Author: S Balakrishnan
Publication: The Times of India
Date: March 28, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2905260.cms
'D-Company' is now officially part of the
Lashkar-e-Toiba's terror network, with Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) getting Dawood Ibrahim to merge his gang with the fundamentalist
terror organisation as part of a gameplan to crank up its anti-India campaign.
Sources in Indian agencies tracking ISI's
moves confirmed the coming together of the two outfits and the danger that
it poses to India.
"The underworld gang and the Lashkar
jihadis have been knocked into a single entity and this has serious implications
for India's internal security," a senior intelligence official told TOI
on Thursday.
ISI's links with D-Company are old, going
back to 1993 when Pakistan's external intelligence agency used Dawood and
his henchmen to execute the March 12 terror attack on Mumbai in what marked
the first instance anywhere of serial bombings. (TOI was the first to report
the detention of Dawood, Chhota Shakeel and Tiger Memon by Pakistani authorities).
There has since been a shift in the dynamics
of ISI-Dawood equations, reducing D-Company from being a useful ally to a
group of individuals dependent on ISI to escape international law agencies.
Following the Mumbai blasts, Dawood along
with his accomplices Chhota Shakeel and Tiger Memon fled to Pakistan. Pakistan
has since shielded them from India and the new anti-terrorism sensitivities
post-9/11 which saw Dawood being branded a global terrorist by the US.
But the hospitality has a tag attached to
it: complete dependence for survival on ISI, which does not mind displaying
its leverage vis-a-vis the once ruthless gang.
The merger will, inevitably, transform the
character of Dawood's gang, which did not display any communal tendency before
the serial bombings aimed against members of a particular community.
In fact, many of their business partners were
non-Muslims like Raj Shetty. Chhota Rajan was also a senior member of the
gang before splitting in protest against the serial blasts triggered by Dawood,
Shakeel and the Memons.
"The serial blasts were essentially a
retaliation for the January 1993 communal riots. But now there is a qualitative
change with D-Company becoming part of a jihadi organisation like the LeT.
Earlier, this gang's members were not religiously indoctrinated, but now they
are. The motivation now is not money, but religion," a senior official
said.
The joining of ranks with Lashkar, one of
the most dangerous terrorist outfits which treats "liberation" of
large tracts of India from "Hindu domination" as its religious obligation,
can help ISI to further its subversive agenda.
Stints with Lashkar camps can morph Dawood's
band of urban gangsters into well-armed and jihad-driven terrorists.
On the other hand, Lashkar benefits immensely
from collaboration with D-Company which continues to attract recruits and
has acquired financial muscle by venturing into mainstream commercial enterprises
without letting go of its original money spinner, smuggling.
