The Central agencies’ operation of outsourcing the firing job on fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim’s brother, Iqbal Kaskar, has drawn positive results as the intelligence agencies say they have managed to trace the location of mafia don Chhota Shakeel.
According to sources, on hearing the news of the shooting, Shakeel kept calling his henchmen at Pakmodia Street incessantly.
According to sources in the Intelligence Bureau, Shakeel’s location has been traced to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) of Pakistan. Shakeel, according to sources, kept calling different aides in Pakmodia Street and Nagpada continuously seeking details about the firing.
According to the sources, the calls were made through VoIP phones and Shakeel monitored each and every development through the night. This information, the IB feels, must have been passed on to Dawood. “As Dawood didn’t call directly, we are trying to trace the location to which Shakeel must have made more calls on the basis of the calls that Shakeel made to Pakmodia Street,” a source said, adding, “It’s obvious that Dawood and Shakeel are not at the same place. Dawood must have put Shakeel on the job after hearing about the firing.”
During the various calls made through the night, Shakeel is said to have told his people in Pakmodia Street that the firing was the handiwork of gangster Ravi Pujari. Shakeel, according to IB sources, purportedly said the firing was Pujari’s retaliation to the killing of two of his aides by Dawood’s shooters in Nepal last year. Incidentally, Shakeel doesn’t mention in any of his conversations that the firing might have been the handiwork of rival don Chhota Rajan.
According to the IB sources, after the CIA’s Abbottabad operation in which Taliban chief Osama bin Laden was killed by a US Seal team, Dawood and his trusted aides had fled Karachi and holed up somewhere in Jeddah. To flush him out, or to trace exactly where he was hiding, the IB decided to send a panic signal to the second-most wanted terrorist by killing his brother’s bodyguard. This was in anticipation of the fact that the minute the fugitive gangster would hear of the attack he would try to call Kaskar or his henchmen to get more details.
“Central intelligence agencies had planned the whole operation, hoping that it would trigger a flurry of calls from Dawood or Shakeel and would thereby help them track his actual whereabouts,” said the source.
Transcripts from an intercepted conversation:
Shakeel: Kya hua?
Aide: Bhai ke building ke neeche firing.
Shakeel: Sab khairiyat? Bhai theek hai na?
Aide: Sab khairiyat, Bael (Arif) ko paanch-che goli lagi hai.
Shakeel: [Expletive] kisne kiya, kaun aaya tha?
Aide: Bhai, do ko pakad liya hai.
Shakeel: Yeh kaam [expletive] Pujari ka hai. Thok dunga sale [expletive] ko. Kidhar bhi hoga ussko thok dunga. Mere ko puri details chahiye, kisko pakda hai
Aide: Hai bhai, deta hoon.