Two phone calls changed the course of Ujjwal Nikam’s life: one from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the other from Mumbai Police. A well-known public prosecutor, Nikam was recently nominated to the Rajya Sabha. More than his nomination, what made headlines was that one call from the Prime Minister: “Should I speak in Marathi or Hindi? Modi had then asked Nikam. The conversation that followed was in Marathi which, by Nikam’s admission, the “PM spoke fluently”.
The Modi-Nikam association is a recent one: “I first met Modi in 2024 when I was contesting the Lok Sabha elections. But I have been influenced by Modi’s speeches.”
“He is a patriot and can inject patriotism in the minds of common people and that is why I joined the BJP and contested the election,” Nikam said in a candid interview.
Nikam was handpicked by the state BJP unit to contest the Lok Sabha elections last year from Mumbai North-Central. He was defeated by the Congress candidate Varsha Gaikwad by over 16,000 votes. Come 2025 and Nikam was nominated to the Rajya Sabha: a decision that changed the course of his life: from a much-sought-after public prosecutor to being a member of the Rajya Sabha. “Bhagwan ki kripa”, God’s grace, is what he says about his nomination.
However, the Opposition jumped in and slammed the nomination. The Congress said that Nikam’s nomination demonstrates how the ruling party is “misusing constitutional entities for its own political gain. Nikam worked tacitly for the BJP and is now being rewarded for it. It is an attempt to gradually morph our democracy into dictatorship.” Dismissing charges, Nikam said that his being nominated from the President’s quota substantiates that he is not a representative of any political party.
It is unfair to slam Nikam’s choice for nomination. He may have ties with the BJP, but that does not cancel his competence as a public prosecutor wherein his track record is exemplary.
The 1991 Kalyan blast was the flamboyant public prosecutor’s first major case, but it was the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai that shot him to fame. Other high-profile cases include the 2003 twin bomb blasts at the Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar, the murder of music baron Gulshan Kumar, BJP leader Pramod Mahajan murder case, and so on and so forth. The list is endless. Nikam’s reputation was such that in many cases, victims and their families would demand that he represent them.
A few years into his career in Jalgaon in the state of Maharashtra, Nikam decided to create what he called “my terror” in the minds of the people in Jalgaon. An incident etched in his mind not only shaped his thought process, but continues to haunt: it was a politician’s might that perhaps shaped the course of his life: from practicing as a lawyer fighting for the cooperatives, he changed tack and switched to criminal law.
It started with a judge granting bail to a municipal councillor. He had allegedly killed an innocent in broad daylight. To say Nikam was shocked would be underplaying the conflicting emotions he had then undergone. The bail, to Nikam’s mind, was clearly politics playing out: “That municipal councillor had political connections,” Nikam said.
He succeeded in getting the bail cancelled, but also decided to fight criminal cases. “I wanted to create a terror of my name in the minds of the criminals,” he said. And how? Name any high-profile case and it has a Nikam stamp on it. As of now, he is credited with over 30 death penalties and 600 life sentences. It is, therefore, no surprise that in Maharashtra if any crime is committed the victim’s family often demands that Nikam should be appointed public prosecutor to fight their case: “I am an antibiotic of the state government,” he said.
Known for being the one who prosecuted 26/11 terrorist Ajmal Kasab, Nikam is the man most sought after for state governments and politicians. Yet it was not a cakewalk: there is a back story to a small-time lawyer to making it big in Mumbai and now Delhi.
It started with that one phone call from Mumbai Police way back in 1993 after the serial bomb blast case took place in Mumbai: something he had never expected: “Why me?” he said to himself encountering the “should I, should I not” dilemma. In fact, when he told his mother, she said: “Don’t go, they will kill you.”
Given that she was among those who had fought for India’s freedom, her reaction was a bit surprising, but then in these changing times, anxiety and that too for a son’s safety is a given. Given that he was born on Hanuman Jayanti, his hallmark was and is “fearlessness”.
Nikam did leave for Mumbai to interact with the state police whose reputation to quote Nikam is “like Scotland Yard’s”. The first impression of the cops was not very encouraging: “A thin boy from a small town… yeh kya Karega?”. But the initial impressions were soon dispelled and after that there was no looking back.
Of course there were pressures: more political than any other, including Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray when he tried to prevail upon Nikam in the case of film actor Sanjay Dutt. But Nikam stood his ground. Add to that the actor’s father Sunil Dutt was an MP and also well connected. “Let me tell you, I was never pressurized. Balasaheb Thackeray had a soft corner for Sanjay Dutt and told me that he is innocent, but I said sorry,” Nikam said. Sizing up Dutt, Nikam said: “Perhaps he did not understand the gravity of possessing unauthorized weapons. He was crazy for weapons”.
Post-conviction, Nikam recalls how Dutt was trembling and nearly lost his balance. It was Nikam who stepped in to calm him. “Had I not done that and if he had fallen then he would have got sympathy and become a hero and I the villain,” Nikam said, reiterating that the Bollywood campaign for Dutt being innocent would have gotten heft. In fact, the campaign was aimed at underscoring that Dutt had been wrongly convicted. Dutt, it may be recalled, was involved in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.
However, Sanjay Dutt was not the only Bollywood actor Nikam had interacted with. He had also interrogated Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan in another case, given that their names had figured in the Gulshan Kumar murder case. Before demanding their appearance in court, Nikam decided to meet them in his hotel to ascertain their role, if any, in the criminal conspiracy that was hatched.
Reluctant to go to the “small, nondescript hotel”, where Nikam was staying, their emissary sent word that the meeting should be in a five star hotel. Nikam being Nikam said: “No, they have to come to me”. The next excuse: “Their big car cannot enter the narrow lane of your hotel. So, I said, meri choti gaari bhi five star hotel nahin jaa sakti” which left the film stars with no option.
The Khans and Dutt apart, the other big story was Pakistan terrorist Ajmal Kasab’s trial. It was a seesaw between his pleading guilty and not pleading guilty. Nikam did not accept his plea of guilt: “The judge asked me and I said no I am not accepting his plea of being guilty”. Fingers were pointed at him, but Nikam had his reasons. “Had I accepted his plea of guilt, could I have demanded a death sentence for him? No because in his confession he had denied playing a major and pivotal role in the crime,” Nikam said, bringing to close a case that shook the nation nearly two decades ago.
—The writer is an author, journalist and political commentator