They’re closing in on Osama, our man still at large

Though the police unravelled the Dawood link to the Mumbai bomb blasts within 10 days, he stays a free man, reports SMRUTI KOPPIKAR

RECONSTRUCTING the blasts trail to Dawood Ibrahim then safely ensconsed in Dubai meant that sleuth agencies other than the Mumbai police got involved. Amidst much resistance from the Mumbai top brass, a Special Task Force was set up involving officers from the CBI, IB and RAW as well as half a dozen embassies, the Interpol and terrorism experts in the US and London.

The second phase of the investigation focussed on rounding up nearly 200 suspects. The earliest leads came from the three hotels that suffered from the blasts — the upmarket Hotel Searock in Bandra, Hotel Centaur at Juhu and Vile Parle. In all three cases, the men had checked in, paid an advance in cash and had vanished with their room keys a few hours before the blasts.

The interrogation of about 20-30 men showed that Tiger Memon was holed up in Dubai for the better part of January, then organised batches of two-three selected young Muslim men to reach Pakistan via Dubai for training in handling sophisticated weapons like AK-56s, explosives and detonators. The last group returned to Mumbai in the first week of March and D-Day was scheduled to be sometime in late March.

By then, Tiger Memon had organised the ‘safe’ landing of arms and explosives at Shekhadi and other villages near Shrivardhan on the Konkan coast. Memon had personally supervised the landing of one huge RDX consignment and had accompanied it to Mumbai.
Shekhadi was an example of how the Indian enforcement authority had been totally subverted with lucre. Officials from the Customs and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence were willing conspirators, either helping to land the stupefyingly huge caches of explosives or looking the other way. Five Customs and DRI officials were arrested after the CBI seized documents and pass-books from places along the coast.

A staggering 7,000 kgs of RDX was brought in. About 300 kgs was used in the blasts. Of this, 1,400 kg found in a flat in suburban Mumbra and another 2,400 kg in Thane creek, discovered accidentally by children who were playing there. Daud Mohammed Phanse, one of the three men arrested from Shrivardhan, was in charge of landing explosives and weapons at Shekhadi. He told investigators that he was sent to Dubai for three days by Tiger Memon, put up at Durbar Hotel and taken to meet Dawood Ibrahim who, he said, spoke of retaliation for the Babri Masjid demolition and Mumbai riots.

The link to Dawood was made but the STF faced a Herculean task — of getting him and the Memons back to India. Tiger Memon and his brothers’ families had flown initially to Dubai and later to Karachi on the morning of March 12.

IBRAHIM Mushtaq alias Tiger was the second of six sons of Abdul Razzak, who passed away earlier this month, and Hanifa. Tiger was on the wanted list Customs since 1989, a COFEPOSA order was passed against him the following year for two major smuggling offences. At the time of the blasts, the family wealth was believed to be around Rs 20 crore. Tiger Memon reportedly became richer by Rs 20 crore after the blasts. The STF believed that he was spurred on by the enormous damage to his office building and assets during the 1992-93 riots as well as by heart-rending stories that Muslim women brought to a refugee centre near his Mahim office. The CBI eventually arrested some Memons in 1994.

Where did filmstar Sunjay Dutt fit into all this? The verdict on him is still pending but investigating officers believe he was not in the know, though he had procured some weapons from the consignments, ostensibly for self-protection. It still leaves unexplained how phone calls were repeatedly made from his bedroom to a certain set of numbers in Dubai.

After several extensions, the chargesheet was eventually filed on November 4, 1993. Though Samra and Singh were ready with the Dawood link within ten days of the blasts, interrogation and compiling took months. The chargesheet ran into 12,30,000 pages; different parts of it were filed by as many as 150 officers. Their effort ran into a staggering 4,32,000 manhours of work.

Filing the chargesheet itself became a subject of debate because by then, there was a tug-of-war between rivals Chief Minister Sharad Pawar and Union Home Minister SB Chavan. Chavan had wanted the CBI to conduct the investigation exclusively and file the chargesheet. Pawar took it as a matter of personal pride that his police force should do the task. He had apprised Samra, then police commissioner, accordingly. Four days after the chargesheet was filed in a special TADA court in Mumbai, Samra was transferred.

Back then, it was Judge JN Patel’s court and trial began on June 30, 1995. When Patel was elevated in March 1996, Judge PD Kode took over. Of the 198 originally accused, 124 are now facing trial. As many as 28 were discharged for lack of evidence, three undertrials died natural deaths and seven who were on bail were shot dead by hitmen of Chhota Rajan who vowed to finish off everyone involved in the conspiracy.

A judgement is not expected before mid next year. The prime accused — Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon — are still at large, reportedly in Karachi.

In a telling gesture, NM Singh made all the accused cart up gunny bags of the chargesheet to the court room when it was filed. As it happens, only the operatives have paid, or will pay for their crimes — unless, as Singh now says, the Government of India launch a campaign against Dawood in a manner that the US has on Osama bin Laden.