AEC was tracking Altaf Abdul Lateef Saeed for over a year

The Anti Extortion Cell of the Mumbai Police Crime Branch arrested a member of the D-gang, alleged to have been with the gang for 15 years and believed to be close to Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar’s brother Anees.

Altaf Abdul Lateef Saeed, a resident of Navi Mumbai, was arrested on Monday from Kannur airport in Kerala when he landed from Dubai. AEC officials said his name first came up during the interrogation of Ramdas Rahane, a known D-gang shooter, arrested last year.

“Information obtained in the interrogation indicated that Mr. Saeed has been associated with the gang since his youth and moved to Dubai soon after the Kaskars fled the country. He slowly worked his way up the gang hierarchy and now handles hawala operations for Anees,” an AEC officer said.

The AEC has been tracking Mr. Saeed’s movements and trips to India for over a year. “On Monday, based on a tip off, we laid a trap at Kannur airport, took him in our custody when he landed from Dubai, and brought him to Mumbai for interrogation. After preliminary inquiries established his involvement in last year’s case, we placed him under arrest,” the officer said.

Mr. Saeed has been charged with putting the fear of death into a person with the intent to commit extortion under the Indian Penal Code and was produced in Esplanade court on Tuesday, where he was remanded in police custody till August 16.

“We have received information that he has been booked in cases of smuggling in the 1990s, when the D-gang’s smuggling rackets were at its peak. We are contacting the concerned agencies to get more details of these cases,” the officer said.

Mr. Rahane was arrested by the AEC in June 2018 for allegedly plotting to kill a Malad-based hotelier who had opened a restaurant in Dubai in 2001 using money invested by some of his friends. The D-gang is alleged to have killed one of the investors and started demanding the money invested by him. While the hotelier had paid whatever he could at the time, Anees allegedly started extorting him again and tasked Mr. Rahane with killing him when the latter refused.

Mr. Rahane has 11 cases registered against him, including an attempt on the life of film producer Rajiv Rai in 1997, builder Vikyamal Shroff in Nashik in 2003, builder Omprakash Kukreja in 2005, and builder Manish Dholakia in 2011.

He joined the D-gang after his brother Dashrath was murdered in the early 1990s, officials said.