It was the normal afternoon traffic rush on the Malir road. As a prison van slowed down before the Malir Bridge, several armed men who were lying in wait on both sides of the bridge, showered it with a hail of Kalashnikov bullets. The shooting was so intense that none of the 10 policemen who were escorting underworld gangster,  Shoaib Khan aka Shoaib Rummy walla, back to prison got a chance to even fire back. The lightning attack left four policemen dead, while Karachi's top  gambling den operator, Shoaib Khan, two pedestrians and four other policemen received multiple bullet wounds. Their mission accomplished, the attackers left unhurriedly in waiting cars watched by horrified motorists.  A few hours later, the police found the abandoned vehicles in nearby villages.

            Senior police officials believe the attack was carried out by the Haji Ibrahim Bholoo group.  Bholoo, Shoaib’s former business partner, has been missing since January this year and Shoaib is being held  responsible for Ibrahim Bholoo's disappearance and possible murder.

            Karachi’s two rival underworld gangs, both working for the notorious Mumbai don, Dawood Ibrahim, are now settling their scores on the streets of Karachi.  Dawood Ibrahim and his team, Mumbai's notorious underworld clan including his righthand man Chota Shakeel and Jamal Memon, are on India’s most wanted list for a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai and other criminal activites.  After the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, the gang have made Karachi their new home and base of operations.  Living under fake names and IDs, and provided protection by government agencies, they have built up their underworld empire in Karachi employing local talent like Shoaib and Bholoo.

            Both Shoaib Khan and Ibrahim Bholoo started their careers from the slums of Karachi, a perfect environment for any wannabe gangster.  Within a few years their underworld activities took them and their families from the slums to palatial houses in Karachi’s Defence Housing Authority.  The two small-time gangsters struck gold when they got in touch with the notorious Dawood Ibrahim, five or six years ago and started working for him in Karachi.  From petty crimes they moved into the realm of big-time underworld operations and contract killings in Karachi and abroad.

            Shoaib Khan ran a number of gambling dens in Karachi, a line he was familiar with, as his father Akhtar Ali Khan, was a satta operator and gambler in Liaquatabad.  Even though Shoaib is now in custody, his gambling dens continue to operate in the city, with the biggest gambling den located in the Hockey Stadium.  In the mid '90s Shoaib started a gambling den in Dubai.  It was in Dubai that Shoaib made contact with Dawood through their mutual passion for gambling.  Both men became friends and Shoaib took over Dawood's extortion operation in Karachi.  Then in 1998, Shoaib allegedly murdered a Pakistani businessman, Irfan Goga, who had won a lot of money gambling in Shoaib's den in Dubai. Irfan's body was never recovered but his abandoned car was found in the parking lot in Dubai airport.  Goga's family accused Shoaib of the murder, but before warrants could be issued, Shoaib fled to Pakistan.  Dawood also knew Irfan and reportedly when he questioned Shoaib about the killing, he told Dawood that he killed Irfan because he had been abusing Dawood, something Shoaib found impossible to accept.  Shoaib soon acquired a reputation for not honouring his financial commitments both in his gambling operations and otherwise.

            Haji Ibrahim, alias Bholoo, was a People's Party worker and a good friend of Najeeb Ahmed, a top PSF activist, as well as other Peoples Party activists.  In the early '90s he left for South Africa, where he amassed a small fortune in drugs, hawala and smuggling.  Then he met Shoaib in Dubai and became his business partner.  Dawood Ibrahim too had extensive drug operations in South Africa.  So it was inevitable that Bholoo joined hands with Dawood Ibrahim, serving as his agent in South Africa.

            Bholoo was a known contract killer.  His name shot into the limelight when the mutilated body of Karachi’s top bookie, Hanif Kodvavi alias Hanif Cadbury, was found in Johannesberg in 1999.  Hanif had fled to South Africa after a dispute with Dawood over the payment of 800 million rupees of bet money, which Dawood apparently lost in the Sharjah Cup matches.  Though Dawood and his men deny they have anything to do with Hanif Cadbury or his murder, Ibrahim Bholoo’s name has been associated with carrying out the contract killing of Hanif Cadbury in South Africa for Dawood Ibrahim.

            Hostilities between Bholoo and Shoaib surfaced last year, when Shoaib asked Bholoo to arrange hit men to eliminate Dawood Ibrahim’s arch enemy, Chota Rajan.  Till the Mumbai blasts, Chota Rajan was Dawood’s right hand man.  After the blasts, however, he defected and formed his own group, and ganged up with RAW to hit the business interests of his former Godfather.

