Dawood Ibrahim is the leader of a crime ring known as D-Company. You probably have never heard of Dawood OR D-Company. And that's kind of insane because D-Company is considered one of the most violent criminal organizations in the world. The syndicate has been linked to extortion, gun running, murder, and counterfeiting, among other heinous crimes.
He is currently wanted on charges of drug trafficking, terrorism, murder, extortion, money laundering, targeted killing, and more. He makes El Chapo look like a boy scout.
Dawood Ibrahim was named a global terrorist by both India and the U.S. in 2003 for his role in the 1993 Bombay bombings, which were responsible for 257 deaths and more than 1,400 injuries. Reportedly, after planting the bombs that decimated parts of the city, he fled for Karachi, Pakistan. He might still be there. Or not. No one knows. Despite his absence, his D-Company still runs Mumbai.
D-Company pushes drugs, pimps out women, skims money from businesses, extorts Bollywood stars, and fixes the results of cricket games. Through D-Company, Ibrahim backs militants terrorizing Kashmir and northern Nigeria. And all of this comes from a man who is the son of a police officer!
There have long been whispers that he was directly have been linked to Osama bin Laden.
There's a $25 million reward for his capture. For a time he was #3 on the FBI's list of the world's 10 most wanted fugitives. Long story short, Dawood Ibrahim is a bad, bad, bad dude.
Dawood Ibrahim has been on the run for nearly three decades. His exact whereabouts are completely unknown.
I guess it's easy to evade capture when you've got a net worth of…
$6.7 BILLION
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Where Did He Come From?
Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar was born in 1955 in Dongri –a poor neighborhood in central Mumbai which leans heavily Muslim in a city that is mostly Hindu. Dongri is tiny – just about the size of two soccer fields, but it is well known for the gangs that are born and simmer there.
Dawood and his brother Shabir did not follow in their law-abiding father's footsteps. Instead, they started stealing, robbing people, and committing fraud as children. When Dawood was 19, he mugged a courier for a well-known Indian crime lord named Haji Mastan. That caper earned Dawood $200,000. His father took him to the police chief, who unknowingly set Dawood on the trajectory that would make him the most feared crime lord in Southeast Asia. The chief told him that instead of taking the law into his own hands, he could do it with the law by his side. The aspiring gangster then launched a war against Haji Mastan.
In 1981, hitmen for Mastan cornered Dawood and his brother. Shabir was killed. Dawood got away. By 1984, Dawood had exacted revenge for his brother on those three hitmen, having them killed. Haji Mastan packed up his gang and left Mumbai. D-Company grew throughout the 1980s to become the biggest mafia in India.
The Biggest Mafia In India
In the 1990s the tides changed somewhat. Suddenly Dawood and his network of gangsters, drug dealers, and assassins were no longer working with the law by their side. Mobsters were gunned down by the police by the hundreds. In 1991, D-Company mobsters were locked in a gun battle with Mumbai's police on live TV. The following year, Dawood had one of his assassins execute a police officer in broad daylight.
The following year, 1993, the Bombay bombings occurred. Dawood and his D-Company had become a terrorist organization that brought the city of Mumbai and its 12 million residents to its knees.
Dawood was placed on the most-wanted lists of the FBI, Interpol, and other law enforcement agencies. Soon after the bombings Dawood left India for Pakistan.
A Billionaire Gangster In Hiding
Pakistan is likely giving Dawood refuge as a power play over India, its nearest neighbor. Pakistan and India are not exactly friendly allies.
Dawood isn't getting a free ride. At some point he allegedly paid for his protection by bailing out Pakistan's Central Bank with a huge cash infusion at a time of a banking crisis. He armed the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in its battle to take control of Kashmir from India. Dawood has also lent money to Boko Haram, the notoriously violent terrorist group in northern Nigeria responsible for the death of more than 36,000 people since 2009.
Dawood is still inflicting violence in Mumbai from afar. Back in 2008, it is believed he smuggled members of the Lashkar into India to instigate a four-day siege of blasts and gunfire in Mumbai's prominent Taj Mahal hotel that killed 31 people.
These days, D-Company is focusing on gambling and fixing cricket games. D-company members have been found to be bribing star players and issuing threats to other players so that they will throw games. According to one report, in 2018 D-Company fixed the outcome of two-thirds of all the cricket games in the world.
Dawood Ibrahim has never been caught – and it seems very unlikely that he ever will be. Thanks to his nearly limitless financial resources, he has been called "the most dangerous man in the world."
