Manas Dasgupta
MUMBAI, Feb 23: The Maharashtra minister for minority development and aukaf and a leader of the Nationalist Congress Party, one of the constituent units of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, Nawab Malik was on Wednesday placed under arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a money laundering case linked to the Mumbai underworld and the international terrorist and underworld don, the fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim and his aides.
Malik was questioned for about one hour at his residence and later for about six hours at the ED office before he was placed under arrest. He was later produced before the special prevention of money laundering act court. He walked out of the ED office sloganeering, “We will fight, we will win and we will expose everyone” in Hindi.
The case involves alleged land and money transactions between Dawood Ibrahim and the minister over alleged purchase in September, 2005, by Malik of a property in Mumbai owned by the underworld don at a much lower than the prevailing market price. Only five days ago on February 18, the special court had remanded Iqbal Kaskar, Dawood’s brother, in the ED custody for seven days in the same case and since then the imminent arrest of Malik was very much in the air.
The ED’s case is based on a complaint originally made by the former chief minister and the presently the leader of the opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly Devendra Fadnavis who had levelled the allegation against Malik having entered into an illegal deal to purchase the posh property at a dampened price. An FIR was also filed by the National Investigation Agency on February 3 this year against Dawood who has been designated as a ‘Global Terrorist’ by the United Nation also listed under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for being involved in terrorist activities, smuggling, narco terrorism, underworld criminal syndicate, money laundering, unauthorised possession/acquisition of assets for raising terror funds and is working in collaboration with international terrorist organisation including Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al Qaeda.
Accusing Malik of having “underworld links,” Fadnavis had stated on November 9, 2021, that Malik bought property for cheap from two men associated with the Mumbai underworld. Fadnavis said that one of them, Sardar Shahwali Khan, was sentenced by TADA court to life imprisonment in 2007 in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case, while the other, Mohammed Salim Ishaq Patel alias Salim Patel, is a frontman of Dawood Ibrahim’s late sister Hassena Parkar and was arrested along with her in 2007 in a land grabbing case.
“A prime property of 2.80 acre on L B S Marg in Kurla was bought by Solidus Investment Private Limited for a meagre Rs 30 lakh. The signatory on the deal was Faraz Malik, the son of Nawab Malik,” Fadnavis had alleged. Malik himself had resigned from the company on becoming a minister in 2019, Fadnavis said.
According to the BJP leader, as part of the deal, the Maliks paid Rs 15 lakh to Sardar Shahwali Khan and Rs 5 lakh to Mohd Salim Ishaq Patel, still Rs 10 lakh less than the finalised deal for Rs 30 lakh, Fadnavis had claimed. According to him, the market price of the land then was Rs 8,500 per square metre, but Malik’s Solidus got it for as less as Rs 25 per sq m.
Shahwali Khan, from whom Fadnavis claimed Malik had bought the land, is serving a life term in the Mumbai blasts case. He was said to have been part of the team given firearm training by alleged mastermind Tiger Memon and to have done a recce of the Bombay Stock Exchange and the BMC to decide where the bombs should be placed. He was sentenced to suffer rigorous imprisonment in June 2007 and is presently in jail. The other person in the deal, Salim Patel, Fadnavis said, was the bodyguard and driver of Haseena Parkar, holding power of attorney on all land deals.
Malik had denied the charges claiming he had never entered into any deal with anyone from the underworld. Malik said the Kurla land in question held a godown that Solidus had leased from one Munira Patel. “She approached us and said she wanted to sell us the land. We took ownership of the land and got the registration done through one Salim Patel, who had the power of attorney.”
On Fadnavis’s claims regarding Shahwali Khan, Malik said: “Khan’s father was a watchman at this compound and the family had managed to get their names on the property records, staking claim on 300 metres of land. When we came to know about it, we paid them money to surrender their rights.”
Solidus Investments Private Limited is a company set up in 1973 by the Malik family. Malik’s son Aamir Nawab Malik and wife Mehjbeen Nawab Malik are listed as the two directors of the firm.
Defiantly waving his fist in the air to the waiting media persons as he was being brought out of the ED office on way for medical check-up before produced before the special court, 62-year old Malik said he won’t bow down. “We will fight and win, and expose everyone,” he said.
On February 15, the ED had carried out raids at 10 locations including premises linked to Dawood Ibrahim’s late sister Haseena Parkar, brother Iqbal Kaskar and Salim Qureshi alias Salim Fruit, brother-in-law of gangster Chhota Shakeel. The agency also took custody of Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Iqbal Kaskar in the same case. According to sources, some evidence related to property purchased by Nawab Malik has surfaced during the ongoing investigation.
ED officials had reached Malik’s home at 6 am where he was questioned for an hour. He was then brought to the ED office and questioned again for close to six hours eight hours. While Malik was being questioned, NCP workers protested near the party’s headquarters, located close to the ED office in south Mumbai, and shouted slogans slamming the BJP-led central government and the probe agency. “The protest is against the unjust questioning of Nawab Malik as he was exposing the BJP+NCB+CBI+ED nexus on a daily basis. We will not be cowed down. NCP will keep exposing BJP and all central agencies,” party spokesperson Sanjay Tatkare said.
Malik had recently made headlines for attacking the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) Zonal Director Sameer Wankhede accusing him of several service-related wrongdoings after the anti-drugs officer led the raid on a cruise ship on Mumbai’s shore in October last year and arrested 20 people including superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan. Malik’s son-in-law Sameer Khan was also arrested in a drugs case by the NCB’s Mumbai unit last year.
Reacting to the allegations against Malik, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said invoking Dawood was a convenient way to sully someone’s reputation. “I don’t know about the case against him but Dawood’s name has always been invoked to try to defame rivals,” he said. Pawar claimed that he was also accused of having ties with the underworld when he was the state’s Chief Minister. “25 years later, the same trick is being used to harass and defame Malik,” he added.
Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut and Sharad Pawar have accused the central agencies of being politically motivated and claimed that anyone who speaks against the Centre and its probe agencies was targeted. The BJP, however, has rubbished allegations of political vendetta and accused Malik of buying land from gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s aide. BJP MLA from Mumbai’s Ghatkopar West Ram Kadam also claimed that since the land was about to get seized by the government, the minister bought it at nominal rates from a bomb blast accused.
