Mumbai: Mumbai police’s Crime Branch have got custody of a close aide of fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s nephew, a senior official said Tuesday. He said Danish Ali, a close aide of Ibrahim’s nephew Sohail Kaskar, was deported from the United States of America on November 15 last year following which the Mumbai police took him into custody last month. Ali and Kaskar, along with two Pakistani nationals, were arrested by US agencies in a narco-terrorism case in 2014, the official added.
Ali had left India and moved to Dubai in 2001 where he teamed up with Kaskar to operate a diamond smuggling ring, he said. The two attempted to enter Russia to further the diamond racket but Ali was denied a visa, the official added. Ali, however, managed to enter Russia a little while later on a student visa and regrouped with Kaskar for diamond smuggling operations after attending college there for two years, the police official said. Russia is believed to have among the largest reserves of diamonds in the world and is a major exporter.
The duo came on the radar of US agencies when they moved to Spain from where they were nabbed, along with two Pakistani nationals, by these agencies, he said. They were behind bars for a period of one-and-half years and were then turned over to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and remained in jail for another two-and-half years starting September 2015, the official informed.
Mumbai police demanded his custody from US authorities as Ali was wanted in an extortion case here, he said. Accepting India’s request, US authorities extradited Ali on November 15 last year, the official said. He was handed over to Mumbai police in the first week of December last year and has been in jail since, he added. The official said efforts were on to get Kaskar extradited as well.
