4 of Dawood Ibrahim's properties up for bidding today at just Rs 19 lakh

Dawood's property includes four parcels of agricultural land which were seized under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act, 1976.

Underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's ancestral properties will go under the hammer on Friday at a reserve price of just over Rs 19 lakh.

What are the properties

Dawood's properties include four parcels of agricultural land which were seized under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act, 1976. The land parcels are part the underworld don's ancestral properties and are located in Mumbake village in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district.

Bidders for the property

Although the number of bidders for the properties is unclear, one bidder is certain to turn up, lawyer and former Shiv Sena member Ajay Srivastava.

Srivastava has previously bid successfully on three of the don's properties in the past. These include Dawood's childhood home in Mumbake village, where he was born.

While the shops he had bid for in 2001 are caught in a legal tangle, Srivastava hopes to get the deed for the home of the mastermind behind the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

Speaking to NDTV, Srivastava said, "I had bid for the bungalow in 2020. A Sanatan Dharm Pathshala Trust has been set up and construction of the school will start soon. I will participate in the auction on Friday. I had taken part in the auction in 2001 to get the fear of Dawood Ibrahim out of people's hearts, and a few people have come forward after that."

A look into the old auctions of Dawood's properties

The first auction of Dawood's properties in 2000 had seen nobody turning up to participate, and the no-show was attributed to fear of the don.

In 2001, shops owned by the don went up for auction. Currently, the shops are caught in a legal tangle.

In the 2015 auction of Dawood's properties, his restaurant went up for auction. S Balakrishnan, a former journalist, had bid Rs 4.28 crore for the restaurant owned by the don but lost the property because he could not deposit the money in time. The restaurant is situated on Pakmodia Street, a central location in Mumbai

"This is ridiculous. Rs 19 lakh means nothing to Dawood. So, in the name of auctioning such properties, they waste the government's money. But why does the government need to do all this? It has the power to take over all the property he owns," S Balakrishnan said expressing anger over the auction.

Other auctions of the don's properties were held in 2017 and 2020.