‘Main Shakeel Bhai bol raha hoon. Farmaiyen, Sheelaji!’

Among the first female journalists in India to investigate crime and

the underworld, Sheela Raval has had an eventful three-decade-long

career in print media and television that has seen her track India’s

most notorious criminals across different parts of the globe. Always

hot on the trail of a story, Raval broke the news about Chhota Rajan

surviving a brutal assassination attempt in Bangkok in 2000, attended

Dawood Ibrahim’s daughter’s wedding in Dubai and is the only person

to have interviewed Samira Jumani, noted gangster Abu Salem’s first

wife, after Salem’s arrest and extradition.

Now, in a candid memoir of fearless reportage, Raval recounts her

interactions with the much-feared dons, and the revelations they

brought forth about the intricate workings of organized crime within

Indian borders and beyond. Raval’s bold writing gives fresh and sofar

unpublished insight into the D Company’s evolution as a criminal

organization with transnational influence and connections with

foreign governments; the much-talked-about split between Dawood

and Chhota Rajan; a once-promising cricketer who became one of

Mumbai’s most-feared dons; the Abu Salem–Monica Bedi affair; and

the circumstances that led her to appear as a state witness in the highprofile

case against film producer Bharat Shah and Chhota Shakeel.

Chilling and revelatory, Raval’s stories provide a fascinating glimpse

into the minds of organized criminals who have long haunted India’s

security forces. Godfathers of Crime is a chronicle of men who have

lived outside the boundaries of the law for most of their lives, told

through the personal experiences of an intrepid journalist.