He is India’s most-wanted criminal. He is a global terrorist. He is a dreaded gangster who rose to infamy as the mastermind of the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai that killed over 300 people.
He is Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar.
And the don, believed to be hiding in Pakistan, is back in the news. While the government on Tuesday said that it has no information about the whereabouts of India’s most wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahim and he is not on intelligence radar, junior Home Minister Kiren Rijiju made a conflicting stand. Rijiju said that he is in Pakistan.
But what does Dawood look like. Speculation has always been rife since he fled to Karachi in Pakistan after the Mumbai blasts that he had undergone plastic surgery to evade detection by the Interpol.
Declared a global terrorist by the US with an Interpol red notice against him, Dawood is known for holding many passports.
Focusnews.com brings you one of those passports which makes it very clear that Dawood Ibrahim never underwent any plastic surgery but sports a french beard.
Passport number: A 1332945
Issued on: April 6, 2005
Issued by the tiny western African nation—former French colony of the Republic of Mali – Dawood used the named Shaikh Abdul Rehman when he travelled with this passport.
Used so clandestinely, even Interpol was unaware of this passport this it was finally detected by western intelligence agencies.
Intelligence sources in Mumbai told focusnews.com that the don has 29 passports from several countries including, Belgium, Burkina Faso, Azerbaijan and Mauritius among others. The Interpol red notice lists 11 of his Indian passports, but he apparently does not use them anymore.
But he once used a Pakistani passport—H 123259—issued in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in July 2001. In this passport, Dawood calls himself Md Anees, and this passport did not come under any scanner for at least 6 years.
Analysts say his passport from Mali was used for smooth, hassle-free travel in Africa to spread his narcotics business.
The gangster has operated with impunity across countries to leave an indelible stamp of his reach and influence all over the world.
SNAPSHOT: Interpol’s notice on Dawood Ibrahim
Dawood has invested in a textile company in Tanzania and is now under the scanner for funding terrorist organisations. He has set up a drug smuggling base in South Africa and is an hotelier in Kenya and Nepal. He has put money in an airline also.
Dawood is part of the illegal small arms trade in Thailand and Hong Kong. But in Africa, it is the Mandrax pill which has become Dawood’s latest passion.
Mandrax comes in from everywhere, even the sub-continent to South Africa which is the hub of Dawood’s drug business. From South Africa, the drug moves to countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and then onwards to Nigeria and further north to Morocco. From there, not just drugs, Dawood’s expensive narcotics shipments travel to Europe and often to Canada.