Dawood Ibrahim

Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar (/ɪbrəˈhiːm/ ^ⓘ, Hindi pronunciation: [d̪aːˈuːd̪ ɪbɾaːˈɦiːm kaːskəɾ]; born 26 December 1955) is an Indian mob boss, drug lord, and terrorist. He reportedly heads the Indian organised crime syndicate D-Company, which he founded in Mumbai in the 1970s. Ibrahim is wanted on charges including murder, extortion, targeted killing, drug trafficking, and terrorism.

He was designated a global terrorist by India and the United States in 2003, with a reward of US$25 million on his head for his suspected role in the 1993 Bombay bombings. In 2011, he was named number two on "The World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives" by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and fourth on Forbes'. In 2020, the Pakistani government listed Dawood and 87 others in its sanction list in order to avoid FATF sanctions. He has been reported to live in Karachi, Pakistan, though the government of Pakistan denies it.

Dawood Ibrahim was born on 26 December 1955 to a Konkani Muslim family in Khed in Maharashtra, India. His father, Ibrahim Kaskar, worked as a head constable with the Mumbai Police and his mother, Amina Bi, was a homemaker. He lived in the area of Dongri, Mumbai and attended Ahmed Sailor High School, from which he dropped out.

Dawood started committing fraud, theft and robbery while still in his teens. Eventually, he joined the gang of local gangsters and don Baashu Dada, part of the local organised crime syndicate. In the late 1970s, he later split from the gang, creating his own gang with his elder brother Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar. After Shabir was killed by the rival Pathan gang, he became the sole boss of his gang, known as the D-Company. He was then chiefly involved in gold smuggling, real estate, extortion and drug trafficking. He fled from India to Dubai in 1986 after being wanted by the Mumbai Police for the murder of Samad Khan. In the following years, he further expanded his gang with the help of his second-in-command Chhota Rajan, with his gang having over 5000 members and bringing in hundreds of millions of rupees in revenue annually by the early 1990s.

He was named by the Indian government as one of the masterminds in the 1993 Mumbai Attacks. Following the attacks, he fled Dubai for Karachi, where he is said to live to this day.

The United States Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Ibrahim as a terrorist on the Specially Designated Nationals List and the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act as part of its international sanctions programme, effectively forbidding US financial entities from working with him and seizing assets believed to be under his control. The Department of Treasury keeps a fact sheet on Ibrahim which contains reports of his syndicate having smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle-East and Africa shared with and used by terrorist organization al-Qaeda. The fact sheet also said that Ibrahim's syndicate is involved in large-scale shipment of narcotics in the United Kingdom and Western Europe. He is also believed to have had contacts with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In the late 1990s, Ibrahim travelled to Afghanistan under the Taliban's protection. The syndicate has consistently aimed to destabilise India through riots, terrorism, civil disobedience and pumping fake Indian currency notes into the country. India Today reported that Ibrahim provided the logistics for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Presently, Ibrahim's criminal activities are terror funding, drug trafficking, gunrunning, extortion and money laundering. He has also heavily invested in real estate in Karachi, Dubai and India. He is believed to control much of the hawala system, which is the very commonly used unofficial system for transferring money and remittances outside the view of official agents. He was linked to the financing of increasing attacks in Gujarat by Lashkar-e-Taiba. In 2006, the government of India handed over to Pakistan, a list of 38 most wanted criminals including Ibrahim. His crime syndicate spreads across Asia, Europe and Africa, with over 40% of its earnings coming from India.

Dawood is widely believed to have masterminded the March 1993 bombings in Bombay. In 2003, the Indian and United States governments declared Ibrahim a "Global Terrorist." The Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani described it as a major development. Ibrahim is currently on India's "Most Wanted List".