans stir the air like hot sludge. A gangster called Amir Zada stands in the dock. Zada is on trial for gunning down a fellow gangster outside a petrol station a few months before. Unfortunately for Zada, the gangster's brother is an up-and-coming ganglord called Dawood Ibranhim.
Zada does not notice a man disguised in naval officer's uniform enter the courtroom. Nobody does. The man walks swiftly down the centre aisle and approaches the dock where Zada stands.
Then he pulls out a revolver, places it against Zada's temple, and pumps three bullets into his head at point-blank range.
The daring courtroom execution of Amir Zada announced the arrival of a ruthless new gangster. Zada's assassin had been specially trained by Dawood Ibrahaim to avenge his brother's murder. The shots fired that day were the first in Dawood's blood-soaked bid to control India's commercial capital of Bombay.
Dawood Ibrahim is India's most-wanted criminal and Bombay's worst nightmare. For 15 years now his henchmen have carved up the streets with AK-47s and plastic explosives.
His ships secretly ply the Arabian Sea loaded with gold, firearms and narcotics. He is the alleged mastermind of the most horrific act of terrorism Bombay has ever witnessed, and is tipped to become one of the world's major heroin traffickers.
Dawood was born about 45 years ago in Temkar, a Muslim area of Bombay. His family was poor - he was one of 13 children - and young Dawood started his life in crime as a small-time extortionist for Karim Lala, a fearsome Muslim crime-lord who towered over Bombay's underworld in the 1970s.