Mumbai: Iqbal Kaskar, arrested for allegedly extorting a Thane-based builder earlier this week, spoke to his brother Dawood Ibrahim at least four times over the last three years. Officers with the Thane Police Crime Branch said on Saturday that they are in the process of obtaining more information on these conversations.
Dawood, who was classified as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. government in 2003, is wanted in India for planning and executing the 1993 Mumbai blasts, which claimed 257 lives and injured over 700 people.
Mr. Kaskar and two alleged accomplices were arrested on September 18 based on the builder’s complaint. Two days later, a Thane-based jeweller filed a similar complaint. on Wednesday. A Crime Branch officer said, “During interrogation, he had initially claimed that he had no contact with Dawood. However, on Friday, he admitted to speaking with Dawood at least four times over the last two to three years. We are interrogating him about these calls.”
He added that according to Mr. Kaskar, these calls were made by Dawood from Pakistani numbers. Police are in the process of obtaining his call records for the period specified. They have also sought the help of central intelligence agencies, and are sharing interrogation details with them. According to his interrogators, Mr. Kaskar has maintained that the conversations with his brother were ‘general’ in nature. “We’re trying to establish if they had discussed anything related to the extortion racket.”
According to Crime Branch officers, Mr. Kaskar has been extorting money from targets in Thane since at least 2013, and used Dawood’s name used more than once to intimidate them. The call records will be cross-referenced with dates during the period in which the complainants were allegedly extorted.
