Indian mafia

[Hollander]

Dawood gangster spills the beans

Abhishek Sharan

Mumbai, February 17, 2007


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He hobnobbed with top global gunrunning cartels and this is what helped him survive in Dubai despite enmity with Dawood Ibrahim's younger brother, Anees.

Top deported Dawood gangster Abdul Qayyum Shaikh (42) has provided Mumbai Crime Branch detailed information about the D-company's gun-running activities and links with international gun-running cartels.

Qayyum is known to have a sharp brain in D-company and has excellent networking abilities.

"Qayyum has admitted to having sent a big arms consignment for the gang," said an officer, requesting anonymity. The consignment included 35 AK-47 assault rifles, which were seized in Rajasthan in 1999.

Qayyum revealed that another top Dawood aide Ejaz Pathan - now lodged in Arthur Road jail - had helped him procure arms from the international gunrunning cartels.

According to Qayyum, Pakistan's ISI ("through unofficial channels") and a former KGB major named Victor Anatoliyevich Bout - one of the world's biggest "illegal" arms suppliers, who had a nexus with the Russian mafia - had helped him and Pathan procure arms and supply to India.

Since 2002, the Crime Branch (CB) has been aware of the role of Qayyum, Pathan, ISI and Bout in smuggling the consignment. Apparently, Pathan had confided the details of the "operation" to a few close aides who were actually the Crime Branch's informers.

"Pathan's disclosure had come at a time when he survived an aborted assassination attempt in Karachi that had been ordered by Dawood and executed by his under-boss Chhota Shakeel," said an officer.

The CB was trying to keep Pathan away from Dawood to weaken the gang.
Qayyum has revealed that over last 15 years, he has built an intricate network of contacts with gun-running cartels run by Bout, Chechnyan rebels, Kenyan and even Chinese.

He even helped Bout in sending arms to Chechnya and to Afghan mujahideens.
According to an IB officer, Qayyum had started a rice-trading company, Star Inc, and transported most of his consignments through Bout's Transavia Aviation Network (comprising 60 aircraft).

"Qayyum had also passed on crucial information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that had led to the arrest of a Mumbai-born gun-runner in the US a few years ago," said the IB source.

Qayyum had evolved into a big gun-runner on behalf of the gang, but over the last few years he admits to having run his operations independently due to his rift with Anees, according to a source.

His contacts with the global cartels kept him going in Dubai although he incurred Anees's wrath. Anees had apparently ordered Shakeel to get him killed a few years ago but the attempt failed.

This post has been edited by Hollander on Dec 3 2007, 12:37 PM

[beemoe]

Hey Hollander: Dawood is no question "one of my guys". I briefly mentioned him in the "money laundering" post. No question an "operator" of major proportion.

[Hollander]

Islamabad August 7: Pakistan today stuck to its known stand that Dawood Ibrahim, wanted both by India and the US, does not live in this country amid conflicting reports about the fate of the underworld don.


Pakistan Interior Ministry reiterated Islamabad's position while officially denying reports of Dawood's arrest by the ISI in Quetta.


"Nobody by the name Dawood Ibrahim has been arrested by the security forces," Pakistan Interior Ministry spokesperson Brig(retd) Iqbal Cheema told a media briefing here while responding to a question on the whereabouts of the don.


"He is not in Pakistan and there is no truth in reports of his arrest in Quetta," Cheema said.


"There is nobody by that name who has been arrested by anybody here. We have reasons to believe he is not in this country. There is absolutely no credence, no truth to the report. We do not know where this report has come from," he said.


"If anyone has any evidence of his presence in Pakistan, we would welcome that. But he is an Indian national, the UN lists him as an Indian, and he should be looked for in India. As far as my knowledge goes, he is not in Pakistan," the spokesman said.


Pakistan in the past even denied any passport existed in the name of Dawood Ibrahim when US had forwarded details of his passport and address.


Before the reports of injury as well as his detention came in public domain, a Pakistan daily had reported that US pressured Pakistan to arrest Dawood who has been declared wanted by Washington for his involvement in narcotics smuggling and links with al-Qaeda related Islamist extremist groups. "The News" said the FBI and the US Drug Enforcement Authority, (DEA) had approached the ISI,the Federal Investigation Agency, FIA) and the Anti-Narcotic Force, (ANF) of Pakistan to locate the whereabouts of Dawood.


Cheema has reiterated the government's resolve to root out extremism and terrorism from the society with the help of peace loving people of the country.


Replying to a question on frequent suicide attacks, he said the government is aware about the perpetrators of these crimes and would be brought to justice sooner than later.


