The errors of their ways

With the good riddance of Osama bin Laden, The Guardian has published the world’s most wanted list as it stand now and guess who makes it to the second slot in that ranking – none other than Dawood Ibrahim, the head of the Mumbai-based, 5,000-member organised crime syndicate D-Company, which has engaged in everything from narcotics and counterfeits to weapon smuggling and contract killing.

He is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for organised crime and counterfeiting. He was ranked fourth on the Forbes' World's Top 10 most dreaded criminals list of 2008.

After the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people and wounded 713 - allegedly organised and financed by Ibrahim - he became India's most wanted man.

The US, maintaining that Ibrahim had close links with bin Laden, declared him a “global terrorist” in 2003 and pursued the matter before the United Nations in an attempt to freeze his assets around the world and crack down on his operations. The US government claims that the kingpin of the criminal world shares smuggling routes with al Qaeda and has collaborated with both al-Qaeda and its affiliate, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which allegedly pulled off the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, possibly with Ibrahim's help.

Unfortunately, Pakistan again comes into the limelight when Ibrahim’s issue comes up.

There have been numerous claims that he was, or probably still is, is a ‘guest’ in Pakistan just like bin Laden, protected by appearance-altering plastic surgery and friends in Pakistani intelligence community.

Urban legends in Karachi are that he lives somewhere in the DHA area of the city and many claim to have seen the underworld don.

The fact that Pakistani cricket legend Javed Miandad’s son married Ibrahim’s daughter further fuels suspicions.

Now if these rumours are true, it is yet another example of our intelligence agencies’ never-ending list of blunders. What objectives can they achieve by treading this path of self-destruction, it is anybody’s guess. Perhaps it all comes down to their eternal hatred for India. But in the process, what they are really doing is weakening their own country and tainting its image in the eyes of the world. We can only hope that our spy agencies can see the errors of their ways before it is too late.