Ever dialled 9845148063? If you have, you might find the Karnataka police hot on your heels! For the number belongs to a small red, yellow and grey mobile handset dropped by fleeing assassins in Bangalore last week. They were allegedly supari killers from Bombay, hired to murder real estate businessman Subbaraju.

Everyone knows mobile phones leave better digital footprints than the largest clod-hopping shoes. Still, criminals in Bangalore seem to keep getting caught since they have a penchant for using and dropping them!

Last fortnight, Subbaraju was sitting in his office in Sheshadripuram, Bangalore, looking at his accounts. At about 5.45 pm, a group of men told watchman Gangadhar they would like to see his boss. They entered Subbaraju's office and, without uttering a word, advanced towards him with hands outstretched, ostensibly to shake his hand. Instead, they suddenly took out guns and shot him at point-blank range.

One bullet entered Subbaraju's forehead and exited from behind, killing him instantly. Another bullet passed through his shoulder and lodged in the wall behind him. Subbaraju's two sons, Srinivasa Raju and Jagadeesh, chased the fleeing assassins, but could not catch them.

When the police arrived soon after, they could not find any witnesses who could give them a proper description of the assassins. However, some distance away, a break awaited them.

Head constable B T Ramakrishnayya of Sheshadripuram, on spotting the assassins behaving suspiciously a short distance away, had given them the chase. The two fleeing men quickly hopped into an autorickshaw at a busy traffic intersection nearby. Unfortunately for them, they dropped a mobile phone.

The police are not willing to disclose the number of the mobile phone that Ramakrishnayya seized. Some sources insist it is actually a Bombay number. Others swear it is the Bangalore number given above.

Muthappa Rai

Thanks to this mobile phone, the Bangalore police were able to put together a broad picture of exactly what could have transpired in the two hours after Subbaraju was shot. The crime scene and the bullets indicated the assassins had been armed with two guns -- a .9mm revolver and a pistol. More importantly, the seized mobile phone, with its record of dialled numbers, led them to suspect gangster Muthappa Rai's involvement in the murder.

Rai once used to function from Bangalore, Mangalore and Kodagu. He is now believed to operate from West Asia and Dubai and to be a close associate of another fugitive gangster, Dawood Ibrahim.

Six years ago, this correspondent had written a series of articles on then supercop Kempaiah's single-minded pursuit of Rai, on his being shot at by Bombay supari killer Saliyan while being brought to court and on his continuing hold on the Bangalore underworld. Both she and the publication that carried the stories promptly received threatening telephone calls from Rai's wife, who was then living on their estate in Kodagu with her two daughters.

Rai is still believed to be running large segments of Bangalore's underworld by remote control, much in Dawood's style.

Meanwhile, the emerging picture in the Subbaraju murder goes something like this: Subbaraju apparently came to Bangalore from Chittoor almost half-a-century ago. He slowly built himself up from being just another contractor into a real estate magnate with many big buildings to his credit. There were, apparently, many land deals were in progress when he was killed.

Lankesh Patrike, the popular Bangalore-based Kannada tabloid weekly, says it has been in touch with Rai, who is believed to have been involved in Subbaraju's murder. It gives Rai's e-mail id as nmrai@hotmail.com, on the basis of a new year card it purportedly received from him. It also claims that its staff has spoken to Rai on his mobile number 00971506512674.

This tabloid now says the mobile phone seized from Subbaraju's assassins was found to have a couple of calls listed to this number. The killers had apparently bought a Magic telephone card from Airtel for Rs 5,000 three days before the killing and had made about 30 calls within that time frame.

This is not the only case in which the Karnataka police have been able to get vital clues because of mobile phones. Some months ago, three members of the Deendar Anjuman Channabasaveshwara Siddiqui sect placed a bomb in St Peter and Paul's church in Bangalore, before trying to escape in a Maruti Omni. They were blown up by a crude bomb they were ferrying to another church in the Omni.

Two working mobile phones found in the van and the driver, who survived the blast, helped the police solve the case. The police were able to apprehend several members of this hitherto unknown sect in Bangalore and elsewhere with the help of the numbers registered on the handsets.

Earlier last year, Lily D'Souza, whom the police describe as a successful escort services operator, was killed by an unknown miscreant. The police searched her house and found a mobile phone and a diary. The numbers registered on the phone turned out to belong to politicians, police officers and other other affluent Bangaloreans. And the number from which she had received the maximum number of calls belonged to the killer!

Criminals in Bangalore certainly seem to be following in the footsteps of their brethren in the world of cricket and Bollywood; leaving clear digital footprints that sleuths find only too easy to track.

Photograph: Veeresh. Design: Dominic Xavier

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