The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday began investigations against Dawood Ibrahim’s incarcerated brother Iqbal Kaskar and two others for extortion and illegal transfer of property, amid a clarification by the Thane police that they had interrogated Kaskar about the funds allegedly given by the Karachi-based don to Zakir Naik’s NGO Islamic Research Foundation (IRF).
On a day when the ED confirmed that it had begun investigations into alleged money laundering by Kaskar and his accomplices who have been arrested in an extortion case, the Thane police dismissed indirectly the reports in a section of the media that Dawood used to fund Naik’s outfit IRF through a middle man Sultan Ahmed.
“Till now we have not interrogated Kaskar about the funding that IRF had received from Dawood. We do not have any confirmed details about such transactions,” a senior Thane crime branch official, who is supervising the investigations against Kaskar and others arrested in connection with an extortion case, said.
Kaskar and two of his accomplices Mumtaz Shaikh and Israr Ali Jamil Sayyed were arrested on September 18 from the Nagpada residence of Dawood’s sister late Haseena Parkar in south Mumbai. The charge against them was that they had allegedly extorted four flats and Rs 30 lakh cash from one builder Jain in 2016.
The investigators suspect that Kaskar and his men allegedly extorted money and property from at least 20 persons.
Kaskar and two others are currently in the custody of the Thane police.
This is not for the first time that Zakir Khan’s link with Dawood has surfaced. Earlier in February this year, the ED had suspected that IRF might have received funds from D-company.
After it arrested Zakir Naik’s chief financial officer Aamir Gazdar for alleged money laundering in the third week of February this year, the ED had begun to investigate the money trail. The trail had led a few businessmen close to Dawood, who had allegedly given substantial funds to Naik’s IRF.
Informed officials sources that with it having launched investigations into the extortion racket by Kaskar and his men, the ED would question the arrested brother of Dawood about the money laundering allegedly indulged in by him and also delve deep into alleged financial links between Naik's IRF and D-company.