Authors: S. Hussain Zaidi
He was hopeful of getting transferred to Pakistan or Dubai because he had citizenship for both those places and would be able to survive in the jails there. But as luck would have it, he did not get shifted to any of those places: the CBI had set the wheels into motion to have him extradited to India, the scene of most of his illegal activities.
Salem realised that his extradition to India would certainly be the road to perdition. Desperately, he began to make efforts to scuttle his return to India.
24
The White Kaskar
D
awood Ibrahim and, to a slightly lesser extent Anees, are the best known of the Kaskar siblings and indisputably the most active in the underworld. Their sister Saeeda was killed in an accident in their village in 1980, elder brother Sabir had fallen to gangland bullets in 1981, and another brother Noorul Haq alias Noora had succumbed to cancer in 2010.Noora was a bit-member of the D Company who harboured aspirations of writing for Bollywood. He is believed to have written a number of songs for Hindi films under a pseudonym.
Dawood now had seven surviving siblings—four brothers and three sisters; all the sisters were living in Mumbai, while the brothers continued to live in Dubai and Pakistan with Dawood.Anees was the only notorious sibling, while Humayun, Mustakeem, and Iqbal Kaskar, Dawood’s other brothers, who did not have any profession per se and sat at home living off Dawood’s money, boasted of a clean slate, with no police record whatsoever. Iqbal had always been someone who was unequivocal in his decision to keep away from all underworld dealings, and wanted to maintain his clean record. However, years of being antagonised by the Mumbai police, harassed by the Crime Branch, and frequently summoned to courts became a bit too much to handle for the three brothers.
It was at that point, sometime in 1988-89, years after Dawood had set up his empire, that the three brothers relocated to Dubai and joined brother Dawood. They would never have considered this but for the fact that authorities in Mumbai had turned their lives into a living hell. Moving to Dubai seemed like a much better idea at the time. And when Dawood shifted base to Pakistan, Humayun and Mustakeem were more than happy to follow suit. Iqbal though was a different kettle of fish altogether.
Constantly being on the run and hopping from one place to another seemed to have taken its toll on Iqbal. He introspected at length and decided that this time, he would not accompany his brothers. He knew that he had a spotless record and that the police had absolutely no dirt on him. These facts would work in his favour, he believed, and he felt he would get justice if he decided to return to India.
The only thing that held Iqbal back and cast a doubt on his decision was that he knew of the Mumbai police’s reputation for carrying out encounters and making people ‘disappear’. He knew they would not hesitate to shoot a man dead right outside the airport as soon as he arrived. With these worries in mind, Iqbal began making calls to some influential people he knew in Mumbai. He had been an informant for the police at one point in time and knew some of the top IPS officers in Mumbai. Apart from them, he also called some Muslim politician friends in India.
Finally, he got in touch with one of his old contacts in the Crime Branch, a junior-level officer, a police inspector by the name of Aslam Momin. Aslam and Iqbal were similar in a lot of ways and yet had found themselves (inadvertently, as it was, in Iqbal’s case) on opposite sides of the law. Iqbal was from Ratnagiri and Aslam from Kolhapur, and as Marathi-speaking Muslims, they shared a very good rapport. This was what had actually been instrumental in Aslam roping Iqbal in to be an informant for the Crime Branch.
Ever since Iqbal decided to leave behind the problems in Mumbai and move on to Dubai, he had been in regular touch with Aslam. And naturally, when he wanted to make his return to the country where he was born, Iqbal called Aslam from a landline. Aslam was not overly surprised to receive the call and traded the customary salaams with Iqbal. The exchange of polite pleasantries quickly came to a close as Iqbal got to his point. ‘Sahab
,
I want to come back. Are there any cases against me in Mumbai?’
