Ejaz Lakdawala, an absconding mafia don for over two decades, has been arrested by a team of Mumbai Police in Patna, official sources told on Tuesday.
Ejaz has associated alternatively with the gangs of rival mafia dons Dawood Ibrahim Chhota Rajan. An Interpol red corner notice was pending against him.
“Lakdawala was a part of the Dawood gang. He might help us get important information about him,” Joint Police Commissioner (Crime) Santosh Rastogi told media.
There were over 25 major cases from more than 80 complaints of extortion, attempt to murder, kidnapping, and killings among others.
“He used to call from international numbers and issue threatening extortion calls to various people. The Crime Branch was tracking him for many days,” Rastogi said.
On December 28, the Mumbai Police nabbed Lakdawala’s daughter from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, Shifa Shahid Shaikh, alias Sonia, in a fake passport case, which led the police to the breakthrough.
Sonia had acquired a passport by submitting fake documents and was planning to flee Nepal along with her one-year-old daughter.
During her interrogation she revealed probable whereabouts of Lakdawala in Nepal and north India. A team of Mumbai Police rushed to nab him from the jurisdiction of Jakkanur Police Station in Patna on Wednesday.
He was brought to Mumbai and produced before a magistrate at Esplanade Court. The court then remanded him to custody till January 21.
Lakdawala started his career in the field of crime with D-Company in the 1980s. Later around 1992, he parted ways and joined his arch-rival Chhota Rajan and worked with him for over 18 years.
Later, due to some financial disputes, he started working independently from 2001. Sensing an opportunity for revenge, Dawood’s close aide Chhota Shakeel had ordered a gangland hit on Lakdawala in Bangkok in 2002.
That attack on Lakdawala was launched in a Bangkok market in which he sustained seven bullet injuries, but survived. He was shifted to Canada where he was arrested in 2004 on an Interpol notice.
The attack came barely two years after the attack on his former boss, Chhota Rajan who was also attacked in Bangkok in a hotel.
Rajan was extradited in November 2015 from Indonesia and is presently in jail, facing trial in various cases.
As per reports, Lakdawala also hatched plot to execute Dawood in Karachi but the plan failed as Dawood did not turn up. After the incident, Lakdawala went on the run and virtually became a globetrotter with operations in Canada, UK, US, Malaysia, Cambodia, Nepal and other countries.
Lakdawala is reported to have amassed huge properties in Malaysia, London, and Canada which the Mumbai Police will investigate separately.