Does Dawood have a base in Lucknow?
December 19th 2008 15:21
Does the ISI (read Dawood Ibrahim) have a base in Lucknow and is it still active? Is the arrest of a ISI agent on Wednesday proof that this is true. If so why choose a poor city like Lucknow when you can have all the moolah and chutzpah of Mumbai? Does it have anything to do with proximity to the Nepal border, a direct flight from Pakistan to Kathmandu and a direct flight from Lucknow to UAE or does it have anything to do with local businessmen, local politicians and local mafia dons?
With the present turn of events where dons are being recruited into the ruling party at an unprecedented speed policing has become extremely difficult for police officials who only till yesterday were conducting raids on the houses of notorious dons but today have to offer them a chair in their own office if and when the don chooses to visit as he is suddenly a ruling party candidate and hence ‘respectable’. Will this also affect anti-terrorism efforts in the state? Before we answer this question we need to take a hard look at the evidence and what senior journalists have reported from time to time regarding Lucknow and its links with the great king of terror Dawood Ibrahim.
If these police and media reports are correct then Dawood’s aides have enjoyed several dinners and lunches in Lucknow and even his personal cook has got his passport issued from this city. A Lashkar operative who was held in Kenya – a man with the name of Tunda – not to be confused with the city’s famous kebab maker – was traced to Lucknow. Noora an Afghan national was shot dead in the city while trying to escape from the police and in a raid in Barabanki barely 20 km from Lucknow Vikram Singh who is now the DGP of the state had captured several of Dawood’s henchmen.
Sharat Pradhan a senior journalist of the city writing on Rediff states that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba militant Abdul Karim 'Tunda,' got his first passport issued from Lucknow way back in 1989. A resident of Pilkuan village in Ghaziabad (on the threshold of New Delhi), Tunda was wanted in connection with the Delhi serial blasts in the late nineties that left 24 dead and many others wounded.
Sixty-four-year-old Tunda was believed to have a hand in the 1993 Mumbai blasts as well. Not very long ago, Dawood's personal cook Khan Jabrail Khan, who got his passport issued from the Lucknow office as late as in 2004, the scribe writes.
Subhash Mishra writes in the India Today:
Seema palace is not exactly the kind of place you would like to be seen at in Lucknow. The hotel has a disreputable history, the district administration having closed it on three occasions in the past. However, the hotel managed to get back into business all three times. "We knew some nefarious activities were going on but we had no evidence. So we had to close the hotel, on the pretext of non-payment of electricity dues or of entertainment tax," recalls a senior police officer. "Each time some influential politician intervened and ensured that the hotel reopened," he adds.
SSP Arun Kumar-who had earlier masterminded the arrests and elimination of top mafia dons, including Manjit Singh alias Mange, Babloo Srivastava and Shri Prakash Shukla, wasn't going to let go so easily. He had information that underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's men were using the hotel. Kumar, a specialist in electronic surveillance-laid an elaborate network around Seema Palace. For nearly five months he and his men listened in on the talk inside. Having collected enough material to nail the gangsters, Kumar finally gave his men the go-ahead to storm the hotel on March 3.
It was big fish that landed in the police's net. Two Dawood men, Akhtar Ali Ansari and Sheikh Majid, were arrested. There were more surprises at a parallel raid at Shakira Lodge near Mohanlalganj, about 25 km from Lucknow. The police managed to apprehend Abu Jais-younger brother of Abu Salem, Dawood's right hand man and prime accused in the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993-and Ehsan alias Irfan. So what was D-Company doing so far east of its Mumbai moorings? It turns out that after the bomb blasts and music magnate Gulshan Kumar's killing, the Mumbai Police left Dawood's men reeling after a spate of encounters. D-Company found Lucknow, with its proximity to the porous India-Nepal border, just right for a new base. Conveniently, Lucknow also has a flight connection to Dubai.
The conversations among the gang members recorded by the Uttar Pradesh Police's Special Task Force (STF), the arrest of the four gangsters and their subsequent interrogation have stirred a hornet's nest in the establishment. The investigating agencies now have concrete evidence of ties between D-Company and a Union minister, two ministers of the incumbent Ram Prakash Gupta Government, a former minister, a former MP, nearly half a dozen senior police and civil officers and a big property dealer of the city. According to Vikram Singh, IG-STF, the owner of Seema Palace, Sheikh Majid, has direct links with Dawood. Majid's daughter is married to Noora, one of Dawood's brothers, and his son is married to the daughter of Haji Mastan, former underworld don of Mumbai. "Majid used to provide shelter to members of D-Company and lavishly entertained politicians and bureaucrats," claims a police officer.
The police disclose that D-Company was determined to cultivate Lucknow as its base for expanding its operations and hawala transactions. The criminals are alleged to have strong connections with a political party that has its base in the state. The police have substantial evidence this time. "We laid our hands on them only after obtaining solid proof," says Kumar That Dawood has stepped up his activities in a big way is a fact not hidden from the Government.
According to another report in the press:
Four alleged henchmen of Dawood were nabbed by the STF from a village in Barabanki district near here. State police chief Vikram Singh said the arrested men were desperados who had famous film personalities, including music director Himesh Reshamiya and filmmaker Raj Kumar Santoshi, on their hit list.
