Nobody is talking about Dawood Ibrahim after 7/11.
But is that cause for comfort to anyone, wonders S. Hussain
Zaidi
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S.
Hussain Zaidi |
In the bylanes of
south Mumbai’s Muslim-dominated Dongri, you will find few boys
sporting Pathan suits and long beards these days. Jeans, T-shirts and
the Salman “Tere Naam” Khan hairstyle are in vogue. They,
of course, remain passionate about Hindi movies. But they are also passionate
about computers. Some of the best hacks come from Dongri; six months
ago the Muslim youths of Dongri even offered their services to the Mumbai
Police to check on inflammatory websites that spread poison through
the Internet.
Cut to the new generation
of Muslim youths of Mumbai who have finally severed the umbilical cord
with Dawood Ibrahim. Dawood, who cut his teeth in crime from the mean
streets of Dongri and rose to become The Bhai, was the role model of
most of Mumbai’s Muslim youths. His rise to fame and infamy, his
luxurious lifestyle spanning continents, and his rags-to-riches story
were the fodder that fed their dreams.
Nobody is quite
sure when the psychological drifting away happened. Perhaps sometime
in the last couple of years. But the July 11 serial blasts in Mumbai
firmly established the fact that even the Mumbai Police have finally
unmoored themselves from Dawood Ibrahim. The Big D has for the first
time disappeared from the Mumbai Police’s radar. There is no mention
of him in the Mumbai blasts. Mumbai’s mafia had an easy escape
this time; internationally-trained terrorists and brainwashed Muslim
youths from all over Maharashtra are being held responsible for the
blasts.
A couple of years
ago, Dawood Ibrahim had claimed in a telephonic interview that he was
the favourite whipping boy of his countrymen. “The Indian government
has a tendency to blame me for every small thing that happens there.
Good that I was not born in 1947 otherwise they may have accused me
of having a role in the Partition of the country.” Thirteen years
ago Dawood Ibrahim, along with Tiger Memon, were named kingpins of the
serial blasts that rocked Mumbai and changed the city’s character
and profile forever. However, even at the time the Mumbai police could
not incontrovertibly nail him as the prime perpetrator, like say Tiger
Memon. Even at that time, except circumstantial evidence and confessional
statements of the three accused, the investigators didn’t have
much against Dawood Ibrahim.
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| |
The Big D has for the
first time disappeared from the Mumbai Police’s radar. There
is no mention of his involvement in the recent blasts; global
terrorists and brainwashed Muslim youth are being blamed |
They have much less
against him this time. Which is why the government as well as the sleuths
want to be politically correct and say that the blasts were engineered
by the Pakistani government with the help of the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), clearly omitting the name of the don. Perhaps, they know that
Dawood has sought voluntary retirement from underworld and terrorist
operations.
But his gang members
still believe he is invaluable to Pakistan, if only as an adviser. It
was, after all, Dawood Ibrahim who helped the ISI establish their wide
network in Mumbai, Rajasthan and Gujarat. “Dawood is totally in
the hands of ISI and he will do whatever he is asked by them to do,”
says one of his uncles, now ailing and bedridden. On the contrary, Dawood’s
childhood cronies maintain that Dawood still calls the shots in Pakistan
and it’s the ISI who does his bidding.
Some Mumbai policemen,
of course, inured to believing in the larger than life version of Dawood
Ibrahim, would still like to think that this time too Dawood’s
shrewd mind could have been at work. In fact, one senior officer went
to the extent of substantiating his theory that Dawood’s chief
of operations in the western region, Sharif Khan, who takes pride in
the fact that his sobriquet is Chhota Dawood, has engineered the blasts
with the help of the Gujarat Revenge Force (GRF). But then there are
few takers for this theory. For one, the moment Dawood Ibrahim is involved
in an operation it is no longer hush-hush. Elements in the mafia who
are constantly at each other’s throats squeal and sing at the
first opportunity. The Mumbai Police had no scent the blasts were on
the way.
