Asia Times: Mumbai's gangs a threat to India-Pakistan ties


	August 23, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Mumbai's gangs a threat to India-Pakistan ties
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - Now officially called Mumbai, Bombay is India's financial capital. It was once renowned for its sophisticated, cosmopolitan culture. Two of its most prominent industries, film and crime, were both known for reflecting India's avowed secular values. In fact, these were the only two industries where the minority Muslims did not complain of discrimination.

However, everything changed with a string of communal massacres following the demolition of the famous Babri mosque in far-flung Ayodhya, a small town in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, in the wake of a divisive campaign by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992.

The underworld is now split along communal Hindu-Muslim lines. As if this were not bad enough, the two factions, led respectively by Chhota Rajan and his former don Dawood Ibrahim, are also receiving support from Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies, which periodically keep playing games for their own reasons, bringing Mumbai to the brink of violence.

Mumbai spent a very tense two days last week following one such game by one of the agencies - no one knows which. It was rumored that Chhota Shakeel, the most trusted aide of Dawood Ibrahim, who virtually runs Mumbai on his behalf, had been killed in Karachi in Pakistan in an attack by the Chhota Rajan gang, and that the don was also seriously injured.

Private television channels and newspapers publicized the story as prominently as possible, forcing many in Mumbai to stay indoors, fearing retaliatory violence. As a precaution, Mumbai was put on high alert and police remained so even after it became clear that the reports were untrue.

North India's largest circulated newspaper, the Hindustan Times, speculated, "The alleged attack on underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and his associate, Chhota Shakeel, might well have been part of an organized disinformation campaign, either by Indian or Pakistani intelligence agencies."

According to an intelligence analyst, reported the paper, Pakistan's powerful Inter-State Intelligence (ISI) may have calculated that the news of the attack on the two underworld characters would lead to retaliation from their associates, and thus contribute to a major law and order problem in Indian cities. The analyst then argued that the unrest could have then been given a communal spin.

However, it was pointed out, the Indian intelligence agencies, too, would have gained from this move. Agencies such as the Intelligence Bureau (IB), the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have tapped more than 100 telephone lines of the Mumbai underworld, particularly members of D-company (the Dawood gang). The news of Shakeel being shot dead would have triggered a flurry of activity, and listening to the tapped phones would have helped the Indian agencies track D-company's movements. In fact, IB and CBI sources confirmed D-company cell-phones in Mumbai were buzzing after news of the attack broke. The conversations could have been used to publicize the Indian claim that many of the Dawood bosses live in Karachi, although authorities there deny this.

Meanwhile, talking to Star TV and a number of newspapers, Shakeel denied reports of either him or Dawood having being shot at in Karachi's Cliffton area on Friday evening. Shakeel said the rumor had been engineered by his rivals to harm his "business interests". "Our rivals, particularly Chhota Rajan, think that by spreading such rumors they can harm our interests in Bombay and Dubai [United Arab Emirates, UAE]. But we will not let that happen and we will retaliate soon," Shakeel said.

He claimed to be speaking from Singapore and denied that he and Dawood were based in Karachi, echoing what Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf had told Indian authorities during the Agra summit last month.

Senior IB and CBI officials say that Chhota Rajan, along with other gangsters such as Babloo Shrivastava, Ali Bundesh, Ijaz Pathan, Abu Salem and Fazl-ur-Rehman had been planning to strike at D-company in a big way.

So the question remains, who triggered the rumors? Mumbai City Police Commissioner M N Singh on Monday came up with the startling disclosure that a reporter had contacted him about the "nonshooting" a day before the story actually broke. Singh did not disclose the identity of the reporter. Clearly though, some people knew that the rumor was going to be started.

Chhota Shakeel is wanted in connection with several extortion and murder cases. His boss, Dawood Ibrahim, has been accused of masterminding the Mumbai blasts of 1993 in which more than 250 people in the Bombay Stock Exchange, mostly Hindus, died.

Prominent film stars live in constant fear of the duo. Some of them have been reportedly forced to work in substandard films produced by the crooks. A leading producer and a billionaire diamond merchant, Bharat Shah, was arrested last year as he was allegedly acting as a conduit for the Dawood gang's film-making ventures. The extortion activities of the gang have increased rapidly in the past four years, forcing the Maharashtra state government to introduce the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA).

Chhota Shakeel has been booked under the MCOCA and has been declared as absconding. Dismissed judge J W Singh has also been charged with extortion in a case involving Shakeel.

A private television company, New Delhi Television (NDTV), claimed to have learned that an attempt had been made on Chhota Shakeel's life earlier last week in Bangkok by Chhota Rajan's gang. According to reports, Ijaz Pathan, one of Dawood's men, is said to have joined Rajan and three others - Harish Shah, Prem Chandra Pandey and Bharat Nepali - in Bangkok and that they attacked Chhota Shakeel. But when the attack failed they are reported to have followed him to Karachi.

