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<\/div>\nJournalist Sheela Bhatt who interviewed Dawood Ibrahim in Dubai in 1988.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
New Delhi: <\/b><\/p>\n
She says she first met fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim when he was a small-time criminal and was “just emerging”. She met him multiple times over the years and also interviewed him, both in India and Dubai.<\/p>\n
She is seasoned journalist Sheela Bhatt, who sent the interwebs buzzing when she posted a throwback picture last month featuring her and Dawood Ibrahim, India’s most wanted. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
The picture was taken in 1988 when Ms Bhatt, a journalist spanning four decades, visited Dubai to interview the don, who is wanted for multiple terror activities in India, including the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts.<\/p>\n
It was Ms Bhatt’s picture in Chitralekha magazine with Karim Lala, a mafia don of Mumbai in the late 1970s, which got her Dawood’s attention. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Dawood called her to help write against the alleged harassment of the girls in a government remand home on Mohammad Ali Road in Mumbai by the men of Karim Lala, she said in the interview. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“Aap Karim Lala ko mil leto ho. Kaise hamari bachiyon ko pareshan karte hain, aap ispe likhye<\/em> ( You met Karim Lala. You please write about how his men are harassing the girls),” Dawood said over the phone, she told her interviewer.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Dawood was just an emerging man and his bosses were Marwari, Sindhi, Punjabi,” she said, adding in 1981-82 he was just a criminal.<\/p>\n Shortly after that telephone call, the first interview happened. She went with her husband to meet the don. \u00a0<\/p>\n “First, they called us at Tanker street near jail road (Mumbai). Then they got us in a car with tinted windows and took us to Pakmodia street, which I knew,” she said.<\/p>\n “Then we met. Me, my husband, Dawood and Chhota Shakeel (Dawood’s aide),” she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n “He was doing the small talk. The only thing he wanted to say was that Karim Lala is a bad man,” she said.<\/p>\n A few years after that meeting, Ms Bhatt said she again met the don in a Baroda jail. \u00a0<\/p>\n At the time, Ms Bhatt was living in Bombay (now Mumbai) and would visit Gujarat to report. \u00a0<\/p>\n She managed to gain access and visited Baroda jail. To her surprise, she found Dawood playing football in there. \u00a0<\/p>\n “Dawood said he won’t spare Alamzeb ( who used to run Karim Lala’s businesses in Mumbai) and I wrote about it. It came true as Alamzeb died sometime after the article was published,” she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n There was no contact for the next 2-3 years, she said.<\/p>\n