‘For months, ISI has been wanting Dawood dead’
Underworld fugitive and India’s most wanted, Dawood Ibrahim, was killed on the orders of the Pakistan army’s top officials, claim intelligence inputs from two countries with deep penetration into GHQ Rawalpindi, as well as domestic agencies that were keeping an eye on Dawood on a priority basis since 2017. They add that his relatives have been ordered to deny the news in view of the circumstances of the death, which was “anything but related to disease or an accident”. According to them, for some months GHQ was wanting to make Dawood “disappear permanently” in view of intense pressure (mainly from the United States) to extradite the fugitive from Karachi. Dawood was responsible for the murder of several US citizens.
The sources say that it is as yet unclear how the “coup de grace” was delivered by an “assignment squad”, which involved military-linked medical personnel, but speculate that a chemical injected into the body may have been responsible for the sudden collapse of the global terrorist’s vital organs.
According to officials aware of the development, Dawood, who lived in a very protected and controlled environment, did not die due to Covid-19, as was reported before the ISI got into action with myriad posts debunking the news. Rather, his elimination occurred due to a “medical procedure carried out with the express intention of killing him”, the two external sources affirm. They add that “it was to be expected that this would be denied” by GHQ Rawalpindi, “who has long been expert at cooking up medical records signed by actual doctors” or in different circumstances, not admitting that such records exist. Pakistan has always denied that Dawood was in the country, just as they denied that Osama bin Laden was the guest of GHQ in Abbottabad. The fear was that “either India or the US or both would carry out an operation to take out Dawood or even bring him or his body back with them”. Hence the reported decision to act before his enemies could.
According to them, the reason for the “neutralisation” of Dawood was the “immense pressure that was being placed on Pakistan by the US to bring Dawood to justice”. This pressure “was the direct consequence of the flood of intelligence that Indian agencies have regularly been supplying to their US and other counterparts (except to China, where the PLA is known to transmit such confidential information immediately to GHQ Rawalpindi) about the precise whereabouts of Dawood, his family resident in the Gulf and with him in Pakistan, as well as close associates of the don. Wherever he was moved, in FATA or in Sindh or in POK, agencies such as NTRO would track his whereabouts.