It’s a flashback. Peeping Moon.com editor-director Nishant A Bhuse, as a senior crime reporter with a leading Mumbai tabloid in 2005, exclusively came in possession of Abu Salem’s fingerprints.

The fugitive underworld don had been extradited to India by Portugal to face trial in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. He had been arrested in Lisbon by Interpol in 2002 along with Bollywood starlet Monica Bedi on a false passport charge. Now when Salem was extradited three years later, Nishant went to an old source in the D.N. Nagar Police Station, Andheri west, which had arrested Salem in 1992 when he was a vendor in suburban Mumbai and had got into a street fight.

They had fingerprinted him then. 

And it was this set of fingerprints that were later used by the Interpol and CBI in 2002 to confirm Salem’s identity in Lisbon. Nishant procured a set of these fingerprints. And with the hardnosed curiosity of a sleuthing journalist, he decided to find out what the arrested gangster’s destiny was.

He picked the maverick Hindu astrologer Pandit Sahu who famously practiced as the resident fortune teller at a five-star hotel in Juhu to predict Salem’s future based on his fingerprints.

“They are a friend’s and he is going through a troubled phase,” is all Nishant told Pandit Sahu while urging him to read the lines and whorls on the fingerprints and come up with a forecast.

Pandit Sahu, after studying the fingerprints with his magnifying glass, said, “This man will go to jail. He will probably receive a long and harsh sentence. And his crime will be dubious associations with women from the glamour world which will land him in big and serious trouble.”

The astrologer added, “This man also appears to have been framed in some big criminal case though he wasn’t the mastermind, he was merely used as a medium to execute some deadly operation.”

However, Pandit Sahu was convinced the person whose fingerprints he was analyzing would not serve the long and harsh sentence like others involved in the case. “He will come out of prison a changed man,” the astrologer said, “he will go through a rebirth and he won’t return to his criminal ways after serving his sentence.”

Yesterday, when Abu Salem was finally sentenced to life imprisonment or 25 years by the designated TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Prevention Act) Court for his role in the 1993 serials blast case, media circles in Mumbai got in touch with Nishant Bhuse to remind him that Pandit Sahu’s  prediction had come true. That was the first part of the five star fortune teller’s forecast. Will the second part also come true? Will Salem not complete his sentence? And will he step out of prison a changed man? Let’s wait and see!

Who Is Abu Salem

Abu Salem Abdul Qayyum Ansari was born in 1960 in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh. He married to Samira Jumani in 1991 and had two kids with her. Samira is now in the US. While married to her, Salem fell in love with budding Bollywood actress Monica Bedi. They began their tumultuous affair over a phone call in which Salem asked Monica to perform at a stage show in Dubai. He introduced himself as a businessman and then fell in love with the actress. This finally landed him behind bars. 

In 2002, Salem was arrested with Monica by Interpol in Lisbon. In 2004, a Portugal court cleared his extradition to India to face trial in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case. In 2005, Portuguese authorities handed Salem to India on an assurance by the Indian Government that he would not face the death penalty as Portugal comes under the European Union where the death penalty has been abolished. This saved Salem’s life!

PEEPING MOON EXCLUSIVELY HAS SALEM’S FINGERPRINTS PROCURED IN 1992!

Inputs By: Ankita Bhalla