Incredible footage of the notoriously camera-shy gangster who was the prime suspect in the death of a middle-class London teenager is revealed for the first time today.
Zac Brettler, 19, died after jumping from the fifth floor of a luxury riverside apartment building in strange and disturbing circumstances. It sparked a best-selling book and forthcoming TV adaptation.
The man who was with him in that Thames-side flat on the night Zac died – and the prime suspect in the ensuing police investigation – was Virender Sharma, known as ‘Indian Dave’, a notorious gangland enforcer and drug dealer.
Despite intense interest in Indian Dave since his disturbing part in Zac’s death was revealed in global bestseller London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City, only one grainy image of him has ever been published – until today.
The Daily Mail has tracked down a series of never-before-seen surveillance videos of Sharma in his role as a gangland enforcer.
The extraordinary story of what happened to the middle-class public schoolboy from Maida Vale, north-west London, was told in Patrick Radden Keefe’s book London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City, which has become a global success.
It tells how fantasist Zac pretended to be the son of a Russian oligarch with a personal wealth of £200million and became friends with shady characters such as Sharma who were determined to get their hands on his imaginary money.
Zac and Sharma were introduced to each other by Akbar Shamji, a flamboyant Cambridge-educated entrepreneur and the son of a millionaire Tory donor who moved in London’s elite circles.
Sharma invited Zac to live in his fifth-floor Thames-side flat and it was from there that Zac would jump to his death in the early hours of November 29, 2019.
Virender Sharma, circled in red, is the chief suspect in the death of London public schoolboy Zac Brettler, who jumped from Sharma’s luxury Thames-side apartment in 2019
Zac was a middle-class London schoolboy who created a fantasy double life where he assumed a Russian surname and claimed to be the son of a late Russian oligarch worth £200m
In the early hours of Thursday, November 29, 2019 Zac fell 200ft from Sharma’s apartment where he was staying
In the hours preceding Zac’s fatal jump, Indian Dave had sent a message saying he wanted £10million from ‘the kid’ and was thinking ‘f*** him’.
He then talked about cleaning blood and heating knives. At one point Zac did an internet search on ‘what to do with skin burns’ – and soon afterwards, bloodstains were seen on the flat’s walls while Indian Dave had cuts to his hand and nose while Zac had a broken jaw that wasn’t caused by his fall.
All of this caused growing suspicion that Zac had jumped not to take his own life but to save it – to escape serious harm from Sharma.
But just over a year later in December 2020, Sharma, the last person to see Zac alive, was found dead in the same flat after taking an overdose while under police probe, ending any hope of definitively establishing what led to the teenager’s death and prosecuting a culprit.
And despite the exhaustive investigation by Radden Keefe – and subsequently by numerous other journalists – only one image of Sharma was ever found.
The fresh images of the elusive underworld figure – whose speciality involved collecting debts through extreme violence or dangling victims from rooftops to get them to pay up – were gathered by a private detective who had been investigating Sharma over his dubious business dealings.
The detailed investigation by that detective, who we are not naming at his request, provides a fresh insight into Sharma’s chilling character and the way he operated, presenting himself as a ‘respectable’ business leader attempting to secure multi-million-pound deals.
In one video, Sharma is filmed with his associate Mr Shamji, meeting business people who they think are Russian investors but are in fact undercover investigators.
The shady duo are trying to secure £45million investment for a business venture in central London.
Sharma barely speaks during the meeting but proclaims when the conversation turns to how much money could be made: ‘Everything is transparent, everything we do. Any question you want to ask us, feel free to ask us. Any doubts, anything you may want to highlight, you can feel free to discuss it. There’s no discussion here which will be out of bounds.
‘If we’re going to open a relationship we open up as we mean to go on. There’s something, say it.’
In another video, filmed during another business meeting, Sharma swaggers into the room and stares around menacingly.
With Mr Shamji doing all the talking as he explains details of the deal, Sharma’s only contribution is to comment on the style of the sofa.
