THE long wait for Jamnagar Police is over. Now, they have got the custody of gangsters Mustafa Majnoo and Ejaz Pathan to interrogate them for their role in the landing of a huge cache of RDX at Gosabora in Porbandar in 1992. The explosives were later used for the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai.
Mustafa and Pathan, both associates of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, were in judicial custody in Mumbai. The Jamnagar Police want to find out the source of the RDX that had landed in Gosabora.
The Jamnagar Police have also obtained the custody of two more persons, Ijju Sheikh and Amir Bandhukwala, from Valsad jail. All the four accused reached Jamnagar on Thursday afternoon.
On Thursday evening, Mustafa and Pathan were produced before TADA judge N S Vora for their police remand. While Mustafa was sent to a hospital after he complained of chest pain, Pathan was sent to Central Jail. Mustafa and Pathan, the main accused in the RDX landing case, were on the top of Jamnagar Police’s wanted list since 1993. The other accused in the landing case were top members of D-company, including don Dawood Ibrahim himself, Anees and Mohmmad Dosa.
While Mustafa had been arrested by Mumbai Police in 2003, Pathan, along with Dawood’s brother Iqbal Kaskar, had been deported from Dubai in 2003. Though the Maharashtra government had cleared their custody for Jamnagar Police around three years back, the court dealing with the Mumbai serial blast case had not granted permission for their custody transfer.
A case (number 151/93) against Mustafa and Pathan had been registered under 120B of IPC and subsection 37 of TADA at the B-Division Police Station by the Jamnagar Police in 1993. And the two had been declared absconding by Jamnagar Police.
According to police, Mustafa and Pathan had played a vital role in landing of the RDX at Gosabora. The consignment was later transported to Mumbai with the help of local people. In this case, a total of 22 accused are still absconding, and the questioning of Mustafa and Pathan will provide vital links, said police sources.
Though RDX landing was done at Gosabora in Porbandar, its conspiracy was hatched in Madhapar in Jamnagar on the instructions from underworld dons in Dubai and Karachi. In the ’90s, Mustafa was known as ‘Landing Lord’ and most of the explosive landings carried out by the underworld was done through Mustafa. With the support of local criminals, Mustafa and Pathan managed to land RDX consignment at Gosabora in 1992. Part of the consignment had been recovered by police while being transported to Jamnagar in 1993.
In the entire RDX episode, the others who were involved were Dawood Ibrahim, Mamumiyan Panjumiyan Haji Daji Ismail, Aarif Lambo, and Usman Gani Noormohmad Merchant alias Munno. Of them, Usman Gani had been arrested. Like Dawood, both Mustafa and Pathan never visited Jamnagar and the entire operation was conducted from Dubai and Mumbai.
Several locals had been arrested from Porbandar and Jamnagar in this connection. Most were from Salaya in Jamnagar and the main of them included Aaamir Saajan and Ramnath Gadhvi. The two, who made the landing and transportation of RDX possible, had been arrested in 1993. In the same case, 35 people had been booked in Porbandar for assisting smuggling and transportation of RDX. But investigating agency has so far no idea from where the RDX came.
From the arrests made earlier, the police had come to know who hatched the conspiracy and where.
But the source of RDX, which would throw light on the entire network, could not be known. Now, the police hope to learn this by questioning Mustafa, Pathan, Sheikh, and Bandhukwala.