Was Modi ever serious about bringing Dawood back to India?
“Why is the Indian government not able to bring back Dawood Ibrahim? Do these things happen through the medium of newspapers? Did the US issue a press note before they killed bin Laden? Did the US government hold a press conference saying they will go on this particular date to get bin Laden? I am ashamed that the Union Home Minister is giving such statements.”
This is what Narendra Modi had told a Gujarati news channel, Sandesh News, on April 27, 2014. Back then, as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Modi was reacting to a statement made by the then home minister SushilKumar Shinde. He had admitted that India and the US were working together to make an effort to bring back Dawood Ibrahim who was said to be in Pakistan.
Reacting to Modi's remarks, the then finance minister P Chidambaram had asked, "How do you get a person who is being protected by another government? We can't indulge in a clandestine activity. How does Modi plan to do this?"
At that time and even after that, Narendra Modi never divulged his plan, if he had any, on how to bring Dawood back to India. But the tone and tenor of his statement projected full confidence that he and his team are capable of bringing back India’s most-wanted criminal.
Modi had clearly suggested that he would not follow the path of the then ruling United Progressive Alliance on the issue of Dawood and rather do what the United States has done in the case of Osama Bin Laden - who was killed in a covert mission in Pakistan.
Exactly a month after the interview quoted above, Modi was sworn in as India's new prime minister on May 26, 2014. Since that day, he has been in power now for around 1,300 days. Let’s have a look what his government has said on the issue.
On May 5, 2015, the Narendra Modi government was left embarrassed when Union minister of state for home affairs, Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary, said in a written reply that the location of Dawood Ibrahim, India's most-wanted terrorist, was not known to the government and, once he is located, his extradition process will be initiated.
Following massive uproar from the Opposition, an embarrassed government changed its stand a day later. On May 6, 2015, the other MoS in home ministry, Kiren Rijiju, clarified that the underworld don lives in Pakistan and the Centre would continue to pursue the case very seriously.
So, while on May 5, 2015, the Modi government was unaware of the whereabouts of Dawood, the very next day, on May 6, 2015, it was suddenly sure that he was in Pakistan, after all.
Five days later, on May 11, 2015, Union home minister Rajnath Singh made a statement in Lok Sabha, saying, "Whether we have to pursue Pakistan or pressurise it, we will not rest till Dawood Ibrahim is brought back."
Again a year later, on May 24, 2016, Rajnath Singh made similar statement. He said, “Dawood will be nabbed soon. He will be brought back to India on any condition. He is an international terrorist. There is need to take the help of international agencies to nab him.”
This annual statement-making on Dawood continued for a third year when Rajnath Singh on February 4, 2017, said that nabbing fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who is said to be hiding in Pakistan, was just a matter of time.
While the government was making repeated statements of bringing back Dawood, in September news agencies reported that Dawood's wife had visited Mumbai in 2016. The Police said, quoting the fugitive gangster’s brother Iqbal Kaskar, that Mehjabin Shaikh had visited Mumbai to meet her father in 2016. Kaskar had been nabbed by the Mumbai police and was being held in an extortion case. After meeting her father Salim Kashmiri and other family members who live in Mumbai, Mehjabin Shaikh quietly left the country without anybody knowing anything.
While the Modi government kept boasting about its commitment to bring back Dawood to India, it was caught napping even as his wife spent days in India. The Modi government may well be working on a secret plan on to get Dawood back, but all indications are that this government is as clueless as its predecessors on how to do so.
Narendra Modi still has about a year and a half to make good on his pre-election claim about Dawood Ibrahim, and people like Raj Thackeray believe that the Centre will bring back Dawood just before the 2019 General Elections. The idea behind that would be to reap obvious poll benefits, but it still seems a bit of a stretch at the moment.
So far, PM Modi has been all bluster and no action as far as justifying the 56-inch chest-thumping that heralded his arrival in Delhi, is concerned.