Police yesterday said they were probing the involvement of mafia don Dawood Ibrahim in an extortion racket after the arrest of his brother Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar a day earlier.
Kaskar was taken into custody from his home in south Mumbai late on Monday night in a high security operation involving multiple police agencies. According to the police, Kaskar was watching the Kaun Banega Crorepati TV show and eating biryani when they picked him up from the home of his late sister Haseena Parker in Nagpada south Mumbai.
Kaskar and a close relative, Mumtaz Eijaz Shaikh and another associate Israr Al-Jamil Sayyad were arrested by a crack team of Thane police Anti-Extortion Cell led by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma.
The three were arrested for allegedly running an extortion racket since 2013. Three others have been detained for questioning.
Kaskar was yesterday produced before Thane Judicial Magistrate R T Ingle, who remanded him in eight days police custody.
Now, the police are probing the direct or indirect involvement of Ibrahim, believed to be hiding in Pakistan, in the extortion racket and will decide whether to make him an accused in the case, Police Commissioner Parambir Singh said.
“Iqbal Kaskar had demanded four flats and Rs30 lakh as ransom from a builder. The names of some other builders and politicians have also emerged in the investigations,” Singh told reporters.
The police are now examining whether the dreaded Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) can be applied to Kaskar and Ibrahim.
The police action on Kaskar is expected to nip in the bud certain organised crime activities that have surfaced again after a lull.
The police chief said Kaskar has threatened and made extortion calls to several builders in Thane, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
The extortion calls were made in the name of Ibrahim, and occasionally hired gunmen were brought from outside Maharashtra, mainly Bihar, to threaten and make the occupants forcibly evacuate prime properties.
The complainant in the present case – a realtor, who had suffered huge debts after demonetisation, decided to approach the police after he could not comply with the exorbitant extortion demands.
Singh said that Kaskar and his men had demanded four flats worth Rs50mn each in a posh locality of Thane and cash of Rs3mn from the complainant.
Kaskar, who was deported from the United Arab Emirates in 2003, had been handling his fugitive brother’s lucrative realty businesses in Mumbai.
He was implicated in a murder case and also the illegal constructions in the Sara-Sahara shopping centre in south Mumbai but was later acquitted in both cases around a decade ago.