In April 1988 – a few months after Huzurala visited Calcutta - mara ghar ma chori thayi gayi. The ladies of the house were away, we were engrossed in a television programme and the thief made away with nearly 500 gms of gold.
Our first reaction: Huzurala ma araz. His reply: maal mili jaase.
Months passed. No recovery. Tongues wagged. We tendered an araz again. Huzurala’s reply: Bhai ne kaho sabar kare; maal mili jaase. Bhai tasbeeh kare: ‘Hazaehi bidaa-atona ruddat ilaina’.
On 14 October, exactly six months after the theft to the day – something bizarre happened. Ek 22 waras no chokro hamaara baaju ni building ma Nooruddinbhai Chawala na dukan par aayo. He made some vague enquiries about some person he was trying to locate. Chawala kakaji’s first reaction was that this was just another somebody who needed to locate someone from Pollock Street. Chawala kakaji’s second reaction was more intuitive: he felt something was odd about this young man and immediately called me: ‘Mansurbhai jaldi aavo!’
I was there in a minute. We had no reason to suspect him; yet, we caught him by the collar and marched him to the residence of a senior police officer. Even my policeman friend felt I had been high-handed; I had picked someone innocent and dragged him for police inspection for no plausible reason.
He must have spoken to this boy for a few minutes and was on the verge of dispersing the meeting when he suddenly turned round and slapped this boy hard. We were shocked; later, the police officer told me that just when he was on the verge of telling me that I had made a mistake, he noticed a series of injection marks on the young man’s forearm. The police officer was backing his hunch: the young man was an addict and may – this was a stray assumption – have needed to thieve to fund his habit. The buy was questioned; he eventually broke down and confessed that he had indeed burgled my residence!
Like a garbage collector picking up a scrap that turns out to be the winning lottery ticket.
The confessions yielded an interesting sequence: the thieved jewellery was sold to an intermediary in Mehta Building (Ezra Street) for Rs 20,000, who, in turn, had sold the jewellery to a trader on Camac Street for Rs 50,000 – a sixth of the actual value. We followed the trail; the Camac Street jeweller confessed that he had bought the stuff (now transformed into gold) but would willingly return it.
Within three days, the gold was back with us. The policemen confessed that they had seldom come across a case like this. Hamein Aqa Maula ma araz keedhi to Moulana yeh farmayu ke bhai ne kehjo ke ehna waajebaat ma Rs 2700 kam hata aney aa rakam araz kari de!
Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin Saheb works at a level that most of us will never be able to comprehend – drawing the thief to our doorstep, getting Nooruddinbhai to become intuitive and getting the police officer to look at the boy’s forearms.
If this had happened to someone else I would have never believed the story.
Dawoodi Bohras : Following interview of Mansurbhai Bartanwala, Calcutta, by Mudar Patherya:
Source: www.bohranet.com -- Read More Mojezas here
The Dawoodi Bohra community traces its spiritual heritage from Prophet Mohammed.The Dawoodi Bohras Follow Islam and the spiritual leader of the Dawoodi Bohra community is Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).
