File picture of Iqbal Mirchi

Mumbai, Oct. 11: Iqbal Mirchi, a D-Company gangster who left India just before the 1993 blasts, was arrested today by Scotland Yard for threatening a local businessman in Outer London where he has lived for years in a six-bedroom house in an upscale neighbourhood.

Mirchi, who was ranked among the top 50 drug barons of the world by a UN report and barred entry into the US, is wanted in India on drug smuggling and murder charges but a previous attempt to have him extradited from Britain had failed.

“There is an Interpol red corner notice against him and we have been informed by our sources of his arrest by the New Scotland Yard,” a CBI spokesperson said in Mumbai.

Top sources in the Mumbai crime branch, the anti-terrorism squad and the CBI confirmed that Mirchi is at present under interrogation.

But there has been no official intimation of his arrest from Scotland Yard to any of these agencies.

Iqbal Mohammed Memon, who got the name Mirchi because he was a spice merchant in Mumbai’s Crawford Market, has over a dozen drug and murder related cases pending against him in various countries including the US, the UK and India.

But Tuesday’s arrest was for a comparatively pettier crime. “He threatened a local businessman in Hornchurch over money matters and that led to the arrest,” a top source in the Mumbai ATS said.

Mirchi has been living in Hornchurch, part of the northeast London borough of Havering, since 1994 and is believed to be managing D-Company’s drug-business in the West.

He was arrested in 1995 on drug and terrorism charges, in connection with the Mumbai blasts, after a Scotland Yard raid on his house.

By the time the case came to court, those charges had been dropped and replaced with a charge relating to the murder of Amar Suvarna, the manager of Mirchi’s London rice mill, who was shot dead in Mumbai soon after quitting his job.

But the investigation, which ended in 1999, found no evidence of criminal activity and India’s request for his extradition was turned down.

India did not appeal and paid his legal costs. In 2001, the British home office granted him indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

“It is unlikely he will be extradited or deported this time either as it’s a local matter and the authorities have not contacted India,” a top Mumbai police source said today.

Mumbai ATS chief Rakesh Maria said “his name does not figure in the 1993 blasts case chargesheet, as is being reported in some places”.

“He was wanted for drug smuggling cases in 1987-88,” Maria said.

After leaving India in 1993, Mirchi moved to Dubai where he lived for a year and was often seen in the company of Dawood Ibrahim and his men. For years, he shuttled between London and Dubai. “His meetings with Dawood were held in Dubai, but he stopped visiting the city after he felt he might be extradited to India by authorities there,” a Mumbai crime branch source said.

In 2004, his name again cropped up on Scotland Yard’s radar in connection with the trial of Hemant Lakhani, a British citizen accused of smuggling a shoulder-launched missile to the US, who was believed to be his associate.

Mirchi was questioned by the police but nothing could be established against him.

Iqbal, who once owned properties worth crores in Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh, still holds three buildings in Worli, two in Mahim, and one each in Juhu and Panchgani near Mahabaleshwar in his wife’s name. Properties in his name have been auctioned by the government over the years.

In July, his wife Heena Kausar, a one-time B-grade Bollywood actress, came to India and approached the courts claiming the properties. The case is pending in Bombay High Court.