‘Project Dawood’ to bring global terrorist to justice

Mumbai: With India’s most wanted gangster, Dawood Ibrahim, not hiding in Pakistan anymore, the Indian government has initiated ‘Project Dawood’ to ensure that the United States of America (USA)-designated global terrorist is brought to justice here in India.

Dawood is believed to have taken shelter in a relatively small country, where he still wields considerable influence, said sources, adding that he is probably on the African continent in a nation like Uganda, Kenya (East Africa) or Nigeria in West Africa. He could even be in the south-east European nation of Serbia, they said.

A person familiar with the development said, “Dawood Ibrahim fled Pakistan when political churn began in India’s now mellowed down neighbour nation in the wake of cricketer Imran Khan being installed as prime minister. The Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) agency has weakened considerably, which was further exacerbated after Khan was ousted from power. Even the Pakistani military has been unable to maintain its hold on the political system of that nation.”

According to the source, it was initially suspected that Dawood was hiding in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Indian intelligence agencies and National Security Advisor (NSA), Ajit Doval, leveraged enhanced ties between India and UAE to find the gangster. This was only possible due to the political bonhomie maintained by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his UAE counterpart. It was established that Dawood was not in any of the seven Emirate nations.

Indian intelligence believes that Dawood may be hiding in southeast Europe, East or West Africa where he feels safe and wields huge clout with the political and enforcement agencies. This is owing to the sizeable share held by him in the organized drug trade that flourishes out of these nations.

Meanwhile, Doval’s visit to Mumbai on Saturday, a couple of days before Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s scheduled politico-religious trip on Monday, is also the second phase of ‘Project Dawood’. It entails sanitizing the Mumbai police department of the influence wielded by Dawood Ibrahim’s gang.

“The first phase of this clean-up (of the Mumbai police department) was initiated by Doval during the 2014 -2019 tenure of then Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis. Then, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials Datta Padsalgikar was brought in as Mumbai police chief, followed by Subodh Jaiswal. That period saw cleansing of the department when several tainted Indian Police Service (IPS) officers as well as infamous encounter specialists were transferred out of Mumbai city. According to Doval’s assessment in 2018, more than 50% of the department was on the payroll of Dawood’s gang,” added the source.

Thereafter, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government came to power in Maharashtra and many of these IPS officers, including former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh found their way back into the upper echelons of the Mumbai police department in the last 2.5 years.

With the MVA government’s collapse, NSA Doval has now relaunched the second phase of the project and an overhaul of the Mumbai police department is imminent.