The spokesman said authorities have found some useful clues with regard to two suicide bomb attacks in Islamabad. To a question, he said they are definitely looking at involvement of foreign hand as far as these acts of terrorism and suicide bombings are concerned. (Agencies)

[Hollander]

Powerful Indian gangster a strong backer of terrorism

Jonathan Manthorpe
Vancouver Sun


Monday, September 10, 2007


In all the inevitable soul-searching over the next few days accompanying the sixth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, one name unlikely to draw much attention, at least in the West, is Dawood Ibrahim.

But perhaps he should.

This extraordinary character, an Indian national about 52 years old, is an entrepreneur with a mind-boggling portfolio of enterprises.

Ibrahim is don of Mumbai's major organized crime syndicate, the fabled D-Company, beside which the Mafia seems like a corner store operation.

Much of the D-Company's street cred stems from movies glamourizing Ibrahim and his gangsters as folk heroes, produced just down the road from Mumbai in Bollywood and financed, of course, by Ibrahim. As much as anyone, Ibrahim symbolizes that grey area between India's movie industry and the underworld, and which has seen several Bollywood stars as famous for their courtroom performances as their on-camera action.

Ibrahim is also a fervent Muslim. And it is this that has catapulted him into the world of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, international drug dealing, money laundering, and a star spot on the U.S. government's list of global terrorists.

It's not only Washington that wants Ibrahim dead or alive -- so does the Indian government. New Delhi believes the Pakistani government, and especially the military's Inter-Service Intelligence agency (ISI), is sheltering him.

Ibrahim and his financial empire are seen as essential ingredients in the survival of al-Qaida and the Taliban insurgents whom Canadian, British and Dutch forces are battling in southern Afghanistan.

Opium grown in Afghanistan and trafficked through Taliban networks is believed to be transported to Europe, where it is processed into heroin before being sold locally or moved on to North America. All of this travels through Ibrahim's courier systems in Central Asia.

Recent reports say Afghanistan now produces 95 per cent of the world's illegal heroin, and is the major source of financing for the Taliban insurgency.

At the same time, Ibrahim is believed by Indian police to control much of the "hawala" system in Pakistan and India. Hawala is an ancient but still very popular invisible method of transferring money from country to country by use of credit guarantees. Washington has often railed that the system is tailor-made for financing terrorist operations.

That Ibrahim is still at the centre of a spiderweb of criminal enterprises is in itself a testament to the man's perverted genius. His empire should have crumbled in 1993, but instead he seems to have rocketed ever upwards.

In December 1992, extremist Hindu nationalists attacked and demolished the Babri Muslim Mosque at Ayodhya in northern India.

Ibrahim, it seems, was incensed by this outpouring of anti-Muslim violence, although there are also strong suspicions that he already had links to Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, which persuaded him to seek vengeance.

Using his D-Company network and scores of unemployed Muslim street youths, Ibrahim launched a massive terrorist attack on Mumbai. Thirteen bombs exploded in the city on March 12, 1993, killing at least 250 people and injuring another 700.

Shortly before the attacks, Ibrahim and some of his closest cohorts left India for the United Arab Emirates, but he later moved to Karachi, Pakistan's southern port and commercial centre.

Here Ibrahim has rebuilt his empire around his links to ISI, al-Qaida and the Taliban.

As the U.S. assessed the al-Qaida network after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Ibrahim came into view. In 2003, Washington designated him a terrorist and ordered financial sanctions imposed on anyone doing business with him.

This does not seem to have cramped Ibrahim's style.

Pakistan does not have a film industry offering Ibrahim stars and starlets with whom to consort. In Pakistan, the megastars are cricket players, and Ibrahim's daughter is married to Javed Miandad, Pakistan's greatest batsman and one of the great cricket players of all time.

The Indian police are not allowing Ibrahim to live in peace, however. In November of last year, Mumbai police managed to get 10 of Ibrahim's gang members extradited from the United Arab Emirates.

Now, one of the techniques used by Indian police in their interrogation of prisoners is to administer the so-called "truth drug", sodium pentothal -- although resultant confessions are not used in court, as they are deemed too unreliable.

But as a result of the gangsters' drug-induced babbling, New Delhi says it has a detailed picture of Ibrahim's operations and is demanding Pakistan hand him over. Pakistan says it doesn't know where he is, although there are persistent reports Ibrahim was detained by police in Karachi after a gun battle two weeks ago.

It would be unwise to bet, however, that Ibrahim's time has run out.

jmanthorpe@png.canwest.com

[Hollander]

Dawood aide arrested in Lucknow
2 Dec 2007, 2006 hrs IST,PTI


LUCKNOW: A sharpshooter of mob boss Dawood Ibrahim's gang was arrested on Sunday while he had come to a colony here to meet an accomplice and claimed he was soon to be given a target in Uttar Pradesh.