Aslam, with his voice exuding a calming sense of reassurance, said, ‘Don’t worry, Iqbal.’ Encouraging Iqbal to return to Mumbai, he added, ‘There are no cases against you. There will be no fake cases filed against you and you will definitely not be “encountered”. You have nothing to worry about.’ After mulling over the pros and cons for a few months, Iqbal Kaskar finally returned to his homeland in May 2003. Expectedly, there was no red carpet welcome for him and he was taken straight into custody because officially, he had been deported from Dubai. As per procedure, being taken into custody was inevitable.
Now normally, it would be quite natural for someone to be a little anxious about being taken into custody, but Iqbal was not perturbed in the least. He was confident that he would be out of prison and free as a bird in a couple of weeks, at the very most. After all, he
had
just voluntarily returned. It was not as if he was a fugitive who had been captured and brought back. The Mumbai police, unfortunately, did not see things this way, and was on hand to throw a spanner into the works. To the police officers, it was a matter of reputation and pride that they had Dawood’s sibling in their custody. The fact that he had no cases against him was dismissed summarily, as when it came to Dawood’s brother, the bottom line was that there was no way on earth that he could possibly be clean.
The cops began working overtime and scoured high and low for cases against Iqbal. After burning the midnight oil going over old records, they finally found an age-old murder case that had been filed against him. Victorious, the police threatened to book him for those charges. And yet, Iqbal was still cool and collected. He knew that the case had been filed on very weak grounds because a co-accused had testified that the victim and Iqbal were on bad terms. This, Iqbal thought, would never stand scrutiny in a court of law, and so, he felt he would be discharged in no time.
Iqbal was guilty beyond doubt of counting his chickens much too prematurely. He underestimated the Mumbai police’s fervour to see him locked up and put away for good. Even as the enthusiastic cops were looking for a case to supplement the weak murder case, by a blinding stroke of luck, they struck gold. A large plot of land that measured around 20, 000 square metres and was located right next to Crawford Market was owned by the Public Works Department, had been usurped by Dawood’s men. Two shopping complexes had appeared there, the Sara Shopping Complex and the Sahara Shopping Complex (referred to collectively as the Sara-Sahara Shopping Complex).
Each of these complexes housed around fifty retail shops, and every single one was doing brisk business. In fact, the twin shopping complexes became so infamous after a while that they were called ‘Dawood Mall’. The Mumbai police uncovered a veritable treasure trove of incriminating evidence comprising fifty-six tapes of telephonic conversation between Dawood or his men and people from the BMC and other government departments. The cops realised that they could probably book Iqbal and did exactly that. Iqbal was swiftly booked under the extremely stringent MCOCA for conspiracy and aiding and abetment of organised crime’s effort to usurp government property.
Iqbal was now left with little recourse, other than fighting the charges in court, and his case went on for several years in the court of special judge A.P. Bhangale. During the course of the trial, the police discovered that Iqbal’s voice had also been recorded on the tapes. Although there was no concrete evidence on the tapes to incriminate Iqbal, the Mumbai police nevertheless decided that some action, whatever it was, had to be taken. The then Commissioner of Police A.N. Roy, using the police chief’s prerogative under Section 311 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), decided to sack Aslam Momin for what was described as his ‘alleged involvement with the underworld’. Three years after Iqbal’s fateful call to Aslam, the latter was unceremoniously booted out of his job by Roy. Naturally, Aslam was distraught and went to the tribunal to see if he could clear his name. The Mumbai police did not make this task any easier and took their own sweet time to provide the requisite affidavits. The entire process took an excruciating fifteen months, but Aslam was finally given a clean chit.
Unfortunately for the former inspector, the Mumbai police quickly went to the high court to appeal against his clean chit and Aslam had to wage yet another long drawn-out battle against his own former bosses with no immediate reprieve in sight.
In 2004, inspired by the example set by Arun Gawli, who was then a member of the legislative assembly despite the significant handicap of being lodged at Arthur Road Jail, Iqbal decided to contest the elections as an Independent candidate from the Umerkhadi constituency. With everything in place, he filed his nominations and was all set to go head-to-head with the Nationalist Congress Party’s Bashir Patel. It was then that something went awry and Iqbal had to withdraw his nominations.
