The Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Iqbal Kaskar and one of his associates for attempting to extort Rs 3 lakh from a real estate agent in Byculla and assaulting him. According to police, Kaskar and Sheikh surrendered at the J J Marg police station Tuesday afternoon after which they were arrested. Kaskar, his associate Shabbir Usman Sheikh and a third unidentified suspect were booked by the Byculla police on Monday night after the victim, 48-year-old Mohammed Salim Shaikh, filed a complaint. On Tuesday, the case was transferred to J J Marg police station, which has the jurisdiction over the scene of crime, the police said. [related-post] The duo will be produced before a court on Wednesday, the police said. According to police, Iqbal and his associates allegedly assaulted Salim Shaikh on January 30. “Iqbal called the victim to his residence on Pakmodia Street in Nagpada. In the presence of his two associates, Kaskar demanded Rs 3 lakh from him. To intimidate Shaikh, the three also thrashed him,” said Krishna Prakash, Additional Commissioner of Police (South). Meanwhile, the Crime Branch has also begun parallel inquiries into the matter. “This is Kaskar’s first reported crime since his deportation to India from the United Arab Emirates in 2003. That he should be extorting a relatively paltry sum of Rs three lakh is suspicious. We are probing whether there is another side to the story,” a senior Crime Branch officer said on Tuesday. Kaskar, Dawood’s fifth sibling, was deported to India from the UAE in 2003. He was wanted in a murder offence and also for his alleged role in the Sara Sahara case, where a building came up illegally on government land. However, Iqbal Kaskar had been acquitted by the court in both cases in 2007.
