NewDelhi : India Saturday asked Pakistan to hand over the “country’s most wanted” and 1993 Mumbai blasts’ mastermind Dawood Ibrahim, while the Congress said it was time for the Narendra Modi government to “walk the talk” and sought to know what it had done so far.
“He is the most wanted… India has asked Pakistan to hand him over… you just wait,” union Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters here.
India has made this demand to Pakistan many times earlier also but Pakistan had denied his presence in the country. However, Dawood, listed as an international terrorist, has reportedly been caught on tape by a western intelligence agency talking to one of his associates from Pakistan’s Karachi city.
Reacting to the home minister’s statement, Congress leader Manish Tiwari sought to know what the government headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which had raised the issue frequently while in the opposition, had done about getting Dawood.
“So what is this government is doing about it? When they were in the opposition they used to do a lots of chest thumping about how they would use diplomacy. How they would explore other means and mechanisms in order to bring Dawood Ibrahim…
“If Dawood Ibrahim is indeed in Karachi than this government should walk the talk and bring him to justice,” Tiwari told reporters.
The BJP, however, defended the government, saying it “was committed towards the fact that Dawood is brought back to India”.
“…because of our government’s efforts a joint statement, by the US and India, regarding the terrorist was issued during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US,” BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra told IANS.
Dawood, who is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for cheating, criminal conspiracy and organised crime, is reportedly involved in a number of crimes in India, including for planning the 1993 Mumbai blasts, sport fixing and others.
The US, believing that Dawood maintained close links with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organisations, had declared him a “global terrorist” in 2003.
It had also taken the matter to the UN in an attempt to ensure freezing of his assets around the world and a crackdown on his operations.