Mumbai: Iqbal Kaskar’s questioning in the extortion case against him by the Thane crime branch revealed that fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s wife Mehzabeen had travelled to Dubai in 2016 from Pakistan to meet his family.
This contradicts Pakistan’s claims that Mehzabeen and Dawood were not residing in Pakistan. The Thane police had arrested Kaskar and two of his aides on Monday in an alleged extortion probe.
Commenting on reports doing the rounds that Mehzabeen had allegedly visited India to attend her father’s funeral on her Pakistani passport, Thane city police commissioner Param Bir Singh said, “It is not true that she had visited India. As per the information that we have, she had travelled to Dubai to meet Kaskar’s family.”
Meanwhile, a team of crime branch’s anti extortion cell, including senior inspector Pradeep Sharma, left for Delhi on Friday.
It is stated that the team has gone there to meet senior officers of the Delhi police and as well as to brief key ministers in the Centre about Kaskar and his revelations.
However, senior police officials have down played the visit, saying that it is “personal”.
Kaskar’s family, including his wife and five children, reside in Dubai, officials said. This also reveals that the family meeting took place despite pressure building up against Dawood, officials said.
“Kaskar has started answering more questions than before. He has spoken about Mehzabeen’s Dubai visit and has revealed that he spoke to her on phone at that time.
However, he is not revealing further details about it,” said Abhishek Trimukhe, deputy commissioner of police.
Kaskar would also regularly speak to his family in Dubai and the crime branch has those phone records. The investigators are in the process of ascertaining if the calls were to take orders from Dawood.
This newspaper had reported that during his questioning, Kaskar also revealed that he kept in touch with Mehzabeen and Anees Ibrahim.
Police is suspecting that Dawood's wife Mehzabeen was the link to pass on Dawood’s orders. Officials said that most of the calls were voice over internet protocol (VoIP) ones and hence getting details about location or destination was difficult.
