Political pressure to catch Dawood has increased Officials who have been tracking Dawood Ibrahim, who is wanted for his role in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, said that the political pressure to catch Dawood has increased “substantially” in the recent times. A senior Intelligence Bureau official, when asked about recent media reports regarding a “failed” operation that was apparently carried out by Indian security officials to kill Dawood last year in Pakistan, neither denied nor confirmed that such an operation was carried out. The official stated that intelligence agencies were working on a definite plan to catch or kill Dawood, “as soon as possible”. There is already a red corner notice against Dawood and the United States declared him to be a “specially designated global terrorist” in 2003. “Dawood has been our number one priority since long, but in the past, the political backing that the present government has been giving us now, was missing. There have been instances in the past where our efforts to capture him were stopped at the last moment, but now that has changed,” a senior IB officer said. Officials also allege that Dawood enjoyed political patronage from two Indian political leaders in the previous government. “Dawood’s links with two senior political leaders has been kept under wraps by successive governments. With the new government at helm now, at least now the names of these politicians should be revealed,” the official added. Officials claim that the Ministry of Home Affairs has sufficient evidence against these leaders, collected by various agencies including the IB and the Central Bureau of Investigation. When the IPL match-fixing scam was discovered last year, at that time too the Delhi police found a strong piece of evidence that linked Dawood to a Union minister who was serving in the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. But at the time too, the details were not made public because of political pressure. A former secretary level officer, who worked in the MHA, said that the nexus between Dawood and some Indian politicians was an open secret. “The MHA, after the 1993 blasts, gave the Vohra Committee, which was constituted to look into criminal-politician nexus, enough evidence clearly linking Dawood with two very senior politicians. However, when a truncated committee report was finally tabled in Parliament, it did not have any names despite the MHA giving the names of the politicians who had relations with Dawood. Now, when a totally new government is at the Centre I see no reason as to why the entire report cannot be made public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he wondered.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 19:25:53 +0000