During the visit
of the Indian cricket team to Pakistan in 2004, I decided to masquerade
as a sports journalist and meet the subject of my umpteen articles at
his new headquarters. Of course, I did not expect Dawood to be lounging
on the verandah of his Clifton residence in Karachi. A decade after
he relocated to Karachi from Dubai, he had become a fugitive again.
Apparently, General Pervez Musharraf knew he would be in trouble with
both the US and India if Dawood, now labelled an international terrorist,
was found in Pakistan . So he had been told to go underground, especially
at a time when many Indian scribes were in Pakistan.
The whitewashing
had not wiped out Dawood’s imprints, especially in Karachi . Dawood,
now renamed Amer Saheb and Iqbal Seth, had tried to replicate his Mumbai
success story in Pakistan, with the government’s support.
Dawood’s
Clifton bungalow is located in the neighbourhood of the shrine of Abdullah
Shah Ghazi, a replica of Mumbai’s Makhdoom Shah Baba’s shrine
in Mahim in central Mumbai. Ironically, Makhdoom Shah Baba is the favourite
saint of Mumbai’s mafia because they believe that he protects
them from the Mumbai Police. Apparently, Dawood had contributed generously
for the construction and upkeep of the shrine.
During the course
of my story, I learnt that Dawood had properties worth hundreds of crores
in Clifton and at Khayabane-Shamsheer in the Defence Area of Karachi,
where he entertained Pakistan ‘s top politicians. A Karachi journalist
told me, “Dawood has his hands in every business here.”
I told him that he also has his hands in every business back home in
India.
Who would have
thought that a petty thug, the son of an ordinary constable from the
Mumbai Police, would one day come to almost rule the city? Dawood was
a petty thug at the age of 18 when he made his first big grab: Rs 4.75
lakh that belonged to the Corporation Bank’s Masjid Bunder branch
in 1977.
Soon after that
Dawood managed to overthrow the reigning don of the time, Baashu Dada
and took over his throne. Dawood was only 20 when a senior police inspector
of the Dongri police station, who was tired of mindless violence let
loose by local Pathans, decided to cultivate him as a strategy to neutralise
the growing Pathan menace. For Dawood, this was a godsend. He unleashed
a war against the Pathans, got support from the police, grew in clout
and affluence and very soon overshadowed such giants of his era as Haji
Mastan and Karim Lala.
With the help of
trusted lieutenants like Chhota Shakeel, Sharad Shetty and Chhota Rajan,
Dawood managed to set up an empire even bigger than the fictional Don
Corleone’s. His palatial bungalow in Deira Dubai — christened
White House — was the main haunt of Bollywood when they were in
the Gulf. Top actresses took pride in dancing for him. There is a story
that when one married actress was forced to dance at Dawood’s
party by her producer husband, she could not tolerate it and committed
suicide soon after her return from Dubai.
Dawood expanded
far and wide out of Dubai, setting up bases in New York, London and
Singapore. In fact, Dawood has also appointed a spokesperson for himself
who goes by the name of Meraj and often issues statements on behalf
of his master from his London office. For Dawood, growth was power.
Even while in Dubai, he had amassed enough wealth to last generations
but now he wanted to wield power and influence that could topple governments
and establishments.
Today, Dawood is
perhaps Dawood no more. He is Iqbal Seth. Or Amer Saheb. And my attempts
to get to him have been futile. When I reached Karachi airport during
the cricket series, I called his right-hand man, Chhota Shakeel and
told him that I am in Pakistan, would he and the don not like to meet
me? He said, “Neither I nor Bhai are in Pakistan.”
I learnt later that
Dawood had been asked to shift to Waziristan close to Baluchistan in
Pakistan. And often, instead of Karachi’s Clifton, Dawood prefers
to stay in Islamabad’s posh Blue Area, too far from Mumbai, but
still within reach. Who knows?
The
writer is Editor, Special Investigations, Mumbai Mirror
