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Getting Dawood remains a fantasy for India
By Gautaman Bhaskaran on August 28, 2015 in Asia Times News & Features
India has a fantasy, much like what the Jews nursed during World War II. The latter desperately wanted to get that one chance to find the top Nazi leaders together so that they could be blown out of existence.
In 2005, India almost nailed Dawood Ibrahim
India dreams of a day when it can send its sharpshooters into Pakistan to kill Ibrahim Dawood — the man responsible for the 1993 Mumbai bombings. On Friday 12 March, 13 bombs exploded — within minutes in different localities of the metropolis. About 350 people died and 1200 were injured or maimed in what is regarded as the first instance of serial explosions in the world.
Much like the US, which got the notorious terrorist, Osama bin-Laden, in 2011 reportedly after several attempts, India has been striving to get Dawood — through overt and covert ways.
Indeed, in 2005, India almost nailed the dreaded don — who is said to have been friends with Bin Laden and is hence a wanted criminal in America as well. Dawood’s crime syndicate, D- Company, founded in Mumbai, has close links with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which India believes is also responsible for terror attacks on its soil.
According to recent media reports — quoting a former Indian home secretary in New Delhi, R.K. Singh — a hush-hush operation was planned to eliminate Dawood when he was to have been in Dubai during July 2005 to attend his daughter Mahrukh’s wedding. (She was marrying Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad’s, son Junaid. The two had met in England while they were studying.)
India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials felt that it would be best not to send their own commandos. Rather, they thought it would be wise to involve Chota Rajan, who had parted ways with Dawood after the 1993 blasts. Rajan was projecting himself as a Hindu don, opposed to the Muslim gangster that Dawood was. Also, Rajan was livid and devastated when Dawood tried bumping him off in Bangkok in 2000. And the 2005 plan seemed like heaven sent to Rajan.
Rajan sent two of his best sharpshooters, Vicky Malhotra and Farid Tanasha — who were trained in a secret Indian location.
But during their final briefing, cops from Mumbai (once known as Bombay) landed in New Delhi and arrested Malhotra and Tanasha, despite IB’s vehement protest. There are two versions why this operation failed. One, there was lack of coordination between the IB and the Mumbai police. Two, the police supposedly sabotaged the plan because of their close ties with Dawood.
Tanasha was murdered in 2010, and Malhotra jumped bail while he was serving a five-year jail sentence, and today nobody knows anything about him.
Although the plan to kill Dawood has in all these 10 years never been spoken of publicly, there were perhaps some who were in the know of things. Probably, film director Nikhil Advani, had got wind of this or he was merely indulging in wish fulfilment, one would never know. His 2013 movie, D Day, was uncannily similar to the 2005 IB operation.
The don in the crime thriller, Goldman, heads D-Company, travels to Pakistan for his son’s wedding — in defiance of security protocol. The first attempt to get him by agents of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) gets botched
http://atimes.com/2015/08/getting-dawood-remains-a-fantasy-for-india/