Special Task Force (STF) officials said Talib Khan, hailing from Mumbai, had come to the Indira Nagar Colony to meet the accomplice.

Khan, who was carrying a 12-bore country-made pistol, an empty and live cartridge besides a mobile phone, told police that soon after he was released from jail this year, he was asked by his superiors to come to Uttar Pradesh with the instructions that he would be soon given a target.

He said that he had come in contact with Chhota Shakeel and Fahim Machmach in 1999 and used to extort money for them.

Later in 2000, Khan and his two accomplices had attacked a businessman in Bhindi Bazar area of Mumbai after which he was arrested and jailed for seven years in Kolhapur.

The police here have contacted their Mumbai counterparts for details of Khan's criminal record and filed a case in Ghazipur police station.

The STF had on November 26 arrested another sharpshooter of the same gang, Tabrez, in the state capital.

[Hollander]

Notorious mafia don arrested after 20 years
(DPA)

24 January 2008



NEW DELHI - One of India’s biggest mafia dons, Brajesh Singh, who was wanted in as many as 100 criminal cases and was on the run for two decades, was arrested by the police in the eastern state of Orissa, media reports said Thursday.


Singh, who ran an extortion mafia which raked in 75 million dollars annually, was arrested by a special unit of the Delhi Police in the state capital Bhubaneshwar on Wednesday evening, the NDTV network reported.

Bhubaneshwar’s police chief, Amitav Thakur, confirmed the arrest and said Singh would be produced before a court later on Thursday.

According to the Zee news network, Singh was wanted in 100 criminal cases, many of them relating to murder and extortion.

‘What makes the whole police operation a major achievement is the fact that there is no authentic photograph of Singh,’ the Zee network said in its report.

‘He has been literally invisible for the past 20 years, no one had seen him, but one could surely feel the presence of his mafia network,’ the report said.

His rivalry with politicians like Mukhtar Ansari led to multiple murders and gang warfare across northern Uttar Pradesh and eastern Bihar states.

Singh also had links with gangland boss, Dawood Ibrahim, who was branded a ‘global terrorist’ by the US, and a key accused in the 1993 Mumbai blasts in which 257 people were killed.

[Hollander]

Last update - 14:11 30/11/2008


Terror in Mumbai

Is 'the most dangerous man in the world' behind the Mumbai attacks?

By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

Tags: India, Dawood Ibrahim

Security officials in India believe that an Indian citizen once called 'the most dangerous man in the world' masterminded the well orchestrated string of terror attacks that left at least 195 people dead in India's financial capital of Mumbai last week.

The man, Dawood Ibrahim, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Ibrahim is wanted in India for his suspected role in the 1993 bombings in Mumbai, in which more than 250 people died in a string of 13 coordinated bombings.

Ibrahim is a millionaire operating in several countries with connections both in India and Pakistan.
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Speculations have surfaced over recent days that the terrorists responsible for last week's attacks, which began Wednesday evening and continued well into the weekend, had come from Pakistan. Indian officials, among them India's foreign minister, also raised the possibility that Pakistani terrorists were behind the attacks, sparking tension between the neighboring countries.

Reports from India indicate that security officials believe that Ibrahim orchestrated the attacks from the Pakistani city of Karachi, sending his men to enter India illegally to carry out ten coordinated attacks in separate locations in Mumbai.

The connection to Ibrahim was established during the questioning of one of the attackers,
Amir Kasab, 21, who told the Indian authorities that he had been sent to Mumbai by Ibrahim after having undergone training in Pakistan.

Indian media reported earlier that in the past, some of the attackers had stayed at the Taj hotel in Mumbai, which they targeted on Wednesday, and therefore were very familiar with the hotel's structure. The commander of the elite Indian unit that stormed the hotel following the attack, in efforts to free hostages, described the attackers as "skilled fighters, prepared for their mission and merciless."

Pakistani authorities have denied any connection to the attacks. The Pakistani government has asked to be involved in the investigation into the incident, offering to send its highest level spy chief to India, but later rescinded the offer, apparently due to Indian objections, and decided to send lower level investigators instead.

[Paul-Chafs]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawood_Ibrahim

[Hollander]

Last update - 08:00 05/12/2008


Report: India has proof Pakistan spy agency linked to Mumbai attacks

By Reuters

Tags: mumbai attacks, india

Indian newspapers reported Friday that the government had proof Pakistan's military spy agency was involved in the Mumbai attacks, including evidence supplied by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) connection was clear and evident," the Times of India quoted Indian intelligence sources as saying. The ISI is Pakistan's main spy agency.

