Author: S Ahmed Ali
Publication: The Times of India
Dated: August 23, 2008
Introduction: Aide Spills Details On Don
Dawood aide Karimullah Habib Khan is singing.
A day after being arrested from Nalasopara, where he had assumed a new name
and a new vocation, the man who shepherded the RDX consignment to their deadly
end in March 1993 has spilled details of his boss' lifestyle in Pakistan.
Khan told the police that Dawood Ibrahim's
palatial bungalow in the tony Clifton neighbourhood in Karachi is guarded
by six retired officers from the Pakistan army. Khan, who was with the underworld
don's brother Anees after he fled Mumbai in June 1993, said Dawood had also
deployed 25 private security guards to protect himself and his family.
Going by Khan's statement to the police, in
recent years, Dawood prefers to mostly remain indoors during the day. He stays
with his wife and a son in the bungalow located on a two-acre plot. He moves
around in a bullet-proof Land Cruiser and steps out mostly in the night, that
too not without a convoy of 15 vehicles guarding him.
While Dawood and Anees stay in the Clifton
area, his close aide Shakeel stays a kilometre away, according to Khan. Quoting
Khan, a police officer said, "The bungalow is equipped with luxuries__a
home theatre, servant quarters, a garden for children with high boundary walls,
a pool centre and a swimming pool. There is everything that one can think
of."
Dawood heavily relies on Chhota Shakeel although
Anees is still part of his inner circle. All three stay separately in independent
bungalows. Dawood runs his empire like a company and no one dares challenge
his authority. Khan told the police that Dawood is only worried about his
third brother Noora, who is mentally disturbed and picks up fights over petty
issues.
Dawood's other brothers, Mustaqium and Humayun,
who are based in Dubai, keep visiting him in Karachi and stay with him. Khan
denied any knowledge about Dawood's extortion threats to Bollywood, but confirmed
that Anees had ordered the killing of music magnate Gulshan.
Speaking about himself, Khan said that it
was Ejaz Pathan who got him into the Dawood gang. He said that his father
Habib used to work as a loader with the Bombay Port Trust in the late 1980s.
Khan was operating as a petty scrap thief in the docks when he met Pathan,
a silver smuggler.
Their trade skills so impressed absconding
blast accused Tiger Memon that he assigned them the job of landing RDX on
the Shekhadi coast. Khan said that immediately after the serial blasts, he
fled to Dubai along with Anees and stayed there.
After the September 11, 2001 attack in the
US, the Dubai government was under pressure following which the duo shifted
to Pakistan.
Khan claimed that he used to do petty jobs
and stayed in an outhouse in Anees's bungalow. "In 2004, they stopped
paying Khan. They indicated that it was time for him to leave and he decided
to move out. In 2006, he flew to Kathmandu and then sneaked into India using
the land route," a police officer said.