Dawood building sold to Saifee trust for 3.5 crore

MUMBAI: The three-storeyed Masulla building in Pakmodia Street belonging to gangster Dawood Ibrahim, which was put on the block recently, was bought by the Saifee Burhani Upliftment Trust (SBUT) for Rs 3.5 crore at an auction held in the city on Thursday.

The Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha and an SC lawyer too participated in the auction. The base price for the property, which is in the name of Dawood’s mother Amina Bi and is also known as Amina Mansion, was Rs 79.4 lakh; the earnest money was Rs 25 lakh. An SBUT spokesperson said the building would be redeveloped as part of its Bhendi Bazaar redevelopment project.

Dawood bldg sold: Tenants don’t care who new owner is

Masulla building has been declared unfit and poses a serious risk to the lives of tenants and pedestrians. So we participated in the auction and acquired it in order to redevelop it,” the spokesperson said. The auction, carried out under the Smuggling and Foreign Exchange Manipulators (Forfeiture of Property) Act (SAFEMA), was held at the cultural hall at Yashwantrao Chavan Pratisthan near Mantralaya.

Sources said Masulla was part of Dawood’s ill-gotten assets, and he spent some of his prime years in this structure opposite Damarwala building. The building has several shops in addition to houses. The occupants, however, had said they had little interest in who owned the property. Some government officials had earlier visited the building and recorded the occupants’ statements.

SC lawyer Bhardwaj, who had also participated in the auction of Dawood’s properties last year, had in the public auction placed a bid for Rs1.91 crore. However, SBUT won with its sealed tender bid. A finance ministry source said SBUT had participated in all three bid categories: public tender, e-tender and sealed envelope tender. In the e-tender, it had quoted Rs3.43 crore.

After the auction, Bhardwaj said, “If I win next time I want to use the property for my country. I want to wipe out the fear of Dawood from people’s hearts.” Bhardwaj, along with the other participant Indira Tiwari of Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha, had on July 24 visited the property and inspected it amidst police escort. Tiwari had told TOI then that if they won the bid, they would build a home for uplift of the poor and the aged.

The bid winners have to pay 25% of the amount within 30 days. The rest will have to be paid within the next 60 days. Eight other properties belonging to different persons and located in Maharashtra were also put up for auction on Thursday and found 25 bidders.

On November 14, 2017, Hindu Mahasabha had participated in the auction for three other Dawood properties but SBUT won those bids too. The properties auctioned then were a non-operational eating house called Hotel Raunaq Afroz, Shabnam guesthouse, and a four-storeyed commercial-cumresidential structure, the Damarwala building at Pakmodia Street, where Dawood’s younger brother Iqbal Kaskar lived till September last year before moving to his sister’s house. The collective reserve price for all three was Rs 3.95 crore, and the Union finance ministry fetched Rs 11.05 crore from the auction.