New Delhi, December 22
From being a street urchin in Mumbai in the seventies, don of ‘‘Bhai-dom’’ Dawood Ibrahim has come such a long way that his ‘D’ company runs overt or covert businesses in over a dozen countries. His annual turnover is an estimated Rs 7,000 crore and he ‘‘donated’’ Rs 1,000 crore to the Pakistan Government to help Gen Pervez Musharrf tide over his country’s economic crisis.

The latest classified report submitted to the Vajpayee government gives stunning details of the crime life of Sheikh Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, better known as Dawood Ibrahim, and how he is a strategic asset for Pakistan’s ISI for furthering anti-India activity through terrorist and subversive means.

Dawood’s meteroic rise in the underworld and his rags-to-riches story is like the script of a block-buster thriller movie and this report gives glimpses of his journey from a street vagabond to a dreaded don whose diktat runs in a number of countries.

Dawood crawled his way up in the underworld, ruthlessly eliminating his enemies, friends-turned-foes and rivals. The latest example is how his relationship with bosom friend Rajendra Sadashiva Nikhalje, better known as Chotta Rajan, turned 180 degrees and he made many attempts to get him killed.

The semi-literate 47-year-old Dawood now uses state-of-the-art gadgetry and communications equipment to run his empire. One of his e-mail accounts, opened in rediff.com, as mentioned in the secret report, has the following address — janujanu1@rediffmail.com. Janu, which is a user name in the e-mail address is a nick-name of Dawood. The password is ‘Mumbai.’

Dawood’s protege Chota Shakeel, however, has a more fanciful e-mail account — sameerloveyou@hotmail.com.

Following the pattern established by earlier underworld dons Haji Mastan and Yusuf Patel, Dawood is reported to have shifted from smuggling into legal businesses. The difference is that Dawood has been much more systematic and thorough in organising his legal business empire. Dawood has invested in such diverse areas as shipping, food-processing, readymade garments’ export, hotels and construction.