The deportation by Dubai yesterday of Dawood Ibrahim’s younger brother, Iqbal Kaskar, and a Mumbai blast suspect, Ejaz Pathan, caps a long year of intensive cooperation between the United Arab Emirates and India. This has not only led to arrests of key Indian gangsters seeking refuge in that country but also yielded crucial information on other criminals who pass through it under fake aliases. In fact, clinching evidence that the five terrorists who attacked Parliament in December 2001 had been receiving their instructions from Pakistan came from Dubai last year. They gave Indian officials a printout of the mobile phone calls made by one of the terrorists before he mounted the attack. The phone had been found on his body. It was found that the terrorist had made a call to a Dubai number barely 10 minutes before entering Parliament. The Dubai telephone printout had registered this call as an ‘‘incoming call’’ with ‘‘roaming in Pakistan’’. New Delhi passed on this information to the ‘‘highest authorities’’ in the US, according to officials here. US officials are said to have agreed that it amounted to clinching evidence that Islamabad had a hand in the attack. A grateful New Delhi has thanked the Dubai authorities for sending Pathan and Kaskar back to Mumbai. Incidentally, like Aftab Ansari who was deported some months ago, Pathan was picked up despite the fact that he had a Pakistani passport. He is the first major accused in the 1993 Mumbai riots case to be sent by any foreign country to India. ‘‘The arrests signify a new chapter in India’s relations with the UAE, especially Dubai,’’ India’s ambassador to the UAE, K C Singh, told The Indian Express, adding he was confident that Dubai’s ‘‘cooperation would continue in the future.’’ Dubai’s past reluctance to give up the gangsters had much to do with the fact that these men with Pakistani passports had enormous business interests in the UAE. Religion, especially after the demolition of Babri Masjid, was a binding factor while the fact that Pakistan often emptied its deserts to allow the Gulf sheikhs to go bustard hunting went a long way in warming the relationship with Islamabad. Anees Ibrahim’s escape to Pakistan in early December put into perspective what New Delhi was up against. When Anees was picked up on December 2, UAE’s two most powerful men — Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid of Dubai and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zahid of Abu Dhabi — were out of the country on extended Id holidays. The lower levels of the Dubai police — incidentally, not integrated with the federal UAE — allowed Anees to go. But in the wake of the extradition treaty between India and the UAE as well as the post-September 11 events, New Delhi continued to address this problem. External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha travelled through the UAE en route to other countries and kept in touch with senior authorities. Two weeks ago, Sinha wrote a letter to the Crown Prince of Dubai, expressing New Delhi’s gratitude for Dubai’s help and reinforcing the long-term positive relationship between the two countries. Ambassador K C Singh, who carried the letter to the Crown Prince, was given an audience of 45 minutes. Within days, economic offender Rastogi, accused of stealing crores of rupees from Indian banks, had been picked up by the Dubai police. Information about Abu Salem — whom Portugal has now promised to give up — also came from the Dubai authorities. When Salem was arrested in Lisbon last year, details about his Portuguese passport came from Dubai. Armed with this information, CBI asked Interpol for help. Which, in turn, led to the sighting and Salem’s consequent arrest in Lisbon. But Indian officials discounted reports by Dubai’s chief of police, quoted as saying that it was New Delhi’s turn to return the favour and hand over 68 Indian criminals who had committed crimes in the UAE. They pointed out that under the extradition treaty, both nations had agreed not to extradite their own nationals to the other and that it was the UAE which had insisted on this clause.
