"Chhota Rajan Was Scared": Journalist Who Interviewed Dawood Ibrahim

Journalist Sheela Bhatt, who had interviewed underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in 1988, throws light on how the wanted terrorist and his lieutenant Chhota Rajan fell out.

In a podcast conversation with news agency ANI editor Smita Prakash, Ms Bhatt said Chhota Rajan was at the same room as his boss Dawood Ibrahim when she interviewed him 35 years ago.

"Chhota Rajan was at a small dining table with Dawood. I was talking to Dawood. Chhota Rajan also spoke, but very little. He was scared of Dawood since Dawood was his boss," Ms Bhatt said in the ANI podcast with Ms Prakash.

Narrating a memory about asking Dawood Ibrahim on people losing money in a cricket match, she said in those days there were no fancy gadgets and she put the landline on speaker to record the conversation with a dictaphone.

"Dawood spoke at length about how he was cheated in the betting," Ms Bhatt said, alluding to Chhota Rajan's hand. "He (Dawood) had lost a lot of money," she said. "We asked him to show proof that he was in (Pakistan's) Karachi. Then he sent a fax from Karachi's Hyatt Hotel," Ms Bhatt said.

She said at that time they obviously did not anticipate that many years later these material would be interesting to see. "We have lost many of the material we collected then," Ms Bhatt said.

Ms Bhatt is known for her work as a crime journalist and she has interviewed all dons of Mumbai's underworld, which include Karim Lala to Vardarajan Mudaliar and Chhota Shakeel to Dawood Ibrahim.

She is one of the few journalists who interviewed Dawood Ibrahim in-person at his Dubai home and is known to have had access to the mafia don for years.

Recently, a photo tweeted by Ms Bhatt in which she is seen sitting with Dawood Ibrahim during the interview went viral.

She has covered all general elections since 1979 and continues to write on politics and international affairs.