A cash reward of Rs 25 lakh has been announced on fugitive underworld gangster Dawood Ibrahim by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The probe agency also announced various other reward amounts for hisassociates in a probe related to the ‘D’ Company — Ibrahim’s gang — establishing a unit in India to smuggle arms, explosives, drugs and fake Indian currency notes (FICN) and carry out terror attacks in close association with Pakistani agencies and terror outfits.
According to reports, the agency announced rewards for Ibrahim’s brother Anees Ibrahim alias Haji Anees; close aides Javed Patel alias Javed Chikna; Shakeel Shaikh alias Chhota Shakeel; and Ibrahim Mushtaq Abdul Razzaq Memon alias Tiger Memon.
While the reward amount for Ibrahim is ₹25 lakh, the agency has announced ₹20 lakh for Chhota Shakeel, and ₹15 lakh each for Anees, Chikna and Memon.
Based in Karachi, Pakistan, and wanted for multiple terror activities in India, including the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, Ibrahim already has a bounty of $25 million on his head announced by the United Nations Security Council in 2003. He is among India’s most wanted men along with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) chief Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar, Hizbul Mujahideen founder Syed Salahuddin and his close aide Abdul Rauf Asghar.
In February, the NIA had registered a fresh case against Ibrahim and his aides after receiving information that the ‘D’ Company had established a special unit in India with the help of terror groups and Pakistani spy agency – ISI to target prominent political leaders and businessmen, as well as to support the terror and sleeper cells of LeT, JeM and Al-Qaeda (AQ) in Indian cities to carry out strikes.
As part of the investigation, the NIA raided 29 locations in May this year including those linked to Suhail Khandwani, a trustee of Haji Ali Dargah and Mahim Dargah; Samir Hingora, a convict in the 1993 Mumbai blasts; Salim Qureshi alias Salim Fruit, the brother-in-law of Chhota Shakeel; Guddu Pathan, a relative of Ibrahim’s brother Iqbal Kaskar; and Qayyum Shaikh, a resident of Bhiwandi.
Moreover, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had also initiated a money laundering probe in the matter and arrested former Maharashtra minority development minister Nawab Malik on February 23 for allegedly usurping a plot of land worth ₹300 crore at Kurla from a local resident with the help of Ibrahim’s late sister Haseena Parkar.
According to Indian intelligence agencies in 2015, Dawood has addresses in Pakistan, including White House at Clifton, Karachi; three Pakistani passports — first one issued in Rawalpindi (No.G-866537), two issued in Karachi (No. C-267185) and (No. KC-285901).
He has used several aliases over the years, including Dawood Ebrahim, Sheikh Dawood Hassan, Abdul Hamid Abdul Aziz, Aziz Dilip, Daud Hasan Shaikh Ibrahim Kaskar, Dawood Sabri, Shaikh Ismail Abdul and Hizrat.
The UNSC listing of Ibrahim says that the “underworld don’s criminal syndicate has been involved in large-scale shipments of narcotics, and has shared its smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa with Usama bin Laden (former Al Qaeda chief; killed in 2011 in Abbottabad by US Navy Seals) and his terrorist network.”
“a financial arrangement was brokered to facilitate their usage of these routes. In the late 1990s, Dawood travelled to Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban,” it added.
