India may get custody of key Chhota Shakeel aide

MUMBAI: In a diplomatic victory for the Centre, a Thailand court has ruled in favour of India’s request for extraditing Chhota Shakeel aide Mudassar Hussain Sayyed alias Munna Zingada (50). Islamabad was trying to prove that he was a Pakistani national.
A gangster from Jogeshwari, Zingada had gone to Bangkok along with others and had at Shakeel’s behest made an attempt on the life of gangster Chhota Rajan in Bangkok in 2000.

The development is being viewed as a setback to global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim. The extradition of Zingada, who served 16 years in a Thai jail for the bid on Rajan’s life, is expected to help India establish the presence of Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan. An intelligence source said this is precisely the reason why Islamabad left no stone unturned to secure his deportation by trying to prove that he was a Pakistani national.

Zingada should be behind bars in India by September-end, said a source.

Rajan’s aide Rohit Verma was killed in the Bangkok attack, and Zingada was arrested after the incident and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Since Zingada had entered Thailand on a Pakistani passport bearing the name of one Mohammed Saleem, the Pakistan government had been claiming that he was their citizen.

India and Pakistan had locked horns for now almost eight years before the Thai authorities claiming Zingada’s nationality. Shakeel had left no stone to prove Zingada’s nationality by submitting a bogus Pakistani school-leaving certificate and a passport.

“Their claim was bogus. But our documentation before the Thai court that Zingada’s attempt on Rajan, a Indian gangster itself was a strong proof that Zingada was Indian. Secondly, we also collected his dossier that detailed his joining the gang, his ration and voter ID card and lastly DNA samples of his kin, which strengthened our case further,” said a senior official. The officer added that now the Thai authorities, which has ruled in favour of India will give a month’s appeal period to Zingada to challenge their order.

A senior IPS officer said the Pakistan government’s process of Zingada’s extradition before Thai court has also exposed how Dawood is supported by the Pakistani government. In 2016 a team headed by then DCP Dhananjay Kulkarni had gone to Bangkok to expedite the process of Zingada’s extradition. The crime branch team had submitted a dossier on Zingada before a Thai court, listing his criminal forays in Mumbai between 1994-97 along with “incontrovertible proof of his Indian nationality”, which included his passport details, fingerprints, and the DNA samples of his kin.

In 1990, Zingada stabbed a fellow student to death over an eve-teasing incident outside his college at Jogeshwari. His soon caught the eye of Ismail Malbari, an associate of Chhota Shakeel. Zingada graduated to the rank of a shooter. He was assigned the task of killing a person at Bandra. Zingada came into limelight only after he shot dead a key member of gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli’s political party–Akhil Bharatiya Sena in October 1997. Zingada was arrested at Santacruz in 1997, but secured bail in 1999. Later, he landed up in Karachi.