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Salem's satellite phone was tracked using Global Positioning System technology.
Getting the gangster to India will be difficult, as New Delhi does not have an extradition treaty with Portugal. However, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani said that he was hopeful of Salem being deported.
Towards this end, India may even give an assurance to the Portuguese government that Salem will not be sentenced to death, he said.
The reason being that European countries are signatory to a convention, which prohibits deportation of an accused to a country where he is likely to face the death sentence, Advani told reporters in Delhi on Friday night.
"In this case, it is possible and Indian law permits that the necessary assurance may be given to the concerned government," he added. He said efforts were also being made at the diplomatic level to ensure Salem's deportation to India.
Salem, a native of Saria Meer in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, began his career in New Delhi as a driver.
Later, he came to Mumbai and took to petty crime.
He was running a telephone booth at Arsa Market in Andheri when he came in contact with Dawood Ibrahim's younger brother Anees.
Salem is charged with being involved in the Mumbai blasts of 1993. More than 250 people were killed and property worth crores was destroyed in the blasts.
However, it was the sensational killing of music baron Gulshan Kumar in 1997 that pushed him up the underworld hierarchy.
Salem's men also attacked Bollywood producer Rajeev Rai at his office in Tardeo in 1997.
He was believed to have organised the killing of actress Manisha Koirala's secretary Ajit Deewani.
Salem is known to have close contacts with some Bollywood actresses.
He broke away from Dawood Ibrahim after a fight with Chhota Shakeel, the D-Company's unofficial second-in-command, in 1998.
Last year he was arrested in Sharjah, but the Mumbai police could not get him extradited.
Agencies
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