JOIN US“We (detective branch of police) has arrested Arif alias Chachcha from Mohammadpur” area of the city, a police spokesman said.
Arif, one of the top operatives of the Dawood network in Bangladesh, was living in Dhaka, identifying himself as a member of the Urdu-speaking stranded Pakistani community or Bihari since 2001, when he fled India to evade a murder charge, the spokesman said.
Police remand
Soon after his arrest, Arif was placed under an eight-day police remand by metropolitan magistrate Tania Kamal through a court order to be grilled for information about the network.
During initial interrogation, officials said, Arif disclosed that he was in constant touch with Dawood’s second-in-command Chhota Shakil while they have a network of over 100 men in Bangladesh who included both Indian nationals and some “influential Bangladeshis”.
Arif married a Bangladeshi woman and he was receiving Taka 60,000 from Chhota Shakil per month. The arrest came as police on May 29 detained two accomplices of Dawood, Indian nationals Abdur Rauf Daud Merchant and Zahid Sheikh and their Bangladeshi associate Mohammad Kamal from central Brahmanbaria district.
The same court on Sunday also granted police six more days to question them as they were produced before the court on expiry of their eight days’ remand. Police has launched a manhunt for Dawood’s men in Bangladesh while the detained accomplices of the don said their network here was being patronised by several influential people.
Officials familiar with investigation process earlier said two former ministers, three lawmakers and seven businessmen patron the network in Bangladesh but declined to disclose their names. They said the network consisted of some 300 people, 150 of them being highly paid agents of Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakil.
“We have obtained some significant information from the arrested that they had established their terror network in the country in the late 1995 and started strengthening it after 2000 by recruiting 300 dedicated gangsters,” the New Age reported quoting a senior police official.
A Daily Star reporter who earlier managed to talk to Merchant in custody said the 150 highly paid agents have been working in the country and Shakil has been dealing with their payments through a money exchange firm.
Merchant, however, claimed he did not have any link to the mafia network saying he came to Bangladesh last month only to start a business leaving behind his family in Mumbai.
Merchant, a sharp shooter of Dawood, was accused in the murder case of Bollywood music baron Gulshan Kumar, who was killed in Mumbai on August 12, 1997. He was later released from jail for sometime on parole. But he had escaped to Bangladesh via Tripura and was arrested along with Sheikh last month.
PTI