            Insiders claim that Bholoo, who in the past had carried out a number of contract killings for Dawood Ibrahim, immediately arranged for three activists of the now defunct Al-Zulfikar organisation to eliminate Chota Rajan. The three who were wanted in several criminal cases in Pakistan, were assured of protection and a generous pay-off if they carried out the hit on Rajan.  The team of assassins from Pakistan, backed by some former Pakistani undercover agents, left for Bangkok to trace and eliminate Dawood’s top foe.  The Pakistani hit team succeeded in tracking down Chota Rajan who was then staying in the apartment of one of his trusted friends in a fashionable Bangkok district.  The team attacked in a style similar to blockbuster Indian movies.  Armed with automatic weapons and wearing ties and jackets the hit team reached the upmarket apartment building carrying a cake, giving the impression to the security at the gate that they had come to celebrate Rajan's birthday.  The hit team burst into the apartment and against the underworld rule of never killing women and children, fired at the wife of Rajan's top hitman, Rohit Verma.  When she tried to save her husband, both Rohit and his wife were killed.  Rajan locked himself in the bathroom but was injured when the team sprayed the door with bullets.  Rajan managed to slip out of the bathroom window, and hid himself in a nearby garbage dump till the police came to his rescue.  He later slipped out from a Bangkok hospital after bribing the police officers who had been deputed to guard him and disappeared.

            When the team returned to Karachi, Shoaib antagonised Bholoo by refusing to honour his commitment to pay the three Al-Zulfikar assassins their fee.  Bholoo, who could not refuse to pay his former party comrades, paid them from his own pocket.

            On January 8, Ibrahim Bholoo, visited the Defence residence of Shoaib Khan to settle another monetary dispute involving 700,000 dollars and was never seen again.  Senior police officers suspect that Bholoo is already dead, though they have yet to find his remains.

            Since then, the Bholoo group have been gunning for Shoaib who, moving under heavy security, consistently managed to escape the Bholoo boys.  Two controversial Karachi police officials, SHO Anwar Khan and Chaudhry Aslam, have also allegedly joined the Bholoo group, to help them get Shoaib.  While in South Africa, Bholoo was a key informant for the Karachi police on the activities of MQM activists taking refuge in South Africa.  He was constantly feeding information to SHO Anwar Khan and Chaudhry Aslam, who were in the forefront of the army crackdown against the MQM.  "When Bholoo disappeared, we thought it was our moral and ethical responsibility to help out his family," said Anwar Khan.  Bholoo's family had several meetings with Dawood Ibrahim to seek his help in convincing Shoaib to divulge Bholoo's whereabouts.

            Shoaib, who still had the support of Dawood Ibrahim, continued to escape arrest.  Then on February 21, 2001, the situation changed.  There was a shooting incident on the premises of the City Courts, where armed guards from the two rival groups exchanged fire.  Shoaib, who had applied for a temporary bail before arrest warrant in Bholoo's kidnapping case from Sukkur, had come to the court to get his bail confirmed. He was escorted by ranger personnel and several armed men.  Bholoo's men were waiting.  Both the rangers as well as Shoaib's armed guards fired at Bholoo's supporters, who they feared might force Shoaib's arrest after lawyers told Shoaib that his bail may not be confirmed.  The seven ranger personnel led by Major Abdul Majeed of Janbaz Force  in Thatta and Major Tariq Hameed of Karachi, are now facing a court martial. They were reported to be regular visitors at mujra performances at Shoaib's den.  On the day of the shooting at the City Court, the team of rangers apparently left their headquarters on some pretext to accompany Shoaib for his protection.

            The incident forced the government to finally intervene and undercover agents approached Dawood and asked him to stop backing Shoaib.  It worked and on June 14, Shoaib surrendered himself to the authorities.  "Dawood was told that Karachi was not Mumbai.  We told him to stop supporting Shoaib because he had killed an innocent man,” said an inside source.

            So far Karachi was infamous for ethnic and sectarian killing.  But the arrival of underworld mega-bucks has brought a new dimension to the city’s crime profile as warring gangs fight pitched battles on Karachi’s streets.  With Dawood Ibrahim operating out of Karachi, with the apparent blessings of the government, the Shoaib incident might well be the first of a series of Mumbai-style mafia wars.