NEW DELHI (TIP): Early this week, the Delhi police filed a charge sheet that stated Dawood Ibrahim masterminded the IPL match-fixing scam. This seems a civil effort on the part of the Delhi police when compared to the two attempts that the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) made on his life in 1994. Though the killing mission had been worked to the minutest detail, they were aborted at the last minute as the highest police authorities balked at it.

The first plan was to send a team of highly-trained assassins to Karachi where Dawood lives in a palatial house in upmarket Clifton area close to the beach. A team of four assassins was provided extensive training in the use of sophisticated arms and explosives and also briefed about the geography of the Clifton neighbourhood. A getaway plan was also worked out. The government gave preliminary approval for the plan following which the hit squad was flown to Kathmandu, given fake Nepalese passports and despatched to Karachi.

The arms and ammunition were sent across to a safe house in Karachi by using the route used by smugglers. The area was closely recced. Even as the assassins, who were all hardcore members of the Chhota Rajan gang, were making last-minute preparations to go for the kill, the central government, led by the then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, asked that the plan be put on hold