Calcutta, Aug. 8 :    Calcutta, Aug. 8:  The cops were on the trail of a 'big fish from Mumbai'' in Calcutta, involved in the abduction of Khadim's vice-chairman Parthapratim Roy Burman. Instead, they got a Mumbai supari killer, Abdul Gaffar Gani Sheikh, 33, with 21 cases, including seven murder charges, pending against him at the crime branch of Mumbai police. Deputy commissioner of police, detective department, Banibrata Basu, said Sheikh had told sleuths that the Mumbai police would have shot him in an encounter. 'This city is safe as such encounters do not happen here,' said Sheikh, from whom five cellphones were recovered. The city detective department was hunting for Sheikh for trying to kidnap Ganesh Mahalingam, a Park Street shipping magnate. Basu, said Sheikh was on the payroll of Dubai-based gangster Anees Ibrahim. Mumbai crime branch officers said Anees is the younger brother of Karachi-based mafia don Dawood Ibrahim. Basu said Sheikh's arrest exposed the Mumbai mafia's links with local criminals. 'He was extremely close to local gangster Gudda,'' Basu said. Sheikh had tried twice to get Mahalingam - on September 17 last year, when he had tried to kidnap the businessman from his New Alipore residence, and on May 31, when bombs were thrown at his Park Street office to strike fear in him. Mahalingam has business interests in Dubai, and Sheikh's godfathers, Anees and Hazi Yakub, brother of Mumbai realtor Majid Khan, had 'ordered the operation.'' In both cases, Sheikh was helped by Gudda's henchmen, Sources said the CID was working on the information that a Mumbai supari killer was holed up in a Dum Dum house. He called himself Izaz Ahmed and had rented the place on June 1. They raided the house but drew a blank. An informer told the sleuths that he had moved into another house close by on July 7. The detectives could not find him there either. On Tuesday, at around 5.30 pm, four youth entered the house. One of them was Sahid, Sheikh's cousin, and another was Billa, from Lockgate Road, in the Chitpur police station area. Sheikh had sent them with some utensils to be stored in the Dum Dum apartment. 'Sahid gave some details about Sheikh. We sent a crack team to raid the Chitpur house. Sheikh was sleeping when we arrested him,'' Basu added. Sheikh had left the city for Jaipur on July 7 and returned in the first week of August. Sheikh began to work for Majid Khan, a big-time Mumbai realtor of the early Nineties. Gradually, he became close to Hazi Yakub, Majid's brother. Yakub was an accused in the Mumbai 1993 bomb blasts and fled to Dubai with Tiger Memon. Sheikh escaped to his sister's place in Jaipur. With the Mumbai police hot on his heels, he arrived in Calcutta and stayed with his uncle Mohammed Selim, alias Laddu bhai, on Lockgate Road.