Mumbai: In a security lapse that has unnerved officials, underworld don Abu Salem was attacked on Saturday with a sharp instrument inside Arthur Road Central Jail, allegedly by Mohammad Dossa, a member of absconding mafia don Dawood Ebrahim's gang.
Following a scuffle that broke out between them inside the jail premises, Dossa attacked Salem with a sharpened spoon during breakfast, injuring Abu Salem in the face and neck.
Bleeding profusely from the neck and shoulder, the 43-year-old Abu Salem was treated by a jail doctor and is reported to be stable.
Appropriate measures
A top home ministry official described the incident as "minor" but said that the jail authorities would initiate "appropriate security measures" to prevent recurrence of the incident.
The attack took place in a common area where all prisoners are allowed to come out in the high security jail.
The home ministry official added that the jail authorities are likely to take a decision to move Dossa — believed to nurse an old rivalry against Abu Salem — from Arthur Road to another location.
A case has been lodged against Dossa at the N.M. Joshi Marg police station.
The attack has the authorities worried since Pakistani terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir alias Kasab, condemned to die by a special court three months ago in the Mumbai attacks, is also lodged in the same jail.
His government-appointed lawyer K.P. Pawar told reporters that Kasab is "absolutely safe and secure" and he does not interact in any manner with other jail inmates, even during meal times.
Pawar said that Kasab has never complained of any wayward behaviour by any other jail inmate and said that the terrorist awaiting the gallows faced no threats of any kind.
Besides his alleged role in the March 12, 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, Abu Salem is also named as an accused in the killing of music baron Gulshan Kumar in Mumbai in 1997.
Unsuccessful attempts
Salem, whose name once spelt terror for Bollywood, is also considered instrumental in unsuccessful attempts on the lives of film-makers Rajeev Rai and Rakesh Roshan a few years ago.
He, along with his girlfriend and Bollywood starlet Monica Bedi, was extradited to India in November 2005 after an assurance by the former National Democratic Alliance government that the two would not be given the death penalty.
Situated in a congested residential area of south-central Mumbai, the Arthur Road Jail was constructed in 1926 and is the largest and among the oldest prisons in the state, with around 3,000 inmates.
