Arrest of Dawood Ibrahim denied

The government on Tuesday denied arrest of Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian national and a wanted terrorist by Indian government in Mumbai blasts. Javed Iqbal Cheema, spokesman for the interior ministry, said this at his weekly press briefing on law and order situation in the country.
To a question, he said reports regarding arrest of Dawood Ibrahim by Pakistan in daily Indian Press have no credence and he is not in Pakistan. "If India has any information about Dawood, it should inform us officially and share it with Pakistan", he added.
Cheema also said the government is investigating recent suicide attacks in the country from different angles, adding: "We are also investigating whether foreign hand is involved in acts of terrorism." He was of the view that the security agencies have reached near the terrorist network and found important clues in this regard.
The spokesman, however, remained tight-lipped when asked about the reports that Indian intelligence agency, RAW and CIA were involved in acts of terrorism especially in the blasts in which the Chinese nationalists were targeted.
Besides, he said, on Monday China and Pakistan singed an MoU for the establishment of a joint task force at the federal and provincial levels and its meeting would be held every month to review the security measures for Chinese. The establishment of joint task force for the security of Chinese nationals working in Pakistan is a great step, he added.
China is investing in a big way in Pakistan, and, therefore, the government in consent with the Chinese government established the joint task force, said Cheema. There are around 5,000 to 6,000 Chinese working in different parts of the country and for them around 7,000 security personnel are on the duty for their protection.
He said to resolve the issue of missing persons is humanitarian and the government is making every effort to trace them. The government is working in cooperation with all the stakeholders, including families of the missing persons and the human rights organisations.
For this purpose, he said, a Legal Aid Committee has been constituted, consisting of Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General and MNA Farooq Amjad Mir, advocate. He also said the government is making efforts to resolve the issue out of the courts.
He opined that the government had prepared a list of 257 persons reported missing, out of whom 121 have been traced and efforts are under way to trace the remaining 136 as well.
The spokesman informed the media that Pak-Afghan Joint Jirga is being held in Kabul from August 9-11 and Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao has already left for Kabul to review the security arrangements there.
Earlier, an AFP report quoting the Times of India, citing Indian intelligence sources, said Inter-Services Intelligence agency took Dawood and two trusted lieutenants into custody on Thursday.
"Sources in Quetta confirmed the detention," one intelligence officer said in the report. "Dawood and the others have ceased to be of much use to the Pakistani establishment," the unnamed senior officer said. Dawood was being kept in a safe house on the outskirts of Quetta, said the report, which could not be independently confirmed.
The paper said that prodding by the US, which in 2003 branded Dawood a "global terrorist," had led to the move to apprehend him. The son of a police constable, Dawood has run an empire steeped in drug trafficking, extortion and ransom killings for more than two decades.
His gang is said to be deeply feared in Bollywood, India's film industry. Many actors, directors and producers have been linked to Dawood. He is the key accused in a string of blasts that rocked India's financial capital Mumbai in 1993, killing at least 300 people and wounding more than 1,000.
Dawood fled India in the early 1980s and is believed to have assumed many nationalities and used a variety of hideouts, including in Dubai and Karachi. He is one of 20 people India wants Pakistan to hand over in the wake of a December 2001 attack on Indian parliament, which New Delhi said was carried out by Pakistani-backed Islamic militants. Pakistan had previously often denied Dawood was hiding on its territory.