Four parcels of agricultural land belonging to the family of India’s most wanted terrorist, Dawood Ibrahim, are set to go under the hammer on Friday, with a reserve price of just over ₹19 lakh. These ancestral properties, located in Mumbake village in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, will be auctioned under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act, 1976.
While the number of bidders remains unclear, one participant certain to be present is lawyer and former Shiv Sena member Ajay Srivastava. Having successfully bid on three of Dawood’s properties in the past, including the underworld don’s childhood home in Mumbake village, Srivastava is determined to acquire the deed for the 1993 Mumbai blasts mastermind’s home in this auction.
In 2020, Srivastava bid for the bungalow and established the Sanatan Dharm Pathshala Trust with plans to start a school there. He expressed his intentions, stating, “I had taken part in the auction in 2001 to get the fear of Dawood Ibrahim out of people’s hearts, and a few people have come forward after that.”
The auction, scheduled for Friday in Mumbai, has set the reserve price at ₹19.22 lakh. The properties were seized under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act, and the auction has stirred both interest and criticism.
One bidder from a 2015 auction of Dawood’s properties, S Balakrishnan, expressed dissatisfaction with the upcoming procedure, calling it “ridiculous.” He criticized the auction, stating, “₹19 lakh means nothing to Dawood. So, in the name of auctioning such properties, they waste the government’s money.” Balakrishnan had bid ₹4.28 crore for a restaurant owned by Dawood in 2015 but lost the property due to the inability to deposit the money in time.
Balakrishnan claimed to have bid for the restaurant to end Dawood’s terror and expressed disappointment with the government’s refusal to extend the deposit deadline. He said, “I was going to deposit ₹4 crore under any circumstances because I had so much support from the public. Everyone had said they would help me. But I had only three weeks, which included a Christmas holiday.”
The first auction of Dawood’s properties in 2000 saw no participants, attributed to the fear associated with the terrorist. Despite the controversy and criticism surrounding the auctions, authorities continue to pursue legal means to auction confiscated properties linked to Dawood Ibrahim. The upcoming auction, with its reserve price and potential participants, will once again bring attention to the complex process of dealing with assets tied to notorious figures in India’s criminal landscape.
