FALL OF DCOMPANY’S TRUSTED DRIVER SALEM

MUMBAI: Extradited gangster Abu Salem was on Thursday sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

Much before he delivered a consignment of arms and explosives at actor Sanjay Dutt’s house in the run-up to the March 12, 1993, blasts, Abu Salem went by the name Abu Samaan in Dawood Ibrahim’s gang, often called the D-Company.

He got the name because of his good driving skills that ensured many of the gang’s consignments of contraband (referred to as saaman) reach their destination in time. He was thus the natural choice when it came to carrying the consignment of hand grenades and assault rifles from Gujarat to Mumbai in January 1993.

He did not disappoint Anees Ibrahim, Dawood’s younger brother and second-in-command, in the gang. The consignment successfully reached the garage at Dutt’s Pali Hill home.

Retired ACP Shankar Kamble, who was a key member of the Mumbai crime branch team that investigated the case, remembers that Salem never figured in the underworld criminal dossier, neither was he a suspect in the serial blasts even a month after the police unravelled the plot.

It was at the height of the investigation in the third week of April 1993 that the crime branch picked up some D-Company members. The source of some confiscated Kalashnikovs and hand grenades was still to be known, though police had a fair idea about how RDX found its way into the city.

One of the gangsters spilled the beans about Dawood aide Baba Chouhan. “Chouhan’s family ran a motor driving training school, while he was involved in smuggling,” Kamble said. It became evident that a large consignment of arms and explosives was carried into the city from Gujarat in a van. The disclosure not only nailed Dutt, but driver Salem.