Hand over Dawood to India: Advani to Pak

Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha L K Advani [ Images ] on Saturday urged Pakistan to hand over underworld don Dawood Ibrahim [ Images ] to India [ Images ].

Talking to newspersons in Hyderabad, the BJP's prime ministerial candidate said, "'There is a formidable basis for Pakistan to carry out its promise of handing him (Dawood Ibrahim) over to India."
 
Referring to Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's [ Images ] reported offer to hand over the under world don to India, if it furnished proof against him, he said,  "I am happy that for the first time, Islamabad [ Images ] has officially admitted that he (Dawood Ibrahim) is in Pakistan.''
 
Interpol had declared him an absconder as also the US. Indian courts, hearing the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai [ Images ], too had declared him an absconder, he pointed out and asked Islamabad to fulfill its ''promise''.

Besides the UPA government's alleged failure to contain terrorism due to ''vote-bank'' considerations was threatening India's national security, he alleged, referring to terrorist strikes in different parts of the country, the latest being in Jaipur [ Images ].

''For its short-term electoral gains, the Congress is making India pay a very heavy price in the form of the blood of innocent citizens,'' he alleged.

The terrorist strikes in the last four years at Delhi [ Images ], Ayodhya, Varanasi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Malegaon, Hyderabad, Ajmer, Jammu and Jaipur, among others, showed that their reach had considerably expanded but not a single case of terrorist attack had been properly investigated and culprits charge-sheeted during the UPA rule, he said.

In addition to the cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, the country was witnessing a steady growth of cross-border terrorism from Bangladesh, he added.

''This is not unrelated to the total apathy, bordering on collusion, that the UPA Government has displayed on the issue of large-scale infiltration of Bangladeshis. It is no wonder that one organisation whose hand had been seen in most of the terrorist attacks during the past four years is Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJi),'' he added.