188. The Pramod Mahajan Murder

April 2006. Pramod Mahajan is 56 years old. He is the organizational brain of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The man who brought the BJP into the digital age. The man who brokered the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance that conquered Maharashtra. The man who organized Advani's Ram Rath Yatra. The man who, as India's Telecom Minister, helped put a mobile phone in every Indian's pocket. Corporate India courts him. Delhi's power corridors bend around him. He is being spoken about, in hotel lobbies and drawing rooms across the capital, as a future Prime Minister.

And for the last 6 months, astrologers have been calling him. One after another. All of them with the same warning: your life is in danger. From someone close to you. An insider. Pramod Mahajan ignores every single call.

On April 22, a Saturday morning in Mumbai, Pramod sits in his Worli apartment with the morning newspaper. The doorbell rings. It is his younger brother Pravin. He is let inside. Tea is offered. And in 15 minutes, the most powerful political operative in India is on his living room floor, 3 bullets in his body, asking one question to his brother-in-law Gopinath Munde on the phone: "Mee asa kay gunha kela ki Pravin ne mala golya marlya?" What crime had I committed, that Pravin shot me?