Ahmedabad: Gujarat police have been searching for Chhota Rajan for years. Rajan, for his part, has been in an Indian prison since 2015, convicted of murder not once but twice, and is currently serving life sentences. Then, there is the country’s most wanted fugitive, underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who appears under three different names across the state’s own records, and none of them is correct.This is Gujarat’s “most wanted” list.A district-wise review of the list has revealed some embarrassing errors. Dawood Ibrahim — known to Interpol, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and most of the free world as Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar — goes by Dawood Ibrahim Meman in Ahmedabad, Dawood Ibrahim Shaikh in Jamnagar and Surat, and the creative Dawood Ibrahiim Meman in Mehsana, complete with a bonus extra ‘i’ in his middle name. The United Nations sorted out his correct name, detailed his links to terror networks, including al-Qaida, and declared him a global terrorist back in 2003. But 23 years later, the Gujarat police are still unable to write his correct name.Even more striking is the inclusion of Chhota Rajan’s name in the list. Rajan, whose real name is Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, was extradited to India in 2015, convicted for the murder of a journalist in 2018, then convicted again for the murder of a hotelier in 2024, and is currently serving life sentences. He still appears on the most-wanted lists of Ahmedabad city and Surat, among other districts, as an absconder.Police sources admit the lapses stem from outdated data handling. “District units send names of absconders to CID (crime), which compiles the list. In many cases, units appear to have simply copied older records without checking if any of the people on them had since been arrested, convicted, released on bail or died,” said a senior officer.The scale of the list varies wildly by district. Amreli leads with 45 wanted accused. Ahmedabad city and Surat each have 20. Anand, Dahod, Gandhinagar and Junagadh list around 10 each. Among the more memorable entries is a woman wanted in a murder case in Mehsana, who is described in official police records simply as the “keep of another accused”. Her name, apparently, was not considered essential information.Meanwhile, Dawood’s listed address, according to the official records, is still somewhere in Mumbai. This is despite years of international intelligence placing him firmly abroad.