The rivalry between Dawood Ibrahim and his former close aide, Chhota Rajan, is well known. Several attempts have been made by both sides to eliminate the gang leaders. In September of last year, Shakeel was allegedly responsible for an attack on Chhota Rajan in Bangkok. Ironically, Chhota Rajan originally was a part of Dawood's gang. But a split came in March 1993, with the Mumbai blasts engineered by Dawood. Chhota Rajan accused his mentor of targeting Hindus and left their Dubai base with all the Hindu gang members for Kuala Lumpur in 1994.

Mumbai's gangs have now became redrawn on communal lines, with Chhota Rajan being supported by Babloo Shrivastava and Chhota Shakeel with the backing of Dawood Ibrahim and Ashwin Naik.

But police say that the communal battles may be just a front for a bitter turf war aimed at getting a slice of Mumbai's thriving economy. The city's gangs have now divided it into two distinct parts. South and central Mumbai is Dawood's stronghold and the northeast part of the city is Chhota Rajan's base. In the heart of Dawood's turf in the city in Muslim-dominated Mohammed Ali Road, there are fears of a new round of inter-gang battles.

Nevertheless, the fact that little action has been taken for the killing of Muslims following the Babri mosque's demolition, despite a report by the Justice Sri Krishna Commission appointed by the government that indicted prominent politicians and police officers, continues to add fuel to the fire, and perhaps adds to the Dawood gang's growing support.

One of the factors behind the support of Mafia in all parts of the world, including the United States, as depicted in 43-year-old Dawood's favorite film, The Godfather, is the general sense of justice being denied to the common people. Eight years after the massacres the wheels of justice are rolling, however slowly. The Mumbai city police finally arrested their former commissioner, Ramdeo Tyagi, and 17 former officers for deaths in what became known as the Suleiman bakery firing. The basis of the action against the accused is the Sri Krishna report. Thirty-one police officers have been indicted in the report, which also recommended reopening of 1,365 cases, but only five have been. Only five people have received any compensation from the government.

A special task force has taken some initiatives to implement the recommendations of the Sri Krishna report, but there is insufficient political will for it to be really effective.

In fact, in the long wait for justice, according to an investigative report by the website tehelka.com, many of those accused of violence - policemen and politicians - have moved on to successful careers. R D Tyagi, who was the joint commissioner for crime during the riots, became the Mumbai police commissioner and retired as chief of the National Security Guard. Of the militant Hindu fundamentalist Shiv Sena (Shiva's Army) leaders accused of inciting mob hatred, Gajanan Kirtikar became the Minister of State for Home in 1995 and Milind Vaidya became mayor of Mumbai.

It is not just the Shiv Sena, though. Politicians of the opposition Congress party, accused of trying to achieve political gains during the riots by intimidating the police, have not been censured. These include Congress leader Eknaath Gaekwad, who is a minister in the Mumbai state government and Javed Khan, who was a minister in the state government in 1992.

Unfortunately, justice delayed is perceived as justice denied, which adds to the clout of underworld dons. D Company is steadily expanding its staple "business ventures" - arms and narcotics running, extortion, hawala operations (illegal transfers of foreign exchange), contract killings, film financing, counterfeit currencies and other organized crime. In fact, during the past year, Thai police, with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, have broken two of his counterfeit currency rackets in Bangkok. Now, even US intelligence is chasing D Company over its arms business in the subcontinent, including supplying Muslim fundamentalists such as Osama bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian exiled in Afghanistan.

A report in the largest-circulated Indian magazine India Today claims that there is more than one reason to believe the don is back in Karachi. Singapore and the UAE have extradition treaties with India. In fact, Singapore handed over Babloo Srivastava, who was caught while in transit in 1995, to India on a platter. And as far as the UAE is concerned, Dawood himself did not attend the engagement and wedding of his niece last December.

There is even talk that D-company has moved to Nepal, or to Thailand, Malaysia or Australia because of its strong network and business interests in these countries. But last year's failed attempt to kill Chhota Rajan in his Bangkok residence by a team of eight of Dawood's sharpshooters, and his escape from under the Thai police's nose, have made these countries more cautious. India has signed extradition treaties with 15 countries, and with eight other countries it has an arrangement to swap criminals.

But it is not an easy task verifying identities since these men hold many passports. "Extradition also depends on the political will of the countries concerned," says a senior police official in the Mumbai crime branch.

There are also reports that Dawood, in his enthusiasm in cutting side deals, bungled a clandestine arms contract with Chinese agencies. The latter did not hesitate to bring the incident to the notice of the Pakistani military authorities. This, and mounting international pressure, is believed to have decreased Dawood's "usefulness" to his hosts.

Now the story might just take an interesting twist. Some unconfirmed intelligence reports have hinted that Dawood has become a liability, even for the Pakistani Inter-Intelligence Service, and that they might hand him over to India by the end of this year as a "goodwill gesture". When crosschecked with sources in Indian agencies, the information was neither confirmed nor denied.

However, Musharraf, as mentioned above, has denied that Dawood is in the country. And Indian Home Minister L K Advani said in parliament recently that this denial "must be borne in mind when we carry on further talks with them [Pakistan]".

For Musharraf, then, to even admit that Dawood is in Pakistan, much less hand him over, may be impossible. Unless, of course, there is a sea change in diplomatic relations.

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