IANS/Mumbai


Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar yesterday said lawyer Ram Jethmalani had contacted him over mafia don Dawood Ibrahim’s readiness to surrender in the 1990s when he was Maharashtra chief minister but the gangster had put forward conditions which were not acceptable.
The conditions were not acceptable to the state government and hence it was rejected, Pawar said in Mumbai.
Pawar at that time belonged to the Congress Party.
“It is true that Ram Jethmalani had given the proposal about Dawood’s willingness to surrender. But, there was the condition that he should not be kept in jail. He wanted to remain in a house. This was not acceptable to us; we said he must face the law,” Pawar said.
The NCP chief was reacting to Jethmalani’s charge that the state government rejected an offer by Ibrahim to return to India and be placed under house arrest as he feared for his life in a jail, as well as guarantees that he would not be subjected to third-degree torture by the Indian authorities.
Jethmalani claimed Ibrahim made the offer to surrender when they met in London but the subsequent terms and conditions were not acceptable either to Pawar or the then central government.