The deadly Sicilian mafia made its first appearance in Sicily in the 1870s, and soon infiltrated the economic and political spheres of Italy and the United States and has been actively involved in murders, bombings, and embezzlement of public money. Illegal drugs, arms trafficking, extortion, contract killings, political bribery, prostitution, art thefts – they dabbled in every kind of criminal activity.
No other geographical location in the world matches up to Sicily, which has been a breeding ground for innumerable high-profile mafia operators. Cosa Nostra is the original Mafia, with a capital M, based on family clans, meaning “our thing”. Today, Cosa Nostra and the three other main Italian mafia groups – the Camorra, Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita – have an estimated 25,000 members in total, with 250,000 affiliates worldwide, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Cosa Nostra was essentially at war with the Italian state during the reign of “godfather” Salvatore “Toto” Riina.
The Northernmost coastal district of Kerala–Kasaragod–has a reputation that is as formidable as Sicily, but with ethics and morality. India’s best-known smugglers hail from Kasaragod, namely, K.S. Abdulla, Kallatra Abdul Khadar Haji, Ibrahim Soopi, M.B. Moosa, A.P. Abdul Rehman, and Kadavath Atta, whose forte was smuggling of gold and silver across India’s West Coast, specifically from Dubai. But they were honourable men, when compared with the Sicilian Mafia, as they observed restraint and decorum in their illegal professional pursuit.
Crossing swords routinely with the Customs, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), Enforcement Directorate (ED), Police and Judiciary, was an everyday occurrence, yet, not a single official was ever harmed by the Kasaragod Mafia. On the contrary, the Italian Mafia had no ethics at all. In May 1992, Salvatore “Toto” Riina’s men detonated a bomb that killed prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards just outside Palermo. Two months later, they killed his replacement Paolo Borsellino and five bodyguards in Palermo, with a car bomb. Not a single judge was ever killed or harmed in any way by the Kasaragod Mafia.
However, L.D. Arora IRS, an Assistant Collector of Customs, was assassinated on March 24, 1993, in Allahabad by the underworld, which entered into a criminal conspiracy to eliminate him and prevent him from passing on information about their involvement in the Mumbai blasts that occurred on March 12, 1993. L.D. Arora displayed exemplary courage and seized at Mumbai airport a consignment belonging to Mumbai mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, containing arms and ammunition. Babloo Srivastava planned the murder of Arora along with his two associates – Kamal Kishor Saini and Manjit Singh, alias Mange Sardar – who have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Babloo Srivastava was sentenced to life imprisonment under Sections 302 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code for the murder of L.D. Arora.
However, the Kasaragod Mafia never attacked any Customs officer, Police officer or any Judicial officer. Among the mafia gangs, it was a different story if treachery and double-crossing happened (Refer: Kasaragod’s Omerta Code and The Mulbagal Murder), it would be certainly cold-blooded assassinations.
The Italian Mafia is heavily into the destructive trade of drug trafficking. The Ndrangheta Mafia group is active in every continent and controls 80 per cent of Europe’s cocaine trade. The other illegal drugs trafficked by the Italian mafias are heroin, cannabis, and amphetamine-type drugs, apart from human trafficking, firearms trafficking, illicit trading in tobacco, counterfeiting, illegal gambling and match-fixing, extortion/racketeering, usury (loan sharking), fraud and organised property crime.
But, the Kasaragod Mafia never touched drugs, gambling, tobacco, usury, or any of the other above-mentioned crimes. Perhaps, it might have been their strict religious outlook and upbringing that compelled them to restrict their activities to just gold and silver. Never did they touch the lucrative drug market, unlike the present-day breed of drug traffickers, as it would have ruined the lives of several generations of youngsters.
For the Kasaragod Mafia, smuggling of gold into India, it realised, was primarily driven by the demand and supply gap. The Indian gold jewellery industry is almost completely dependent on imported raw materials and about 90 per cent of requirements are fulfilled by imports. The large domestic market provides smugglers enough arbitrage to fulfil the needs of the market through smuggled goods as the domestic gold supply is limited. The Kasaragod Mafia, though illiterate, had a deep business acumen to conclude that gold smuggling produces only tax loss for the government. However, it is highly negligible, though it is positively affecting India’s GDP, India’s jewellery export and gold demand and supply.
Every year India imports between 800 and 900 tonnes of gold. Gold consumption in India in 2024 is projected to be around 700-800 tonnes. Several authorities have estimated that more than 200–250 tonnes, or over 1/4 of the gold used, is trafficked annually into India, the largest gold jewellery manufacturing hub in the world. The country comes second after China, in the list of the world’s biggest consumers of gold. Most of the gold comes to India via the UAE, accounting for 75 per cent of all entries.
On the other hand, the UAE is the preferred destination for gold from the Great Lakes region of Africa. Gold smuggling into the country has been estimated by the Indian Gold Policy Center at 300 tonnes, resulting in a revenue loss of 20,000 crore as high-duty imports lead to an increase in non-official gold trading. The flourishing unofficial gold trade has clouded government efforts to organise the trade in bullion and jewellery, says the IGPC, an Excellence Centre, sponsored by the World Gold Council at IIM -Ahmedabad.
The investigative limitations in the Middle East is one of the great obstacles for Indian Customs authorities, in investigating cases and taking them to their logical conclusion.
The Lok Sabha was informed in 2023 that 3,982 cases of smuggling of gold were detected in 2022, leading to the seizure of 3,502.16 kg of gold and the arrest of 1,710 persons, with Kerala having the highest number of cases. Seizures admittedly represent a small portion of what has been smuggled.
Most of the cases of gold smuggling originate from Dubai, and many of India’s wanted persons for terrorist and smuggling activities are based in Dubai or have strong Dubai connections, and many of them are into hawala rackets. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a 2020 report, highlighted Dubai’s role in facilitating corruption and illicit financial flows. An unofficial estimate of the value of gold smuggled into Kerala surmises it to be around Rs 1 lakh crore. Even from the seized gold itself, the Government of India is effortlessly earning hundreds of crores of rupees. It is reported that the Customs Department seized 2,000 kg of smuggled gold in the first half of 2023-24, registering 43 per cent more seizures than the previous year, yet, only a skeleton staff is employed, hindering the effective functioning of the department.
While American movies glamourised the Italian mafias in movies like The Godfather, The Sting, The Untouchables, Goodfellas, Scarface, Ozark, Narcos, The Equalizer 3, Deep Fear, Craving and TV shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the Kasaragod dons never got any recognition worth mentioning, even in the Malayalam film world. American mafia dons sporting names like Willie “The Creep”, Tony “Ducks”, Tommy “The Nose”, Don Cheech, Don Vito, and “Lucky” Luciano, became the heartthrobs of millions across the globe. On the contrary, the Kasaragod dons were simple people, wearing white dhotis, and the only kind of glamour accoutrements on their person were Rayban sunglasses, Rolex watch, Oudh smeared on their bodies, and a Mercedes Benz car to flaunt. They remained simple rustic people but with hoards of money.
The Italian mafias never invested their ill-gotten wealth in any charitable activities. Whenever there were natural calamities, the mafias used to provide food, but with an aim to scout for fresh recruits into their gangs. However, the Kasaragod mafia dons spared substantial sums of money on charity and by constructing schools and hospitals. The Malik Deenar Hospital was set up by Don K.S. Abdulla. MBM charities by M.B. Moosa built schools, and mosques, apart from supporting orphanages.
The dons had realised that “You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it” – Martin Scorsese
The writer is a retired officer of the IRS and the former director-general of the National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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