It is widely believed and was reported in the
Times of India
on 28 September 2004 that a high-ranking IPS officer who enjoyed a close proximity with an NCP politician, was responsible for getting Iqbal to withdraw his nomination. The story goes that Iqbal was threatened that ‘the cops would not spare him if he contested’ the elections.
Over three years later, in the MCOCA court, where Iqbal was still fighting his case, Bhangale was no longer the judge and was replaced by Judge M.A. Bhatkar. She found that there was insufficient evidence against Iqbal, his voice did not match the one on the tape, and there was not a shred of information linking him to the Sara-Sahara Shopping Complex. Finally, it was then, four years since his return to India, that Iqbal could walk away a free man.
The case, however, was not totally unfruitful for the police as they saw three people from the BMC and other government agencies suspended for their involvement in the shopping complexes. The entire ‘Dawood Mall’ was also ordered to be torn down to the ground. The shopkeepers saw their cash cows slowly slipping from their grip and were naturally, up in arms. They went to the high court and managed to get a stay order against the demolition. Undeterred, the state went to the Supreme Court and managed to get the final orders for demolition.
While the only remnants of the Sara-Sahara Complex today are in the memories of the shopkeepers, for Aslam, the nightmare has refused to end. Even today, he is still under suspicion and continues to wage his lone struggle, contesting his case. There does not seem to be any relief in sight for him because he believes that he will still be fighting his case well into his retirement.
Iqbal seemed to have learnt his lessons albeit the hard way. The surname of Kaskar had been a stigma and he realised that the name would keep getting him into trouble. He decided to approach the Bombay High Court and asked to change his name to Shaikh Iqbal Hasan instead of Iqbal Hasan Kaskar.
25
Global Terrorist
A
fter a struggle of over a decade, the Indian government finally managed to convince the mighty United States that Dawood Ibrahim was now a crucial cog in the wheel for terror activities perpetrated internationally.
The Indian government had launched intensive efforts to convince Uncle Sam that Dawood, who organised the serial blasts of 1993 in Mumbai, was capable of attacking the US interests anywhere in the world because of his liaisons with Osama Bin Laden. The initiative finally worked with Capitol Hill though it took over 10 years and 6 months to achieve their desired objective.
The US Treasury Department on 16 October 2003 announced that it was designating Dawood Ibrahim as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Executive Order 13224 and would be requesting the United Nations to list him as well. The global terrorist designation froze any assets belonging to Dawood within the US and prohibited transactions with US nationals. The UN listing required that all UN members take similar actions.
While proclaiming him a global terrorist, the US government declared, ‘This designation signals our commitment to identifying and attacking the financial ties between the criminal underworld and terrorism,’ stated Juan Zarate, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. He added, ‘We are calling on the international community to stop the flow of dirty money that kills. For the Ibrahim syndicate, the business of terrorism forms part of their larger criminal enterprise, which must be dismantled.’
The executive order clearly describes Dawood Ibrahim as an Indian crime lord who has found common cause with Al Qaeda, sharing his smuggling routes with the terror syndicate and funding attacks by Islamic extremists aimed at destabilising the Indian government. He was wanted in India for the 1993 Bombay Stock Exchange bombings, it stated, and is known to have financed the activities of the LeT, a group designated by the United States in October 2001 and ostensibly banned by the Pakistani Government—which also froze their assets—in January 2002.
Another US Congressional report released simultaneously identified the D Company as a ‘5,000-member criminal syndicate operating mostly in Pakistan, India, and the United Arab Emirates,’ which has a ‘strategic alliance’ with the ISI and has ‘forged relationships with Islamists, including Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Al Qaida’.
The report, prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the research wing of Congress, was aimed at priming US lawmakers on various issues, and had no immediate policy implications. The US Department of Treasury had already designated Dawood as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) and subsequently President George W. Bush designated him, as well as his D Company organisation, a Significant Foreign Narcotics Trafficker under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.