They fought fear and decided to make a point by buying properties belonging to India's most-wanted terrorist, but were rewarded for their courage with threats and legal battles stretching for over 20 years.
As four properties of Dawood Ibrahim go under the hammer tomorrow, a look at some of the earlier auctions paints a dismal picture. The first one, in 2000, had no takers, probably because of the fear of the terrorist, who masterminded the 1993 Mumbai blasts and then fled the country. At least two people who bought three of his properties in subsequent auctions are facing legal battles and one of them has also received threats from D Company, Dawood's criminal organisation.
When the first auction of Dawood's properties was conducted by the Income Tax department in Mumbai in 2000, I was a reporter for a national news channel. I went to the Diplomat Hotel in Colaba and saw that, despite advertisements being published in various newspapers, no one turned up to bid for the 11 properties. The Income Tax officials sat in the hotel for two hours and left after no one came.
I then filed a report for the channel saying that even though Dawood was in Karachi, hundreds of kilometres away, his fear continued to haunt Mumbai. If properties in a key area of the city were being sold at throwaway prices and still no one wanted to buy them, what other reason could there be, I asked.
The Shiv Sainik
After seeing the report, Ajay Srivastava, a lawyer and Shiv Sena member from Delhi, contacted me. Mr Srivastava was one of the Shiv Sainiks who had dug up the pitch at what was then the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium in Delhi in 1999, ahead of Pakistan's cricket tour.
The lawyer told me that he would make a bid for one of Dawood's properties at the next auction and emphasised that this was his decision, not his party's.
The next auction took place in March 2001 and Mr Srivastava was the only bidder present. He bid for two shops owned by Dawood in Jairajbhai Lane in Mumbai's Nagpada and bought them.
While the lawyer is technically the owner of the properties, he has not got possession even 22 years on. Far from doing anything with the shops, he has barely managed to see them once, and that too under tight police arrangements.
To gain possession, Mr Srivastava filed a case in the Small Causes Court, in which Dawood's sister Haseena Parkar was the defendant. No one from Parkar's side came during the first few hearings and her lawyers began showing up only after the court threatened to pass an ex parte order, after hearing only his side. He won the case in 2011 but is still doing the rounds of the courts because the order was challenged in the Bombay High Court.
Haseena Parkar died in July 2014 and the case is being fought by her children.
Mr Srivastava says he has received threatening calls from D-Company and some of Dawood's relatives even offered him money to give up his claim to the properties. At one point, the lawyer also offered to donate the shops to the Mumbai Police, but the force allegedly refused to accept them.
Childhood Home
In 2021, some of Dawood's assets seized under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act, 1976, were auctioned and one of the properties listed was the terrorist's childhood home in Mumbake village of Ratnagiri district. This is the house where Dawood was born.
Mr Srivastava bid on this property and won, but is yet to get possession because of some discrepancies in the documents prepared by a government department. Those mistakes have now been rectified and the lawyer is hopeful that the house will be registered in his name soon.
The Businessman
Months after Mr Srivastava's first bid, a Delhi businessman named Piyush Jain had also bid for, and won, one of Dawood's shops. The auction was held on September 20, 2001, and Mr Jain had bid for a property in Mumbai's Tardeo. The shop was named Umera Engineering Works and had an area of 144 sq ft.
The shop has not been transferred to his name even now because the Maharashtra government objected to the property being sold and said it was owed some dues. Mr Jain filed a petition in the Bombay High Court to get possession, but the verdict is yet to come.
Tomorrow's auction will see four parcels of agricultural land in Ratnagiri district going up for sale. The parcels are in the name of Dawood's mother Amina Bi, and their total value is around Rs 19 lakh. In 2017, Dawood's Damarwala Building, near JJ Hospital in Mumbai, was auctioned. The terrorist's brother, Iqbal Kaskar, lived in that building.
(Jitendra Dixit is an author who writes on crime and conflicts.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.