"Return of the Memons- A Pyrrhic Victory"

Once Suresh gave his consent, we requested our immediate boss Joint Director S. Sen to inform Director, CBI. We suggested that a meeting may be called to hear us out to consider and approve our further plan of action.

K. Viaya Rama Rao, the then Director of the CBI, convened a meeting the same day, attended by his advisors, my immediate superiors, Satish Jha (my Superintendent of Police in STF Bombay and my prime advisor in the proposed mission) and me in the Director’s office in North Block, New Delhi.
Prophets of doom abound aplenty in the police. Some of them were present in the meeting too. They were not supportive of the idea, each with his preposterous reservation. One such imaginary fear was that if Suresh, for some reason, was caught by the Dubai authorities and if he spilled the beans about
CBI’s involvement in sending him, it would cause immeasurable embarrassment to us. Our argument was very simple. Suresh, in any case, by his own admission, was a regular visitor to Dubai in connection with his chemical business. He would arrange his own ticket, visa and lodging. He would track his relatives and, if traced, talk to them. If he succeeded in convincing them to return, we would take the operation to the next level; or else we would abandon it. Our risk in this part of the operation was nil. The Director saw our point and gave us the go ahead.

Suresh returned to Bombay on August 8 itself and left for Dubai on the 11th after convincing his wife and winding up some pending work. He went straight to Al-Wasal Hotel, which was usually the hotel where the Memons stayed when in Dubai. To his utter disappointment, they were not there. Nonetheless, he checked into Al-Wasl and began to look for them at their other haunts only to be further dejected. Meanwhile, he got the eerie feeling that he was being trailed. He noticed a few suspicious characters sitting in the hotel lobby observing him.

To be continued...