Former Dawood aide arrested: ‘Lakdawala’s name didn’t evoke same fear when he started working alone’

In surviving that attempt on his life, Lakdawala had unwittingly emulated his one-time mentor Chhota Rajan, who also came back from the brink in 2000, after being shot by Shakeel’s gunmen in Thailand’s capital city.

Born in Jogeshwari, the now 50-year-old Lakdawala found trouble at an early age. A crime branch officer said Lakdawala first flouted the law when he allegedly attacked his school teacher. He is alleged to have later graduated to committing petty crimes in his locality, which led to his first stint behind bars. It was in jail that Lakdawala allegedly came in contact with members of Rajan’s gang in the late 1980s, before eventually foraying into the underworld.

Inspector Ajay Sawant, in charge of the Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC), said Lakdawala was the first person to side with Chhota Rajan when he split with fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim in 1993 over his orchestration of the Mumbai serial blasts. “When Rajan came to know that Dawood had taken his passport and planned to bump him off, he gathered his closest aides. Lakdawala was the first to tell Rajan that he would flee India with him,” Sawant said.

AEC Inspector Sachin Kadam said that after moving to Malaysia with Rajan, Lakdawala began receiving information on the whereabouts of blast accused who were out on bail. Using these details, Rajan’s gang members would find and kill the accused. Lakdawala, too, travelled to India on one such mission, but was arrested.

While he was lodged at Nashik jail in 1997, Lakdawala complained of health issues and was admitted to J J Hospital. However, he managed to escape and flee the country. “That was the last time he was in India,” Sawant said.

Lakdawala formed his own gang in 2008 after his partnership with Rajan ended. Police said Lakdawala never quite managed to cultivate a strong enough network of informants who identified targets and acquired their phone numbers and sharpshooters who intimidated and collected money from them.

“Till he was working for Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan, builders and businessmen in Mumbai knew who Lakdawala was and were afraid of him. But after he started working alone, his name did not evoke the same fear. Not many of his targets in the last four to five years had heard of him. He would make extortion calls to the smallest builders, start his threats at Rs 1 crore, but was prepared to settle for even Rs 10,000,” said an officer.

Crime Branch officers describe Lakdawala as being soft-spoken and well-versed in English. “He is technically quite adept and masks his extortion calls very well,” said Assistant Inspector Shirish Pawar. Lakdawala, he added, was extremely cautious in ensuring he never revealed his location to the police.

Officers who have worked in the AEC said it was fugitive gangster Ravi Pujari who later acquired the best informants and sharpshooters.

“Very few people wanted to work for Lakdawala because he found it difficult to pay them. In the last four years, we have almost finished his network by booking gang members under the MCOCA. He was left with only a handful of associates and had confined himself to operating in Mumbai’s western suburbs,” said an officer.

Among the last cases filed against him before his arrest, Lakdawala is alleged to have demanded Rs 2 crore from a buffalo trader in Kalyan in December 2019.

Niranjan Hiranandani, founder-chairman of the Hiranandani Group and president of the National Real Estate Development Council, said: “Not just builders, but traders and petrol pump operators are also targeted by extortionists. Any extortionist being put behind bars is a positive step and I congratulate the police for it.”