Chhota Rajan's plan to kill Dawood
in Rawalpindi fails
A suicide squad of the Rajendra Nikhalje aka Chhota Rajan gang visited Rawalpindi less than two months ago. The aim: to eliminate Rajan's one-time mentor, Dawood Ibrahim, and his accomplices, who are holed up in Pakistan.
This was revealed during the interrogation of Rajan's sharpshooters who were arrested recently by the Bombay police.
The plan, according to the police, was to gun down Dawood during the funeral procession of a close relative.
A team consisting of Vinod Matkar, Sushil Hadkar, Sanjay Ghati, Anil Desai and Baloo Dokre left for Pakistan within a month of killing a Nepali minister, Mirza Dilshad Beg, who is alleged to have been an associate of Dawood and an agent of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence.
But they could not succeed in their mission as the Pakistani police maintained a strict vigil at the funeral.
The squad was also supposed to kill Abu Salem and Feroz Kokani, also in Rawalpindi. But Dawood got wind of the plan and his aides took off for Lahore and Karachi.
This, of course, is not the first time the Bombay gang war has spilled over India's frontiers. Besides Mirza Dilshad Beg, Rajan's men killed Dawood hitman Sunil Sawant alias Sautya in Dubai in a sensational shootout. The three men involved in that crime were arrested and sentenced to death in Dubai.
In fact, the Sautya murder was the first time a suicide squad was used by the Rajan gang to eliminate a rival.
After that success, Rajan formed another crack team to kill Mirza Beg. After a brief stop in New Delhi, this squad reached Nepal by plane with the help of an 'agent'. Another agent named 'Shafi' sheltered them for three weeks and helped them gather information on Beg's movements.
During this period, the killers posed as industrialists from Uttar Pradesh, one of the Indian states that border Nepal.
Beg was shot dead on the Nepal National Highway when he was heading to his hometown, Shrikrishna Nagar.
The murders of Mohammed Jindran in Khar, north-west Bombay, and Beg were touted by the Rajan gang as revenge for the serial bomb blasts that killed more than 400 people in Bombay in March 1993.
The Dawood gang had split after the blasts. Dawood, who was then the unchallenged boss of the Bombay underworld, is accused of having masterminded the bombings in retaliation for the riots of December 1992-January 1993.
Rajan, who has since moved closer to the ruling Shiv Sena in the state, is believed to be hiding in South-East Asia, probably Malaysia.
Intriguingly, there are rumours that Indian intelligence agencies assisted the hit squad, though indirectly. Naturally, the agencies have denied any hand in the crime.
After killing Beg, Rajan's squad returned to Bombay via Delhi, Jaipur, and Pune, according to information gathered by the Bombay police.
Of the Rajan accomplices arrested by the police, Dokre and Ghati are wanted in 15 cases of murder, kidnapping, and extortion. They are now in judicial custody.
A resident of Kolhapur district, Dokre turned to crime after he was attacked once by Ashwin Naik, another rival of the Dawood gang, when he was working at a sari emporium in Santa Cruz, north-west Bombay. His mother is a vegetable vendor.
Dokre made his mark in the gangland in 1989 when he murdered Jayesh Thakkar. After that he has committed 14 more murders and is also wanted by Interpol.
Compiled from the Marathi media by Prasanna D Zore
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