Gujarat police snatch Dawood - man, catch Mumbai cops napping — he he he he
RK Misra/ Pramod Kumar Singh/ Gandhinagar/ New Delhi
A crack team of the Special Operations Group, Gujarat Police, arrested Izu Sheikh, one of the key accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, early Friday morning from a hotel on the Andheri-Kurla Road in Mumbai, right under the nose of the city police.
The Mumbai Police were ignorant about the gangster’s presence after he checked into a hotel in the Andheri-Kurla area on Thursday night. Sheikh, a trusted lieutenant of don Dawood Ibrahim, controlled the gold smuggling syndicate of “D Company” in South Gujarat and was one of the 11-member core group formed by Pakistani secret agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) reportedly to “avenge the demolition of Babri Mosque.”
The team of the Bulsar district police led by Superintendent of Police (SP) Abhay Chudasama was on Sheikh’s trail for his role in the shipment of two consignments of RDX in Gosabara in Porbandar and Phansa in Bulsar.
The RDX, smuggled by Sheikh, was used by Dawood and his cronies to carry out the serial blasts in Mumbai on March,12,1993. Sheikh had fled to Dubai after the 1993 serial blasts.
Indian agencies were searching for him as he was instrumental in smuggling RDX. Mr Chudasama told The Pioneer over telephone that his men were tracking Sheikh for quite some time for his involvement in the crime. There was specific information that he was expected to visit his family and would enter the country either through Bangladesh or Nepal.
Sheikh, who had not come to India after his role was established in Mumbai blasts, arrived in Mumbai via Bangladesh on Thursday night and checked into Kamariya Residencey on the Andheri-Kurla Road.
After his location was established, a Special Operations Group (SOG) team led by SP, Bulsar, raided the hotel at around 5 am on Friday and whisked him away to Bulsar, a two-hour drive from Mumbai.
When contacted, a senior Mumbai Police official feigned ignorance about the presence of Sheikh in Andheri. The fact that there was a Red Corner Notice issued by Interpol against Sheikh put the Mumbai Police in a poor light.
Fifty-four-year-old Sheikh, a resident of Umergaon in Bulsar and whose real name is Izra-ul-Huq alias Izu Haji Abdul Hamid Sheikh, has been brought to Bulsar and is being interrogated, Mr Chudasama said.
Sheikh was alleged to be close to former Chief Minister late Chimanbhai Patel, but was kicked out of the Congress by then home minister CD Patel. However, it was during Chabbildas Mehta’s chief ministership that Sheikh was termed a Proclaimed Offender (PO) and his property worth over Rs 2 crore attached.
The attached property included an automobile showroom, a godown in Bulsar town, four shops in Bhilad and two shops in Sari village, a hotel in Bhilad and 15 acres of agricultural land.
The case dates back to the Mumbai serial blasts. An 11- member core group in Dubai, under ISI tutelage, had masterminded a conspiracy to avenge the demolition of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya on December 6,1992.
Soon after, two ships Bismillah and Sada-e-bahar sailed from Dubai to Karachi from where it picked up its lethal consignment. While one offloaded the booty at Gosabara near Porbandar on the Saurashtra coast, the other did so on the South Gujarat coast and sailed to Raigad in Maharashtra.
A key Dawood Ibrahim aide, Umarmian alias Mamumian Bukhari alias Mamumian Panjumian, deported back on December 8, 2004, is already in the custody of Gujarat police. Under intensive interrogation by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), Sheikh has been put through a lie detecter test while his brain mapping test (truth serum test) is awaited.
Mamumian, along with Izu Sheikh, constitute two critical components of the Mumbai serial blasts conspiracy and their interrogation is expected to shed light on the hitherto hidden contours of the larger conspiracy and other players.