The Hindu newspaper said investigations into the Mumbai attack had led to the names of handlers and trainers of the Islamist gunmen and the locations where the training was held. These were believed to be military or ISI men.
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At least 171 people were killed in the attacks last week in Mumbai. Nine of the attackers were killed while one is being interrogated.

The detained man told investigators he had attended four training camps in Pakistan over the past 18 months, Mail Today newspaper said.

He has said he is a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based group blamed for previous attacks in India.

The attacks have increased tensions between India and Pakistan. New Delhi says militants based in Pakistan were involved in the attacks, and has demanded that Islamabad hand over 20 of its most wanted fugitives.

The prime suspect for the Mumbai attacks is Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist group fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, and which analysts say has had ties with Pakistani intelligence in the past.

[Hollander]

Shot in the arm for cops as Dawood kin gets jail
Mateen Hafeez , TNN 19 August 2009, 02:34am IST


MUMBAI: The noose is slowly tightening around India's Crime Family No. 1. In a development that the city police is considering as a major victory, a
Sewree fast-track court has convicted fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim's brother-in-law, Zanzeb Khan alias Guddu Pathan (40), and sentenced him to three years' rigorous imprisonment.

"Pathan was accused of trying to kill a police informer on August 21 last year. The conviction on Monday has come as a boost for us as most of Dawood's kin facing criminal cases are either out on bail or have been acquitted,'' a police officer said.

"The two victims in the attempt-to-murder case approached the police against Pathan, deposed before the court and gave their testimonies. It shows that ordinary Mumbaikars are no longer afraid of the don's family. Now, complainants come forward if they have a problem with the underworld. It was not the case earlier,'' said crime branch chief Rakesh Maria.

Policemen believe it's a positive development. "The verdict will encourage several other victims to come forward and file complaints if they are being threatened or harassed by gangsters,'' another officer said.

[Hollander]

Dreaded Indian Gangster to be Extradited
Amira Agarib and Sajila Saseendran

10 November 2009

DUBAI — Dubai Police has arrested one of the most wanted underworld gangsters from India, accused in over 30 cases including murder and extortion, a senior official said.

Major Salem Al Rumaithi, Director of Wanted Section at the General Department of Criminal Investigation, said Rajendra Kumar alias Bannanje Raja had entered the UAE using a fake passport.
Al Rumaithi said the man was first arrested on October 11 in Dubai in the passport case, but released on bail paid by an Indian businessman based in the United Kingdom.
Dubai Police set a trap and rearrested the man after he was identified as the wanted Indian suspect. Police did not give the date of the second arrest.
The arrest warrant accuses the suspect of being the mastermind of a gang involved in blackmailing and running prostitution dens in Bangalore.
“After receiving the warrant, we arrested the suspect in one of the emirates and he was referred to the Dubai Public Prosecution,” Al Rumaithi said.
After his arrest, a delegation from India arrived, confirmed the suspect’s identity, and began extradition procedures. Investigations are continuing.
Al Rumaithi said the suspect entered the UAE as an accountant of a firm.
Media reports from Bangalore in India’s Karnataka State said that the police there had received information about the arrest of the suspect, believed to be operating from Gulf countries since he went into hiding about 11 years ago.
Reports said Raja, listed among the six most wanted criminals by Bangalore Police and against whom there is an Interpol alert, was nabbed while trying to flee to Malaysia on October 11. Two of his accomplices were arrested the previous day in Dubai.
Bangalore City Police Commissioner Shankar Mahadeve Bidari earlier told Khaleej Times that the information was received from “intelligence channels”.
He said there were 34 cases against Raja, including murder, extortion, robbery, rape and attempt to murder in various parts of Karnataka.
Reports in India said he will be handed over to Indian authorities before November 18.

[Junior]

Nepal jails sex trafficker Bajir Singh Tamang for 170 years
BBC News, July 12, 2012

A district court in Nepal has handed down a record 170-year jail term to a man convicted of trafficking teenage girls to work as prostitutes in India.

Bajir Singh Tamang, 37, was convicted of luring teenagers from rural areas with the promise of jobs in the Middle East only to sell them to brothels.

His own daughter was among the young women he trafficked.

Correspondents say that the trafficking of women for prostitution has long been a problem for Nepal.

Six women under 16, rescued by human rights groups in 2007 and 2009, had pressed charges against Tamang, prosecutor Krishna Jung Shah told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

"He was charged for illegally recruiting the girls, selling them to Indian brothels and also running a prostitution ring," Mr Shah told AFP from Sindhupalchok, the central district where Tamang was convicted.

The sentence is the longest handed down in Nepal's history.