The private detective said: ‘He never said anything of any significance during the meetings. His role was to have Shamji’s back, to be the hard man.
‘He’d walk into the room and glare at all of us and stare intensely as if he was trying to see if there were any secret recording devices, which there were but he was never able to find them.’
Sharma befriended Zac and took an interest in Zac’s reported wealth. According to his family, the gangster wanted his share of it
Central to Zac’s story is also Akbar Shamji, an associate of Sharma. Shamji seemed to embody the world to which Zac aspired
It is unknown why Zac created the persona of the son of a super wealthy Russian oligarch. But his claims attracted the attention of some undesirable individuals
Sharma invited Zac to live in his fifth floor Thames-side flat at The Riverwalk next to Vauxhall Bridge
Akbar Shamji was at Sharma’s flat in the hours leading up to Zac’s death, but then left to go home. Here are his movements and his communication with Sharma after Zac jumped
He added: ‘He was highly suspicious of everyone and everything. His whole character was that of an enforcer, the tough guy who’s there in case of any trouble.
‘We discovered that they were quite a double act. Shamji was the polished one, well-spoken and sophisticated whereas Sharma was the quiet, dangerous one.’
Photographs show Sharma arriving at one meeting in central London in an orange Lamborghini, which almost led to the undercover investigation being exposed.
The private detective said: ‘He saw one of our guys taking pictures and ran over to the building. He was banging the front door and threatening everyone inside, shouting he was going to kill them.
‘Luckily there was a fashion shoot going on in the same building so our photographer claimed he was there for that. But he was also ex special forces and wasn’t intimidated by Sharma.’
Further details have also emerged of Sharma’s life and his rise through the ranks of the capital’s underworld.
He was born in Leicester to parents who emigrated to the UK from Punjab, north India, in the early 1960s. His father Hans Raj worked as a loader in a hosiery factory, but Sharma always had bigger ambitions.
In his early 20s he moved to London, settling in Tottenham where he soon established himself as a drug dealer while earning a reputation for extreme violence.
He rapidly emerged as a prominent figure in London’s criminal fraternity and moved on from Tottenham to more upmarket central London addresses as he began moving in wealthier circles.
Zac’s father Matthew Brettler, a director of a financial services firm, and his mother Rachelle, a journalist, still don’t really know what happened to their son on the night he fell into the Thames
In 2003, he was implicated in the drive-by shooting of Dave ‘Muscles’ King, a gangster who was mowed down in a volley of bullets from machine guns as he was leaving a gym in Hertfordshire.
He then fled to France, returning to the UK a year later but was never arrested.
The two men who were eventually convicted and jailed for life for King’s murder had been arrested a year earlier alongside King and Sharma after their attempts to import 13kg of heroin were intercepted by customs agents – leading police to conclude it was a revenge shooting.
But it is Sharma’s association with Zac and what happened on the fateful night he jumped to his death that remains most mysterious.
A member of Sharma’s family, speaking for the first time about the incident, told the Daily Mail earlier this year: ‘Dave wanted the kid’s [Zac] money.
‘And Dave found out that he did not have nearly as much money as he was telling everyone.
‘So, he called the kid in for a “sit-down”. And Dave is not someone you mess with.’
The relative added: ‘Knowing what we know of Dave, if he wasn’t happy about something – or felt let down – you would soon know it. And that often meant violence.’
Messages sent by Sharma in the hours preceding Zac’s fatal jump, produced at the teenager’s inquest, appear to back up this assertion.
In one Sharma writes how he wants £10million from ‘the kid’ and ‘I’m thinking f*** this little kid.’
In another to him he wrote: ‘Akbar, I want 5 per cent of that 205 million.’
Zac’s parents, Matthew, director of a financial services firm, and Rachelle, a design journalist, have consistently criticised the Met over the way it investigated their son’s death and have continued to push for answers.
They have been approached for comment.