One of them, identified as Anees Radiowala, confessed to his nexus with Mumbai-based gangster Ejaz Lakdawala.
The other three were identified as Mohammad Raheem Khan, Ishrat Warsi and Namdev - all residents of Mumbai.
The police seized three imported revolvers, a locally made pistol, a Qualis car and a mobile phone from their possession. The Uttar Pradesh police chief also threw light on the nexus between Lakdawala and Dawood Ibrahim as well as Abu Salem
With the present turn of events where dons are being recruited into the ruling party at an unprecedented speed policing has become extremely difficult for police officials who only till yesterday were conducting raids on the houses of notorious dons but today have to offer them a chair in their own office if and when the don chooses to visit as he is suddenly a ruling party candidate and hence ‘respectable’. Will this also affect anti-terrorism efforts in the state? Before we answer this question we need to take a hard look at the evidence and what senior journalists have reported from time to time regarding Lucknow and its links with the great king of terror Dawood Ibrahim.
Sharat Pradhan a senior journalist of the city writing on Rediff states that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba militant Abdul Karim 'Tunda,' got his first passport issued from Lucknow way back in 1989. A resident of Pilkuan village in Ghaziabad (on the threshold of New Delhi), Tunda was wanted in connection with the Delhi serial blasts in the late nineties that left 24 dead and many others wounded.
Sixty-four-year-old Tunda was believed to have a hand in the 1993 Mumbai blasts as well. Not very long ago, Dawood's personal cook Khan Jabrail Khan, who got his passport issued from the Lucknow office as late as in 2004, the scribe writes.
Subhash Mishra writes in the India Today:
Seema palace is not exactly the kind of place you would like to be seen at in Lucknow. The hotel has a disreputable history, the district administration having closed it on three occasions in the past. However, the hotel managed to get back into business all three times. "We knew some nefarious activities were going on but we had no evidence. So we had to close the hotel, on the pretext of non-payment of electricity dues or of entertainment tax," recalls a senior police officer. "Each time some influential politician intervened and ensured that the hotel reopened," he adds.
SSP Arun Kumar-who had earlier masterminded the arrests and elimination of top mafia dons, including Manjit Singh alias Mange, Babloo Srivastava and Shri Prakash Shukla, wasn't going to let go so easily. He had information that underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's men were using the hotel. Kumar, a specialist in electronic surveillance-laid an elaborate network around Seema Palace. For nearly five months he and his men listened in on the talk inside. Having collected enough material to nail the gangsters, Kumar finally gave his men the go-ahead to storm the hotel on March 3.
It was big fish that landed in the police's net. Two Dawood men, Akhtar Ali Ansari and Sheikh Majid, were arrested. There were more surprises at a parallel raid at Shakira Lodge near Mohanlalganj, about 25 km from Lucknow. The police managed to apprehend Abu Jais-younger brother of Abu Salem, Dawood's right hand man and prime accused in the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993-and Ehsan alias Irfan. So what was D-Company doing so far east of its Mumbai moorings? It turns out that after the bomb blasts and music magnate Gulshan Kumar's killing, the Mumbai Police left Dawood's men reeling after a spate of encounters. D-Company found Lucknow, with its proximity to the porous India-Nepal border, just right for a new base. Conveniently, Lucknow also has a flight connection to Dubai.
The conversations among the gang members recorded by the Uttar Pradesh Police's Special Task Force (STF), the arrest of the four gangsters and their subsequent interrogation have stirred a hornet's nest in the establishment. The investigating agencies now have concrete evidence of ties between D-Company and a Union minister, two ministers of the incumbent Ram Prakash Gupta Government, a former minister, a former MP, nearly half a dozen senior police and civil officers and a big property dealer of the city. According to Vikram Singh, IG-STF, the owner of Seema Palace, Sheikh Majid, has direct links with Dawood. Majid's daughter is married to Noora, one of Dawood's brothers, and his son is married to the daughter of Haji Mastan, former underworld don of Mumbai. "Majid used to provide shelter to members of D-Company and lavishly entertained politicians and bureaucrats," claims a police officer.
The police disclose that D-Company was determined to cultivate Lucknow as its base for expanding its operations and hawala transactions. The criminals are alleged to have strong connections with a political party that has its base in the state. The police have substantial evidence this time. "We laid our hands on them only after obtaining solid proof," says Kumar That Dawood has stepped up his activities in a big way is a fact not hidden from the Government.
According to another report in the press:
Four alleged henchmen of Dawood were nabbed by the STF from a village in Barabanki district near here. State police chief Vikram Singh said the arrested men were desperados who had famous film personalities, including music director Himesh Reshamiya and filmmaker Raj Kumar Santoshi, on their hit list.
One of them, identified as Anees Radiowala, confessed to his nexus with Mumbai-based gangster Ejaz Lakdawala.
The other three were identified as Mohammad Raheem Khan, Ishrat Warsi and Namdev - all residents of Mumbai.
The police seized three imported revolvers, a locally made pistol, a Qualis car and a mobile phone from their possession. The Uttar Pradesh police chief also threw light on the nexus between Lakdawala and Dawood Ibrahim as well as Abu Salem
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