Dongri to Dubai (46 page)

While the arrests of these shooters were inexplicable, a confidential dossier of the Mumbai police explained they were part of a strategic move of Chhota Shakeel’s, who let his men surrender and show them as cooperative so that he could score brownie points with the Royal Thai police.

A team of police officers led by Assistant Commissioner of Police Shankar Kamble was sent to Bangkok to interrogate and extradite Rajan. The team reached Bangkok and met Police Colonel Kriekpong, who was in charge there. They apprised him that Vijay Daman was none other than the Indian gangster Chhota Rajan living under an assumed identity.

A private jet parked at the Bangkok airport was hired by Rajan’s men to whisk him away. But with Kriekpong’s intervention, the plan was foiled and Rajan was detained for the offence of illegal entry into Thailand. However, Kriekpong, who until that day was cooperation personified, did an about turn soon after.

The dossier adds that Kriekpong told the Mumbai police team that as they never sought the assistance of the Mumbai police, there was no way that they could become part of the investigation. Also, as neither Interpol nor the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had conveyed to them the impending visit of the Mumbai police, there could not be any official communication between them, Kriekpong told the Mumbai police team.

The Mumbai police was making desperate efforts to ensure that they got hold of Rajan, while the Royal Thai police expected communication through diplomatic channels, which was not forthcoming. Even as a series of requests and reminders were made to the First Secretary for an official draft to the Thai government, no such letter was issued by the Indian government. The Mumbai police soon understood that Colonel Kriekpong would not cooperate with them. He had not allowed them to have any meetings with Rajan or his assailants, who were also under detention.

The Mumbai police made a last ditch effort, proposing for Rajan’s extradition from Bangkok. The documents were routed through CBI and Interpol in Delhi. But the papers never reached Bangkok.

Even as the Indian bureaucrats were procrastinating over the sending of these documents, formal extradition requests and such other important communication, Rajan’s wound was healing fast.

Over seventy days had passed after the incident and the Mumbai police, despite a couple of visits, had not been able to make any headway in the case. Nor were they any closer in getting Rajan back on Indian soil.

And then, on 24 November, Rajan mysteriously disappeared from the Smitivej Hospital. His escape was next to impossible, situated as he was on the heavily guarded fourth floor room of the hospital. His escape was unanticipated especially as Rajan was not only physically unfit but also overweight and weakened by his wound.

Several theories were offered around his escape. The Thai police claimed that Rajan took the help of professional mountaineers to escape and climb down the four floors of the hospital. Thailand’s scientific crime detection division found mountaineering rope and descender equipment along the wall of the hospital and found scratches and traces of cement on them, which confirm that they were used in Rajan’s getaway,
reported
Bangkok Post
.

According to the report, professionals helped Rajan slip down the 40-metre rope from the fourth floor of the hospital within minutes. The 13-mm rope had a breaking point of 200 kg. A man was also seen buying the rope and the equipment from a shop in a locality in Bangkok called Soi Rangnam, the paper reported.Deputy Commander of the Division Chuan Voravanich, had forwarded these findings to chief investigator of the Thonglor Police Station, Mantharn Abhaiwong.

According to other news reports, Rajan’s Thai lawyer, Sirichai Piyaphichetkul had a simpler explanation: Rajan paid 25 million baht ($5,80,000) to Thai police major-general Kriekphong Phukprayoon—who later denied it—in exchange for his freedom. He simply walked out of Smitivej to a car waiting outside to drive him away to safety.

Rajan’s escape and the police’s fanciful account of what happened at Samitivej on 24 November have caused considerable embarrassment in Thailand. Nine non-commissioned police officers were sacked for ‘grave negligence’.

The same paper also claimed that the commander of Metropolitan Police Division 5, Krisda Pankongchuen, had ordered investigations into a report that a number of police officers had visited Rajan at the hospital to receive money.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai has said that he believed the Indian mafia figure could not have escaped without help. ‘Obviously it would not have been possible for Rajan to escape if his helpers never stood to gain anything,’ he said.

The Maharashtra state government was just as stupefied at this unprecedented vanishing act, that too from a secure hospital. The Maharashtra home minister, who was also the Deputy Chief Minister Chhagan Bhujbal, had vociferously alleged that the Centre allowed the gangster to escape. He reiterated the hurdles and obstacles that the Mumbai police faced at every juncture and how their efforts were sabotaged by lack of cooperation by the central government.

These allegations made by such an authority with so much conviction. stung the Union government. Silence on their part would have been only detrimental.

The then Minister of State for External Affairs Ajit Panja got into damage control mode and claimed that the Centre had done whatever the Thai government wanted it to do for Rajan’s extradition. ‘But, if they [the Maharashtra government] have said so it is absolutely wrong. Point to point action was taken and there was no delay on our part,’ Mr Panja was quoted as saying. The Union Minister of State for Home Vidyasagar Rao said it was not proper for anybody to comment on this case till the government received full details of the incident.

The mystery of Rajan’s disappearance had only deepened after such statements from the government. A certain section of the media reported it as a ‘conspiracy of silence’.

However, Rajan’s lawyer remained forthcoming with whatever details he could share with the media. Sirichai claimed that Rajan phoned him from ‘abroad’ to tell him about how he had bribed the Thai police officials. He said Rajan was in Cambodia and was intending to go to a third country, possibly in Europe. According to another version by Sirichai, Rajan was in a Southeast Asian country, planning to continue his journey to ‘somewhere’ in the Middle-East.

Speculation aside, it is obvious that Rajan had every reason to fear for his life in Bangkok and that his escape was carefully planned. The gunmen who were sent to kill him, identified as followers of rival mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim, had vowed to fulfill their mission as soon as they were released. It might be some time before the three gunmen who were apprehended after the shootout walked free, but other gunmen from Dawood’s gang were suspected to have arrived in Bangkok, awaiting the chance to kill Rajan.

So where did Rajan go? It would have been foolish of him to try to leave via any of Thailand’s airports, where the immigration authorities maintained computer records of everyone entering and leaving the country. The fastest and easiest overland escape route would be a five-hour drive from Bangkok to the Cambodian border. Cambodian immigration authorities issue visas on the spot to anyone for USD20. Rajan could then have continued by car to Phnom Penh, and from there left by air to any destination in Asia, the Middle-East, Europe, or Australia.

Another possibility would have been the more than 24-hour-long drive down to the Malaysian border. It is possible to sneak across undetected, as hordes of illegal immigrants and smugglers do all the time. Given that Rajan used to be based in Malaysia and had extensive contacts within the Indian community there, it would have been possible for him to hide there till the uproar over his escape died down. Then he could arrange for a passport and leave for a safer destination. Thailand’s only other land borders are with Myanmar and Laos, which are not considered likely escape routes.

Regardless of how he escaped, Rajan’s flight from Thailand meant that an important chapter in his criminal career had come to an end. Rajan, as Vijay Daman, had initially obtained a tourist visa, but in May 2001 he requested to have his visa status changed to that of a business visitor, which would have made it possible for him to obtain a permission to run a company, called Daman Import-Export. The company ostensibly exported dried fish from Thailand to Hong Kong, but it is suspected that it was a front for his illegal activities. A business visa simply enabled him to stay on in Thailand.

Rajan’s near-perfect set-up in Bangkok went up in a burst of gunfire three months before the attack on him, and recreating such a set-up was not going to be that easy with Dawood’s men hot on his tail.

19

Post 9/11

T
he promise of a virginal, green-eyed hourie in the garden of paradise, where streams of honey and milk have been abundantly flowing, has been the most powerful motivation for crazy men since time immemorial. But none can beat what a few insane pilots did on the historic morning of 9/11. In a series of coordinated suicide attacks by Al Qaeda upon the United States on 11 September 2001, a group of jihadis launched one of the most heinous attacks in modern history.

Early on the morning of 11 September, nineteen hijackers took control of four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Boston, Newark, and Washington D.C. (Washington Dulles International Airport). At 8:46 am, American Airlines Flight 11 was flown into the World Trade Center’s North Tower, followed by United Airlines Flight 175, which hit the South Tower at 9: 03 am.

Another group of hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon at 9: 37 am. A fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 9: 57 am, after the passengers on board engaged in a fight with the hijackers. Its ultimate target was thought to be either the Capitol (the meeting place of the United States Congress) or the White House (http://news.bbc.co.uk).

It is reported that the suicide attack resulted in the death of 2, 973 victims, apart from the hijackers. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over seventy countries.

These men had learnt that the attack would give them a quick death and an equally rapid meeting with a seductress in heaven. For them, jihad was the quickest means to reach heaven, regardless of any insanity that they may have to perpetrate in the process.

Muslims across the world reacted to the incident in different manners. While some were jubilant that the mighty United States of America had been brought to its knees, others had to hang their head in shame, feeling that the attack was orchestrated in the name of Islam by a few self-appointed guardians of Islam. The attack thus blemished a religion of peace forever. The 9/11 attacks became a watershed incident, one that changed the world forever.

The incident also had far reaching repercussions for Dawood Ibrahim. One of the famous euphemisms that Dawood cited while giving instructions to his men to kill his detractors was, ‘
Duniya uske liye choti kardo
[make his world smaller than it is now]’ — implying that the movement of his enemies be restricted so as to not let them roam around the world freely. Let them be cocooned in their shells with fear of getting caught or killed.

Ironically, the 9/11 attacks made the world a smaller place for Dawood. In fact, he had been on the US radar for a long time, but as terror had not hit Uncle Sam earlier, they did not get serious about apprehending him.

Way back in 1995, US President Bill Clinton, by presidential decision directive number 42, designated the activities of organised crime groups a major threat to national security and made it a priority for American intelligence agencies to apprehend such groups. A similar decision was taken by John Major’s government in the United Kingdom on the recommendation of Stella Rimington, the then director-general of MI5, and by other European Union governments.

Since then, the Dawood gang was amongst the organised crime groups being closely monitored by various Western intelligence agencies, thereby keeping him largely confined to Karachi, where he is a privileged guest of the ISI.

Over the years, Pakistan premiers and later its military dictator General Pervez Musharraf and the ISI have fine-tuned the art of hoodwinking the international community and particularly the US Administration—be it with respect to its assistance in supplying clandestine weapons of mass destruction to North Korea and Iran, its sponsorship of cross-border terrorism into India and Afghanistan, or evasion of action against terrorists and other organisations.

At the request of the Government of India, Interpol, based in Lyons, France, issued many lookout notices for Dawood’s arrest and deportation to India if he was found in the territory of any member-country. The lookout notices also gave his Karachi address.

In response to these notices, the Pakistani authorities kept denying the presence of Dawood in their territory. Earlier, the matter was taken up by Atal Behari Vajpayee with President Pervez Musharraf during their meeting in Agra in July 2001 (which was reiterated during their meeting in Islamabad in January 2004). Dawood’s name also figured in the list of twenty terrorists wanted for trial in India, which was handed over by the Government of India to Islamabad. The stock response from Musharraf was, of course, that Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan.

During the Agra Summit, Musharraf was not lying because as an astute military leader he knew that if the RAW sleuths decided to call his bluff and expose Dawood on Pakistani soil, it would be an international embarrassment for him. So Dawood was shifted from Pakistan for a temporary period, just like Tiger Memon’s family was shifted to Bangkok when the Indian government had turned the heat on Pakistan in 1993.