Mumbai’s First Family of Crime
Slum redevelopment. Rent collection. Loan recovery. Dawood Ibrahim’s siblings control the Karachi-based don’s expanding business interests in Mumbai, right under the noses of the police.
Slum redevelopment. Rent collection. Loan recovery. Dawood Ibrahim’s siblings control the Karachi-based don’s expanding business interests in Mumbai, right under the noses of the police.
By Sandeep Unnithan and Kiran Tare
From his four-room apartment atop Dambarwala building in Nagpada, Iqbal Kaskar, 46, can see the police headquarters at Crawford market over seven km away. It is a constant reminder of how close the law is. And how powerless it is to nail him. Since his deportation from Dubai in 2003, the police have tried to arrest Dawood Ibrahim’s younger brother at least twice but failed. First, it was a 2007 case over the Sara-sahara (no connection with the Sahara Group) shopping malls in Crawford market. Police say Iqbal entered into a criminal conspiracy with Dawood and Chhota Shakeel to build the malls on land reserved for a civic school. They colluded with Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation officials. The sessions court acquitted Iqbal in June 2007 for lack of proof. Next, it was the midnight blaze that completely gutted the Sara-sahara malls and parts of Manish market in November 2011. Police suspect sabotage. It was an attempt to clear the land, which cost Rs 200 crore, for redevelopment. Again, there was no evidence to nail prime suspect Iqbal Kaskar.
There is plenty of evidence, however, to nail Dawood as the architect of the March 12, 1993, Mumbai serial bomb blasts that killed over 260 people. Pakistan continues to deny he is in Karachi. Dawood was once known as ‘Bhai’ and ‘Mucchad’. Over the past five years, he has acquired a new nickname, Boss, evidently to mark his transformation into a legitimate businessman. He has an estimated net worth of Rs 75,000 crore with investments in shipping and airlines, among others, and business interests spread across Asia, Europe and Africa.
“In the 1990s, the underworld took money out of the city through extortion. In the last few years, they have been pumping money into real estate and the stock market,” says a senior officer from the Mumbai Police’s Crime Branch. The police, as well as the Enforcement Directorate ( ED), have been unable to prove the underworld link to funds flowing into building projects.
Dawood’s legacy continues to loom large over the metropolis. Nowhere does it cast a longer shadow than over Nagpada, an urban ghetto of four-storeyed building clusters. This is where the son of a police head constable from Ratnagiri district graduated to someone the US calls an “internationally designated global terrorist” in 2003. A 2010 US Congressional report warned that Dawood and his gang posed a direct threat to US interests in South Asia. The Kaskars live in a heav-
ily guarded bungalow complex in Karachi’s posh Clifton enclave.
The rump of the family, younger brother Iqbal and sister Haseena, live down the infamy of their surname in the don’s nursery, Nagpada. Iqbal has a little fortress atop a grey and yellow building on Pakmodia Street, a congested bylane that runs parallel to a 2.4 kmlong flyover snaking over the busy Mohammed Ali Road. An unshaven potbellied bodyguard with a shirt hanging loose over his trousers sits on a metal chair outside the building, cautiously watching passersby. A white domed CCTV camera fitted above the narrow staircase monitors the street. Intruders into the ghetto attract instant attention. Photographers have been beaten up and have had their cameras snatched away.
Rival gangs breached this stronghold on May 17, 2011, when Chhota Rajan gunmen shot and killed Iqbal’s driver Arif Syed Abu Bukha. Iqbal now stays indoors, watching Hollywood action films and reality TV shows. When he must step out, he slips into a white kurta-pyjama, takes the backdoor and flags down a taxi. Iqbal retains the Kaskars’ obsession with Bollywood. He has connections with the film world through a gangster-turned-film producer. Two of Bollywood’s biggest stars still keep in touch with him using predecided aliases like ‘Salim’ to identify themselves. Iqbal is believed to have invested in real estate in the distant suburbs of Mira Road and Bhayandar as well as around central Mumbai.
