AMN
Former Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar today denied reports attributed to him that fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim had negotiated surrender with him months after the 1993 Mumbai blasts and that the then government scuttled the plans at the last moment.
Kumar, in an interview to a daily newspaper published yesterday, was quoted as saying that Dawood had got in touch with him and wanted to surrender but the plan was shelved by the government.
Mr Kumar said that he had not given the interview. He said, it was an informal chat with the correspondent who is known to him for sometime and the correspondent has given the chat a slant which is both incorrect and unfortunate.
Mr Kumar said, at no stage was Dawood willing to surrender nor did anyone stop him from surrendering.
Mr Kumar, who probed the 1993 Mumbai serial blast cases when he was a DIG with CBI, said, Dawood did speak with him but that was to give his defence in connection with Mumbai serial blast cases.
However, the denial flies in the face of his own comments at a book release function last month where he had made similar claims while referring to Dawood as a certain gentleman whom CBI had planned to get at with the help of non-state actors, but the move was scuttled by his political bosses.
Last month, Kumar had backed Union Minister VK Singh when he said the Army was capable of executing daring operations to avenge 26/11-like attacks by eliminating offshore criminals but certain considerations prevented it from doing so. The duo was speaking at the launch of journalist-author S Hussain Zaidi’s book “Mumbai Avengers”, a fictional account of a covert operation by a retired Army officer to avenge the 26/11 attacks.