Gangster Ejaz Lakdawala

Chhota Rajan

Karachi

Dawood

(From left): Rajan, Lakdawala and his aide Penwala; (below) Dawood

Mirza Dilshad Beg

D-Company

has told the Mumbai Police that a 10-member team led by’s main hitman Vicky Malhotra waited for days outside a dargah inin 1998 to killIbrahim. Lakdawala, who was arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch from Patna on January 8, disclosed a plot that appears straight out of a Bollywood movie.“Chhota Rajan, with the blessings of the Indian intelligence agencies, tried eliminating Dawood after the death of his daughter Maria. I was a part of the team led by Vicky, which also included Farid Tanasha, Balu Dokre, Vinod Matkar, Sanjay Ghate and Baba Reddy, and we camped outside a dargah where Dawood was to arrive to conduct some rituals for his daughter,” Lakdawala, himself a close aide of Dawood at one point, told the police.He told the police that a Dawood aide, a Member of Parliament in Nepal, tipped theboss at the last minute and foiled the hit. “Nana (Chhota Rajan) was so enraged that he ensured Beg was murdered the same year,” Lakdawala told the police.The sensational details have emerged from Lakdawala’s interrogation by the Mumbai Police. Aged around 50, Lakdawala was on the run for nearly 20 years, during which he switched allegiance from D-Company to Rajan, before launching his own gang to start a countrywide extortion racket.He walked into the Mumbai Police net after the arrest of his daughter Shifa in December last year in a fake passport case.A senior Crime Branch officer told Mumbai Mirror that Lakdawala informed them about the retaliation from Dawood and Chhota Shakeel in 2002, in which Lakdawala almost lost his life. “He said that he was shot at six times from point-blank range, but the bullet aimed at his chest hit an amulet and got deflected,” the officer said.“My associate, Salim Penwala, contacted me saying he wanted to present me a taaweez (amulet) from Ajmer. I was wary of meeting Penwala out of the fear that Shakeel’s men could be following him,and sent my wife instead. I specifically asked her not to come directly home after meeting Penwala. However, she forgot about it and returned home, which helped Shakeel trace me,” Lakdawala, who was attacked two days after receiving the amulet, told the police.After the bid on his life, Lakdawala fled to Canada, the officer said, adding that he also turned towards religion. The officer said that the gangster has revealed some very relevant information on Dawood and Shakeel and that his interrogation will continue.