Dec 7, 1998

An IB report details the ISI's links in India of which Dawood Ibrahim and Romesh Sharma are a part. Plus an exclusive transcript of telecon between Sharma, Abu Salem and RIL's Balu.

By Harinder Baweja

He trades in terror and lives a life of leisure. Has a weakness for Armani suits and loves cruising the high seas in a speed boat and shooting seagulls. In between, he's issuing instructions to his lieutenants -- expanding his business empire, which includes smuggling, extortion, gun-running, money laundering and contract killings.

The uncrowned king of the underworld, the 43-year-old Dawood Ibrahim also loves reading The Godfather repeatedly. He has many of his own, including Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). A resident of Karachi since he left Dubai after the Mumbai blasts of March 1993, Dawood and the ISI have both extended their reach and spread their net through chosen contact men. A net so elaborate as to prompt Home Minister L.K. Advani into reiterating that Pakistan is a terrorist state. As a senior Home Ministry officer says, "There are few crimes or plots unearthed in India where either Dawood or the ISI do not have a role to play.''

Therefore, when Romesh Sharma was arrested in Delhi last month it came as no surprise that he was a Dawood point man in India. The underworld don seems to have such contact men everywhere, including in Dubai where he lives a sheltered life and in Nepal where the ISI has an operational base. According to a presentation made to the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Home Affairs, the ISI -- over the last decade alone -- has cost India a colossal Rs 64,500 crore in internal security.

The threat is real. Contrary to popular perception, the ISI is not fomenting trouble in Jammu and Kashmir alone. Recent arrests indicate that it has spread its influence right from Kashmir to parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It has also set up operational bases from Gujarat to the North-east. A group like the Harkat-ul-Ansar for instance, which sends in members trained in camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has been able to influence and indoctrinate members of the minority community and even set up bases in places like Firozabad, Hapur and Agra.

If the arrest of Sharma held a mirror to Delhi's ugly underbelly, investigations into the case now also reveal the apparent ease with which Dawood was able to subvert the system. The case of the missing file, dealing with the issue of Dawood's mother Ameena Bi getting a passport within 24 hours -- which would rope in senior officials of the Ministry of External Affairs -- is only one such instance. The residential address given in her application form -- which has been traced -- is that of Arvind Bali, an employee of Sharma. But which politician or bureaucrat facilitated the overnight passport is yet to be firmly established.

There are other pieces of information that inextricably link Sharma with Dawood. In the course of his interrogation, Sharma has confessed to having met Dawood in Dubai. The first meeting, however, dates back to the early '80s when Sharma received Dawood at the Mumbai airport on his return from Haj. They met again at a public meeting in Mumbai after which they became quite thick. Sharma was introduced to Dawood's brothers Noora and Anees.

Interestingly, Sharma was able to impress Dawood with his network of contacts even in Dubai where the don was supposed to be king. Nasar Abdullah, one of the most powerful men in Dubai, wanted to buy a stud farm in India. According to his interrogation report, Sharma claims to have helped Abdullah acquire the farm in Pune with help from "Rajivji'' (Rajiv Gandhi).

To test Sharma's proximity with the Dubai notable, Dawood requested him to get his associate Sharad Shetty a liquor licence at Abdullah's Anna Palace hotel in the emirate. Such licences are extremely difficult to come by but Sharma managed to convince Abdullah, who was only too willing to return a favour. The 1992 deal reinforced the ties between Dawood and Sharma and the wheeler dealer became an inner member of the D-Company.

So close were the ties, says the Delhi Police, that Sharma spoke to Dawood and his henchman Abu Salem almost on a daily basis. By tapping Sharma's mobile phone the police were able to confirm the links. The tapped conversations also revealed the plan to assassinate Babloo Srivastava, a former aide of Dawood who then crossed sides to join hands with Dawood sworn enemy Chhota Rajan. The surveillance also led to the raids on the offices and house of R. Balasubramaniam (Balu), a senior executive of Reliance Industries Ltd. The crime branch was also able to tape a conversation between Balu and Salem (see box).

Sharma came in handy on more than just one occasion. He hosted Anees at his upmarket Mayfair Garden residence in Delhi when the latter was in India in connection with a court case. Again, he used Salem to terrorise and evict owners from prime properties. He was of considerable help to Dawood himself. Thanks to his contacts in bureaucratic and political circles, he was able to alert the underworld don each time there was any progress on an extradition treaty between India and Dubai, allowing Dawood to return to the safety of Karachi.

If Advani is talking of Sharma's arrest as being the test case to establish the ISI's deep links, it is because for the past month or so, senior Home Ministry officials have been going through the mind-boggling revelations made by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in its presentation to the consultative committee. Dawood's independent links apart, the presentation says that the ISI network includes petty shopkeepers, traders and doctors strewn across Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat to senior diplomats in the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi. The Pakistani officials have been briefing leaders drawn from Kashmir's All Party Hurriyat Conference as a gesture of moral support. The list of those who facilitated the ISI indirectly may be more impressive.

That Kashmir is but only one link in the long ISI chain has been presented through case studies, including that of Abdul Matin. A resident of Mirpur in Pakistan's Sindh province, Matin first infiltrated into Baramulla in September 1994 after a training course in handling arms and explosives in Afghanistan. Between September 1994 and mid-'97, when he was arrested in Srinagar, Matin successfully toured Uttar Pradesh's Muslim-dominated mohallas of Agra, Mathura, Hapur, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar under the guise of a medical representative. After setting up a front office of the Harkat-ul-Ansar in Firozabad, he returned to the Valley for a while before setting off for Jaipur. There he established a network and even planted explosives at the stadium where the Republic Day function was held. Fortuitously the bombs failed to explode. Three months later, Matin planted an explosive device under a bus at Delhi's overcrowded ISBT. The bomb went off when the bus was nearing Modinagar in Uttar Pradesh, killing 15 passengers.

According to the IB, in the past decade the ISI has been able to recruit approximately 20,000 Indian agents, apart from the 7,000-odd who have infiltrated from across the borders. Matin is only one amongst this growing bank of agents. And Sharma is only one such point man who provides a link between the underworld and politicians. At the end of the day, however, the question of who is more dangerous -- Matin or Sharma -- is a difficult one. Both, as a senior Home Ministry official said, "are ultimately subverting and weakening the system".

For Dawood, Sharma was a crucial conduit. As a wannabe politician, Sharma could walk into government offices and ferret information that could be transmitted to Dubai. For instance, Dawood wanted to know whether the CBI director and the officers handling the Mumbai blasts case were pliable. He wanted Sharma's assessment of the latest round of elections. Information also being power, he wanted to be in the know. Whether on the high seas, shooting seagulls. Or helping the ISI spread its net.

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