Mumbai: Dawood Ibrahim aide and terror under-trial Mohammad Dossa “auditioned” eight models on a city court’s premises, selected three for a Dubai assignment and gave them an advance, police said.
Then two of his henchmen allegedly posed as cops, hijacked the cab in which the girl who had received the advance on the trio’s behalf was returning, and robbed her of the money on a Mumbai street.

Two police officers went on record narrating to The Telegraph this remarkable story, which suggests that some former D-Company gangsters still enjoy a free run in the city 22 years after the Bombay blasts.

Had it not been for the greed of the two fake cops, who couldn’t resist grabbing the teenage model’s mobile phone too after relieving her of the Rs 1 lakh advance, the crime may have remained under wraps. The duo have been arrested.

Dossa, held in Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail, is under trial separately for his role in the 1993 blasts like his onetime D-Company colleague Abu Salem. The “audition” took place in early May on a day he had been taken to the city civil and sessions court for a hearing.

The models appear to have had no idea who was hiring them.

“These women were brought to the court premises by a model co-ordinator named Shivkumar Ghosalkar. We are questioning him,” said senior inspector Parashuram Kakad of Shivaji Park police station, who is overseeing the case.

“The three models Dossa selected were to go to Dubai and model for a jewellery store there. Each was supposed to be paid Rs 5 lakh.”

This newspaper could not reach Ghosalkar.

On May 8, Dossa’s aide Khayyumuddin Sayyed, 26, paid the Rs 1-lakh advance to one of the models, a 19-year-old, at a house in Mumbai’s Mahim neighbourhood, police said.

Minutes later, after she had climbed into a cab with the money, two men dressed as cops flagged the taxi down and introduced themselves as crime branch officials.

“They told her they knew she had just collected Rs 1 lakh in cash and that she had been paid by Mohammad Dossa,” Kakad said.

“She had never heard of Dossa. They told her he was an underworld don and Dawood Ibrahim’s man. The girl panicked. She quietly agreed when they got into her cab, took it to an isolated spot in the Matunga area and threatened to arrest her.”

The impostors eventually agreed to let her off if she paid them Rs 5 lakh, Kakad said. The model then called Ghosalkar, who did not respond. Next she called Khayyumuddin, who arrived at the spot on the pretext of helping her.

“After pretending to carry out a hard bargain with the fake cops for a while, Khayyumuddin persuaded her to hand them the Rs 1 lakh she was carrying,” said assistant inspector B. Gonjari of Shivaji Park, the investigating officer.

“The two men took away her mobile phone, asking her to collect it from the crime branch Unit 4 office at Antop Hill police station.”

A couple of days later, the model mustered the courage to go to the Antop Hill crime branch office to get her phone back. “That’s when she realised she had been conned and that the men in uniform she had met were fake policemen,” Gonjari said. “She had mentioned Dossa, so it was not difficult to track the culprits.”

On May 15, the police arrested Khayyummudin and Firoz Mustafa Khan alias Badi. Mohammed Anwar Ansari was arrested the following day.

They have been charged with impersonating police officers, kidnapping and extortion.

“We are now investigating how Dossa managed to carry out an audition on the court premises,” Kakad said.