Dawood Ibrahim: From petty criminal to India's most wanted (2024)

News headlines are abuzz with coverage a purported poison attack on and the hospitalisation of mob boss Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan. The underworld don has reportedly been hospitalised in Karachi owing to a serious health complication, various reports said.

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar is among the most wanted criminals in India for being one of the masterminds behind the 1993 Mumbai blasts. He has been designated a global terrorist by the United Nation. He runs an international terrorist network, named D-Company, with his associates like Anees Ibrahim Shaikh, Chhota Shakeel, Javed Chikhna and Tiger Memon, among others.

Dawood has long been in the news because terrorism-criminal activities such as arms smuggling, narco terrorism, underworld criminal syndicate, money laundering, circulation of FICN, unauthorised possession/acquisition of key assets for raising terror funds and working in active collaboration with international terrorist organisations including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Al Qaeda (AQ), an NIA statement says.

From petty criminal to public enemy
Born in 1955, Dawood spent his early years in Mumbai. His father was a policeman and his mother a homemaker. He took to a life in crime after dropping out of school while still a teenager, starting out with fraud, theft and robbery, before taking control of the D-company and getting involved in big-time crimes such as gold smuggling, extortion, realty and drugs.

Dawood fled to Dubai in 1986 after the police started chasing him in a murder case. Over the subsequent years, he spread his footprints internationally with the help of his close aide Chhota Rajan. At its highest point, the D-company boasted of thousands of gang members and crore and crore of rupees in revenue.

Dawood became the biggest public enemy in India when investigations linked him to the 1993 Mumbai (then Bombay) blasts that killed 257 and maimed hundreds.

Whereabouts
He reportedly fled to Pakistan after Dubai became too hot for him. For a long time now, media reports have widely described him as living in Pakistan since then, a charge Pakistani officials have consistently denied.

Dawood's empire of crime is spread across the continents of Asia, Africa and Europe. Well over a third of their revenue comes from India.

In 2015, India has prepared a dossier to be given to Pakistan by way of proof that Dawood lives therein. The dossier listed him as having nine residences in Pakistan. It also had the specifics of three Pakistani passports which he frequently uses for travelling.

In 2020, Pakistan -- while sanctioning terrorists under UN directives -- listed three addresses of Dawood Ibrahim. These were a) White House, Near Saudi Mosque, Clifton in Karachi; b) House Nu 37 – 30th Street – defence, Housing Authority, Karachi and c) Palatial bungalow in the hilly area of Noorabad in Karachi.

Pakistani authorities, however, insisted it was not an admission that he was in Pakistan. "The notifications only contained what was listed in the list of sanctioned individuals and the entities belonging to the United Nations," they said.

D-Company's current situation
The gang is reported to have two factions. The major one is led by Shakeel Babu Miya Shaikh alias Chhota Shakeel, while the other one is run by Dawood’s brother Anees Ibrahim.

There has been a battle for supremacy between Shakeel and Anees for years, media has reported on multiple occasions quoting sources. Dawood trusts Shakeel more than brother Anees, and Shakeel trusts his aide Machmach, reports say.

In Video: Underworld don Dawood poisoned, hospitalised in Karachi under tight security: Sources

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