The mafia don has ‘done a lot for Muslims,’ the ex-captain of the Pakistan cricket team said in an interview.
Having family ties with Dawood Ibrahim is an ‘honour’ for Javed Miandad, with Pakistan’s former cricket captain also describing the fugitive underworld don as someone who has ‘done a lot for Muslims.’
“I have known him for a long time, from Dubai. It is an honour for me that his daughter married my son. My daughter-in-law is very well-educated; she studied in a convent school and went to a renowned university,” the cricket great told Pakistani journalist Hassan Nisar on the latter’s YouTube channel.
Miandad’s son Junaid is married to Dawood’s daughter Mahrukh. The couple’s union was solemnised in Dubai in 2005 under unprecedented security cover.
People have a ‘wrong impression’ about Dawood’s family, Miandad further said.
“Understanding the real Dawood Ibrahim is not easy. The way people think about the family, they are not like that,” he remarked.
An Indian national, the mob boss is a ‘wanted terrorist’ in his native country, where he masterminded the March 1993 serial bomb blasts which claimed more than 250 lives in Mumbai, India’s financial capital. The head of ‘D-company,’ an organised crime syndicate he founded in Mumbai in the 1970s, Dawood is believed to be living in the posh Clifton locality of Pakistan’s largest city Karachi; Pakistan, however, has repeatedly denied that the gangster has lived, or is living on its soil.
Miandad, meanwhile, played 124 Tests and 233 one-day internationals (ODIs) for Pakistan, in an international career that spanned nearly 20 years (October 1976-March 1996). An extremely prolific batter, he scored 8832 runs and 23 centuries in Test cricket, while in ODIs, he scored 7381 runs with eight centuries. His batting average in the two formats was 52 and 41, respectively.
