Biography Planet

Ibrahim Kaskar, the son of a police constable Mohsin Khan, was born in Mumkaa village in Ratnagiri in the Indian state of Maharashtra on December 27, 1955. He is of Konkani descent. He is said to have begun his career in Mumbai working for the Karim Lala gang exploiting the rapid expansion in the Bombay (now Mumbai) textiles industry to his advantage. He soon moved his residence to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where he has business interests alongside India.

Narcotics trafficking Dawood Ibrahim 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 agencies. Much of the organisation's operations are in India.

Ibrahim is widely believed to have masterminded the 1993 Bombay Bombings, a series of terrorist attacks carried out in the city on March 12 of the year. In 2003, the Indian and United States governments declared Ibrahim a "Global Terrorist". The then Deputy Prime Minister, L.K.Advani described it as a major development and that India stands "vindicated". Ibrahim is currently on India's "Most wanted List".

The United States Department of Treasury has also designated Ibrahim as a terrorist as part of its international sanctions program — effectively forbidding U.S. 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 organisation al-Qaeda. The fact sheet also said that Ibrahim's syndicate is involved in largescale 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 traveled in Afghanistan under the Taliban's protection. The syndicate has consistently aimed to destabilize the Indian government through riots, terrorism and civil disobedience.

Washington added that they will request the United Nations to list Ibrahim "in pursuance of relevant Security Council resolutions". The UN listing will require that all UN member states freeze Ibrahim's assets and impose a travel ban. Juan Zarate, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, said that they are committed to identifying and attacking financial ties between terrorism and the underworld. Ibrahim is also suspected to have connections with terrorist organisations, and in 2002 was linked to the financing of increasing attacks in Gujarat by Lashkar-e-Toiba. New Delhi handed over to Islamabad a list of 38 most wanted criminals, including Ibrahim.

In a major blow to Ibrahim, ten members of his gang were arrested by Mumbai Crime Branch on November 21, 2006. They were extradited from the United Arab Emirates, from where they had been deported.

Sources reported in India Today indicate that Dawood Ibrahim provided the logistics for the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

United States Deportation ResistanceIn January 2002, a month after the Parliament attack, Indian officials visited the US, where they had meetings with Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. A list of the Top 20 most-wanted terrorists in Pakistan was handed to the US. Ibrahim was wanted in connection with the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts. Following the meetings, "He (Powell) told his Indian interlocutors that Pakistan would hand over Dawood Ibrahim to India 'with some strings attached' and also that Musharraf needed 15 to 20 days more for doing so," However, Advani says he "started facing hurdles" soon and recollecting it now "is not a very happy experience."

No Pakistani action was made the following months...

“ ...there was only fibbing and foot-dragging. In my interactions with visiting Americans, I began to see, strangely, a certain lack of enthusiasm. 'We do not have the clout to compel Pakistan to act on this issue,' they started saying...I suspected, not without basis, that somebody in the bureaucratic system was trying, in Indian's dialogue with Americans, to de-emphasise or derail the issue of getting Ibrahim and other Indian terrorists back from Pakistan...[India] was ‘denied a major success in its war against Pakistan-supported terrorism by way of bureaucratic non-cooperation ‘that I have not been able to fully fathom”.

Ajmal Amir Kasab, a gunman arrested for participation in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 173 (164 civilians and security personnel and 9 terrorists), has confessed to authorities according to reports that Ibrahim's organization provided arms and explosives to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group that were used to carry out the attacks.

Dawood Ibrahim's daughter Mahrukh Ibrahim married Junaid Miandad the son of a former Pakistan National Cricket Team captain, Javed Miandad. Miandad told the press that his son and Ibrahim's daughter met while studying together in the UK.

The past few years have seen a dramatic decline in Dawood's fortunes from the heady heights of the life depicted in "Portrait of a Don" - the ground breaking exposé by Ghulam Hasnain in 2001.

Firstly came the death of Sharad Shetty, Dawood's financier and long term confidant, an assassination carried out by Dawood's longtime rival Chotta Rajan. News media outlets reported the murder as a sign of a dramatic shift of power between the crime lords. This was the seminal event in a series of blows to his criminal empire from which Ibrahim has never fully recovered. The loss of Shetty was followed by the declaration by the United States Treasury Department declaring Ibrahim a global terrorist because of his links with Osama bin Laden. Ibrahim then lost one of his closest aides, Shoaib Khan in 2005.

2009 continued to be a difficult year both on personal and business level. On 30 March, his brother Noora died in his sleep of natural causes, aged 50.