mumbai

Updated: Sep 22, 2017 13:40 IST

Dawood Ibrahim, underworld don-turned-global terrorist, definitely lives in Pakistan, his brother, Iqbal Kaskar, has reportedly confirmed to the Thane police who are questioning him after his arrest in an extortion case. Iqbal even provided his interrogators four addresses of Dawood’s in Karachi, police sources close to the case told HT.

India has long maintained that Dawood Ibrahim lives in Karachi and Pakistan has consistently denied this.

The Thane police, the sources said, planned to share Kaskar’s claims with central intelligence agencies so as to verify if the information matches what is already known about Dawood’s whereabouts. In fact, central agencies are likely to be involved in the investigation by the Thane police.

The Thane police commissioner, Parambir Singh, refused to confirm or deny the developments, only saying investigations were on.

Iqbal also told interrogators that that he did meet Dawood in Dubai somewhere around 2003, the sources said. However, the police have doubts about the date and suspect Iqbal could be confusing things. In July 2005, when Dawood’s daughter Mahrukh married former Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad’s son Junaid, there were reports that Dawood had attended the wedding in West Asia. Police suspect this could be when the brothers last met.

Iqbal was known to be closer to another of the Kaskar brothers, Anees, who is reportedly in charge of gold, silver and narcotics smuggling operations of D company and is said to live in Karachi with his wife and children. Soon after his arrest on Monday by a team led by encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma, Iqbal had told the police that Dawood had called him only 3-4 times since he returned to India in 2003.

Iqbal Kaskar is the fifth of Dawood’s 11 siblings and he was deported from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in March 2003. Unlike his brothers Anees and Noora, Iqbal and Mustakin (who is elder to him) never went to Karachi to join Dawood’s global crime syndicate that runs from a number of plush bungalows in the posh Clifton area in Karachi.

Soon after his deportation, Iqbal was booked in two cases of murder and land-grabbing. He was acquitted in both those cases in 2007 and went to live in the family’s well-guarded fortress on Pakmodia street. He was arrested in 2015 in an extortion case but was granted bail.

Iqbal’s revelations will help buttress India’s claim that Pakistan is harbouring Dawood. They will also help the local police verify if Dawood was involved in extortion rackets in Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai.