In 1995, BJP leader late Gopinath Munde-then the opposition leader had come up with 113 calls made between April 27 and June 19, 1992, from the offices of 12 members of the Sudhakarrao Naik ministry. The records revealed that some of the Dubai numbers were repeatedly dialled; forty of the numbers were common to all ministers; and that all the calls were made between 11 am and 6 pm. Though Naik’s men revealed that in 1992, two ministers close to Pawar had frequently phoned Dubai.
Munde had made full use of it in his campaign against the criminalisation of politics. Sharad Pawar was the CM when Dawood escaped and Mr Pawar helped him as per the records by an intelligence officer’s statement. He had promised to unmask Sharad Pawar from whose offices “suspicious” telephone calls had allegedly been made to Dubai, the place synonymous with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
After the Shiv Sena – BJP came to power, Munde promised to trace the controversial calls, list them and name those involved. Sixteen calls to Dubai and one to Nepal have been reportedly traced to the offices of Padamsinh Patil – a relative of Pawar-who then held the irrigation portfolio. Former transport minister Shankarrao Kolhe heads the list with 24 calls to Dubai, followed by Madan Bafna with 18. The others named are Pushpatai Hiray (13), Shivajirao Shengde (6), Bapusaheb Thite (6), Ramesh Dube (4), Jaidutt Kshirsagar (4) and Rajinder Gode (l).
In 1993, Sharad Pawar had lied quite blatantly. When the serial blasts went off in Bombay that year, he told reporters there had been 13 blasts, instead of the 12 they had located. It was almost a decade later after he ceased to be a chief minister when he admitted in an interview to the Hindustan Times, that he had lied to prevent a conflagration. He did not choose Masjid Bunder without reason and he dropped ample hints before the police cracked the case a few weeks later that ‘it looks like the handiwork of some Sri Lankan terrorists’.
Ex RAW officer NK Sood in an interview to Defensive Offence made stunning revelations about the unholy nexus of Congress and NCP leaders including Sharad Pawar Dawood Ibrahim and their complicity in shielding the D-Company supremo from arrests and sabotaging the Indian intelligence’s efforts in nabbing the Mumbai 1993 bomb blast accused.
In a blistering attack against the NCP leader Sharad Pawar, Sood asserted that there was an illicit link between the NCP chief and Dawood Ibrahim, claiming that Pawar, who was the chief minister of the state at that time allowed Dawood Ibrahim and the other accused of the bomb blasts to flee the country. He also said that the police and the law enforcement agencies didn’t come down hard against the Dawood Ibrahim gang in the aftermath of the blasts, hinting at a possible symbiotic relationship between the two entities.
Sood further emphasized that Sharad Pawar’s remarks regarding Pakistan that it is a hospitable country and Indian politicians are exaggerating about the situation there lays bare his ingrained love for the neighbouring country. Sood contended that the real reason behind Sharad Pawar’s affection with the terrorist nation Pakistan is because they are hosting Dawood Ibrahim.
It was Sharad Pawar as the defence minister in central Govt who arranged for the exit of Dawood during the riots since Dawood was the business partner. Also, when our RAW had arranged to kill Dawood in Dubai, it was the same Pawar who stopped that and informed D. This is as per the statement of Retd. officer of IB. It is on record.
Ibrahim is not just a fugitive for India, but also has been designated as a terrorist by the United States of America. The US has alleged that he shared smuggling routes with the terror outfit Al Qaeda. According to the US authorities, he is involved in large-scale shipping of narcotics in the United Kingdom and other European countries. It is alleged that he was in touch with the Al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden. Reports suggest that he travelled to Afghanistan in the 1990s under the Taliban’s protection. The United Nations has also imposed sanctions on him. Under the recently amended Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, he has been officially declared a terrorist by India too.
