The Polyster Price

was not very happy by hearing all this.'

After this meeting, Babaria pressed Sequeira once or twice, but-according to Sequeiracame to realise that he was not really interested in the job, which Sequeira admitted himself.

'When Babaria approached me with the offer I thought that it was a good opportunity to me to make good money,' he said. 'But when I came to know that the person involved is an industrialist and a prominent figure I realised that it was too dangerous and I decided to back out. However I was knowing that the persons who wanted us to do the job were also connected with industries and it was possible for me to knock out as much money as I can by dodging them. With this idea I knocked from them the sum of three lakh rupees.'

In a later interview, Babaria freely admitted to his role in organising the murder conspiracy, and said that his assembled hit-squad had actually tracked Wadia at three locations with a view to carrying out an attack.

On one occasion they followed Wadia to a bungalow at Khandala, a resort in the Western Ghat mountains inland from Bombay. 'We wanted to kill him but were two hours late so the operation failed,' Babaria said. On the other attempts, the gang tried to catch Wadia outside his home at Prabhadevi, and again outside the Breach Candy Hospital where Wadia had gone to visit the ailing Ramnath Goenka.

Babaria claimed that the advance actually paid to him by Kirti Ambani totalled Rs 1.3 Millon, suggesting that if Sequeira had played his cards better he could have squeezed even more money than his Rs 300 000. This tends to accord with the sudden flush of money enjoyed by Babaria at the end of 1988 and early 1989, when he lavished his wife Hema with gold jewellery bought at top jewellers in the Opera House district of Bombay, bought two old cars and a new sound system for his band, and had a priority telephone installation at his small house in the Bhendi Bazar Police Lines.

The plot came unstuck in mid-July, however, when one of the gang talked about it while drinking in a bar, and was overheard by a police informant. The gang member was taken in for questioning, and revealed the details. As the gang was rounded up, the sensational identity of the alleged target and client of the gang got attention from Bombay's seniormost detective, the joint Police Commissioner (Crime), Arvin Inamdar.

Babaria's new telephone line allowed the police to collect more evidence against Kirti