Dusk for Don from Dongri?

MULTIPLE ASSETS SEIZED IN UK, big diplomatic win for Modi government

In what is being touted as a big diplomatic victory for the Narendra Modi government, the assets of world’s most wanted gangsters, Kaskar Dawood Ibrahim, have been seized in the UK.

This could be the first indication of the master coup that the Modi Government hopes to stage in the run up to the 2019 elections. Even as media reports filtered in of the seizure of assets, Union Minister VK Singh made a cryptic comment that "things are happening," but added by way of caution, "We can't let the cat out of the bag".

The seizures are an outcome of the diplomatic pressure that PM Modi has been exerting on the British government. The process was initiated during Modi’s visit to the UK in 2015, when he had reportedly handed over a dossier on the terrorist to his then counterpart David Cameron. Dawood is the second richest criminal to have ever lived, after Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, according to the Forbes business magazine. The 61-yearold Indian national, who goes by 21 aliases, is estimated to be worth $6.7 billion while a bounty of $25m is on offer for his capture.

.Dawood owns a hotel in Warwickshire and other residential properties across the Midlands. According to a report in the Birmingham Mail, these properties were on the radar of the Indian Enforcement Directorate. His other UK properties, which include a hotel in Dartford, Kent, another in Essex and several more in central London, are also under the ED scanner.

Most of Ibrahim’s money, up to half a billion dollars, is believed to be locked up in investments in the UK, Dubai and India. It is an open secret that the erstwhile Don of Dongri controls 70 percent of India’s $1 billion piracy market and has been extorting millions of dollars from Bollywood film producers. But his main illicit business interests is terror funding.

Things are happening, but we can't let the cat out of the bag – VK Singh, Union Minister