Congress says Modi government 'slept' as Dawood's wife visited Mumbai

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Saturday demanded the Narendra Modi government explain how absconding don Dawood Ibrahims wife Mehjabin Shaikh managed to visit Mumbai last year undetected to meet her father. "Wife of Ibrahim, Mehajabin Shaikh came to meet her father in 2016 in Mumbai and the Modi government kept on sleeping," Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a video message. Surjewala's remarks came a day after the arrested brother of Dawood, Iqbal Ibrahim Kaskar told investigators that his sister-in-law, Mehjabin Shaikh (Dawood's wife) visited Mumbai sometime in 2016 to meet her father, Salim Kashmiri, before quietly departing. Targetting the investigative agencies of the government, Surjewala questioned, "What was CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) doing? What was Research and Analysis Wing (RA&W) doing?" Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the Congress leader said, "Wife of a terrorist, who is wanted in many terror cases arrives in India to meet her father and then goes back." "Why she was not arrested? Why no action was taken against her?" he asked. He also said that this shocking revelation was made by Mumbai's Thane police. "The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi), Defence Minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) and Home Minister (Rajnath Singh) must give answers," he said. Iqbal was arrested early on Tuesday by a crack team of Thane Anti-Extortion Cell headed by former encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma who had picked him up from his Mumbai home late on Monday night in an extortion case.