Thaindian News

Mumbai, May 18 (IANS) The city police is on high alert and there was no threat of an underworld gang war, Maharashtra Home Minister R.R. Patil said Wednesday, a day after the driver of Iqbal Kaskar, brother of India’s most wanted mafia don Dawood Ibrahim, was gunned down here.

“The police are on high alert and there is no threat (of gang-war). Most gangsters have fled the country. Many others have been either arrested or killed in encounters,” Patil told mediapersons in Ahmednagar district of the state.

Earlier in the day, in a surprise announcement, Mumbai police said Iqbal Kaskar was not fired at by gunmen in the attack that killed his driver. It was not immediately clear if he was the target.

Contradicting what the area police had said late Tuesday night, Deputy Commissioner of Police Rajkumar Vhatkar said Wednesday that Kaskar was not in the vehicle when the shooting took place.

“According to our information, Kaskar was not (there). Only his driver and bodyguard were present at the spot,” Vhatkar told reporters.

He said Kaskar’s driver Arif Syed Abubaker, 45, was shot in the chest and died when gunmen opened fire near a restaurant, close to Kaskar’s house on Pakmoria Street in south Mumbai.

The police has made all preparations to avert any potential gang war spilling onto Mumbai’s streets between the groups of Dawood Ibrahim and his arch rival Chhota Rajan, believed to be holed up somewhere in south east Asia.

Mumbai police Crime Branch officers said that all precautions have been taken avert any bloody fallout of Tuesday’s shooting incident in the sensitive Pakmodia Street, where Dawood grew up.

The Crime Branch sleuths are also keeping a close watch on the activities of the suspected operatives of all the major gangs through their network of informers.

Meanwhile, Vhatkar categorically said that Iqbal Kaskar would not be provided police security.

He also dismissed suggestions that the incident was of a serious nature.