The UN has confirmed what India has been saying all along, that terrorist Dawood Ibrahim is in Pakistan enjoying all creature comforts. Out of the nine addresses in Pakistan which he has been using and which India had included in a dossier prepared on him, the UN has authenticated six. What more is required to prove that the man, who organised the serial blasts in Mumbai in 1993 in which 250 innocent people were killed, has been enjoying the hospitality of Islamabad? It is from his base in Pakistan that he is still busy organising his anti-India activities. The UN has truly called the Pakistani bluff.
The UN and many Western countries, including the US, had declared him a terrorist. As far as India is concerned, he is a fugitive wanted in several criminal cases. The Indian state has a moral and legal responsibility to bring him to book for the heinous crimes he himself committed or ordered his followers to commit. Pakistan also has a responsibility to hand him over to India to face trial. Far from that, Islamabad has been providing him everything from a Pakistani passport to comfortable houses so that he could carry on his nefarious activities. Bilateral relations would have improved considerably if Pakistan had agreed to hand him over to India. Instead, it has been on a denial mode, despite Indian media publishing photographs of the houses he lived in Karachi and other places.
Now that the UN has confirmed that India’s dossier was fact, not fiction, New Delhi should do everything possible to have him extradited to India where he would have opportunities to prove his innocence. India should use every fora available to drive home the point that Pakistan has been sheltering a person whom the world considers a menace. Western nations, particularly the US, should realise that their war on terror would become laughable if they cannot force Pakistan to extradite Dawood.