Posted on 07/22/2005 11:08:00 AM PDT by nickcarraway
NEW DELHI -- With even the wedding invitations being investigated by police, few will admit they're on the guest list let alone boast they're planning to attend the marriage in Dubai this weekend of an Indian crime don's daughter.
A mobile phone message invitation - "Your presence is solicited for the auspicious wedding of Mahrukh. For travel arrangements, contact Noorabhai. Regards, from D" - has been sent to top politicians, officials, film and media personalities in Mumbai, according to police and journalists.
It was purportedly sent by international fugitive and India's most wanted criminal Dawood Ibrahim, popularly known by his first name, whose daughter Mahrukh is to marry the son of Pakistani cricketing legend Javed Miandad in Dubai on Saturday.
Aside from the mobile phone text invitation - which is being probed by police for its veracity - formal wedding cards have also been sent to a select few in Mumbai, India's western commercial, film and lifestyle capital.
But no one is willing to acknowledge having received the invitation from "bhai" [brother] as Dawood is also known - leave alone say whether they plan to attend the nuptials.
Mumbai police and India's home ministry, which has chased Dawood for decades across the globe, are tight-lipped about the marriage but they say they will keep a strict watch on the guest list.
"Nobody will openly admit his or her intention to visit Dubai to attend the wedding, but we have information about some Bollywood personalities, who might take a different route to reach Dubai," a Mumbai police official said.
Dawood's gang is deeply entrenched in Bollywood - India's flourishing Hindi film industry - and many actors, directors and producers have been linked with him.
Son of a police constable, Dawood has for more than two decades been running a nefarious empire steeped in drug trafficking, extortion and ransom killings.
A prime accused in a string of blasts that rocked Mumbai in 1993 killing at least 300 people, Dawood was declared a "global terrorist" by the United States in 2003.
The elusive don, whose life story has inspired many Bollywood films, fled the country in the early 1980s and is believed to have assumed many nationalities and as many hideouts including in Dubai, Karachi in Pakistan and cities in Africa and Southeast Asia.
After years of laying low, Dawood - a godfather-like character supported by a gang of young jobless shooters in Mumbai - is tipped to surface either at his daughter's wedding or at the reception which is to follow in Karachi.
Many believe Dawood has been staying for a while in a heavily-guarded palatial bungalow with his wife, three daughters and one son in the Pakistani port city. But one Mumbai police officer, who has tracked the don's shadowy life for over a decade, believes Dawood reached Dubai, "10 to 15 days ago and is staying in a hotel".
But he said Indian police can only wait and watch.
"We can't do anything. They [the mafia] work through the loopholes. A surveillance team can be sent to Dubai but we don't know whether he will emerge in Dubai or Karachi," he said.
India has an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates but not with Pakistan. Both countries have consistently denied they are sheltering Dawood.
"I think he will attend the Dubai wedding and also the Karachi bash," said S. Hussain Zaidi, a Mumbai crime reporter who has written a book on the 1993 blasts called "Black Friday" which has been turned into a feature film.
Zaidi said the marriage is expected to be a small, closed affair at an expensive hotel. He believes the don will indeed be there - after having sneaked into Dubai using false identity.
"He will come there for a while, attend the ceremonies and then leave. It's likely to be more of a family and friends affair. The Karachi bash will be more lavish," Zaidi said.
The journalist, who attended the wedding of Dawood's sister's son in Mumbai last year, said it was a most "dazzling affair" and that the Karachi event would be even bigger.
The entire police apparatus in the city had been put on alert for that wedding, but the don failed to show up.
Dawood is one of 20 people India wants Pakistan to hand over in the wake of a December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, which New Delhi said was carried out by Pakistani-backed Islamic militants. Pakistan denies he lives in the country and has repeatedly ruled out sending the men on the list to India.
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