Iqbal’s brother-in-law Zanzeb Khan alias Guddu Pathan, 43, is believed to run Dawood’s real estate business. “Zanzeb invests Dawood’s money in his legitimate real estate business. He ensures Iqbal stays away from the limelight,” says a police informer. The grandson of late gangster Karim Lala, Zanzeb’s sister-in-law Rizwana is married to Iqbal. An inspector from Nagpada Police Station confirms that Dawood has invested a lot of money in slum rehabilitation projects in Andheri and Jogeshwari areas of Mumbai. “Finding the money trail is ED’S responsibility. We take care of law and order in our area,” he says.
Most of the Kaskars fled Mumbai after the 1993 blasts, never to return. Iqbal was deported in 2003 by the UAE government. He stood trial for the 1998 murder of a Customs Department informer, Ravindra Babulal Singh. Iqbal and his elder brother Noora were the alleged conspirators in the killing. Mumbai police say they brought Iqbal back but he maintains that he came on his own after his UAE visa expired. Insiders say his return had much to do with Dawood’s need to
get a family man to get a grip on his business in Mumbai. Iqbal served a four-year prison sentence between 2003 and 2007 and was back in the thick of things after that.
Police say Iqbal’s return partly had to do with Dawood’s real estate empire now valued at over Rs 250 crore ( see
box: Proxy Properties) left behind in the care of sister Haseena. A burst of construction over the past decade has led to the gentrification of lowbrow central Mumbai, an underworld stronghold. Chawls and red light areas are being demolished to make way for 30-storey skyscrapers. Land prices are now over Rs 60,000 per sq ft. The worth of the Kaskar estate continues to increase.
“The Kaskar family does not need to work,” says a small-time Nagpada businessman close to the family. “They own property worth several hundred crores,” he says. The income tax department has listed several properties which they say are benami ( see Proxy
Properties). After the 1992-93 riots, the department attached 11 alleged benami properties of Dawood. No buyers attended a September 2001 auction announced by the IT department in Colaba. “We assured police protection to potential buyers. We waited the whole day but few came forward,” says a police officer. Only one buyer, a Delhi-based lawyer Ajay Shrivastava, turned up. He bought Dawood’s building at Jayraj Bhai Lane for Rs 2.5 lakh. Haseena, however, filed a stay against his takeover in 2003. The case was finally decided in Shrivastava’s favour in March 2011.
Haseena lives in Gordon Hall, an eight-storeyed building less than a kilometre north of Pakmodia Street. Black tinted glasses shield the twin flats converted into a single dwelling unit on the building’s first floor. A CCTV and an iron grille greet visitors. Till Iqbal’s return, the empire was managed by Haseena
aapa (elder sister) as she is called. A school dropout, she married her brother’s aide Ibrahim Ismail Parkar, a tall, well-built gangster from the same
POLICE SAY IQBAL’S RETURN PARTLY HAD TO DO WITH DAWOOD’S EMPIRE, NOWVALUED AT OVER RS 250 CRORE. IT WAS LEFT IN THE CARE OF SISTER HASEENA.
Konkani-muslim community. It was an arranged marriage.
Tragedy struck less than a decade later. Parkar was gunned down by Arun Gawli’s shooter, Shailesh Haldankar, in 1992 near J.J. Hospital. Gawli’s stronghold, Dagdi Chawl, lay just two km east of Nagpada. Haldankar and other gang members entered Nagpada to carry out the hit. The don vowed vengeance. Twentyfour ‘D company’ gangsters broke into the hospital and gunned down Haldankar with an AK-47 in
SARAMALLWAS GUTTED IN AFIRE IN NOVEMBER 26, 2011. IT HAS NOTBEEN REBUILT. September 1992. Two police constables, too, died in the crossfire.
The sensational shootout was the start of the gang wars of the 1990s. Temporarily eclipsed by the blasts of 1993, the war continued through the 1990s. Members of the Gawli, Amar Naik, Abu Salem and Rajan gangs battled for turf, influence and a slice of the booming real estate and film business. Haseena’s descent into the underworld allegedly began with small dispute settlements. She held court at her firstfloor flat in Nagpada’s poshest address, Gordon Hall, a complex built in the early 1980s. She mediated between builders and businessmen and even ran a loan recovery business called Creative. She is believed to maintain cordial relations with Dawood’s erstwhile aide-turneddeadly foe Rajan and his wife Sujata Nikalje. The Southeast Asia-based gangster still sends her a rakhi every