The UK government has refused to extradite underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's alleged aide Tiger Hanif, the British government confirmed on Monday. A UK Home Office source said to news agency PTI, "we can confirm that the extradition request for Hanif Patel was refused by the-then Home Secretary and Mr Patel was discharged by the court in August 2019".
Hanif, alias Mohammed Hanif Umerji Patel, was tracked down in Bolton in Greater Manchester and was arrested by Scotland Yard pertaining to an extradition warrant in February 2010.
Although the terror-accused's appeals to stay in Britain, claiming that he will be tortured in India, have been quashed multiple times, his bid to Home Secretary Sajid Javid succeeded.
Javid refused to clear Hanif's extradition to India despite a ruling by the High Court of London that he can be extradited in light of the evidence acquired by investigative agencies.
After then-Home Secretary Theresa May ordered Hanif's first extradition to India, London High Court judge Kenneth Parker stated in April 2013 that the information given in India's request "described how, following the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, internecine hostilities broke out between the Muslim and Hindu communities in Gujarat".
India had appealed for extradition citing Hanif's involvement in the two 1993 Gujarat blasts, wherein the country claimed Hanif was a part of a Muslim group that obtained the explosives and weapons used for terror attacks on the Hindu community.
Dawood Ibrahim is an underworld don who is accused of carrying out the 1992 Mumbai blasts and is reportedly residing in Pakistan.
The development comes day after the Indian government was hopeful of the extradition of Vijay Mallya, a fugitive billionaire who exhausted all his legal appeals in British courts.
India and the UK had reached an extradition treaty in 1992, however, since then only a single request has been fulfilled under this. The Indian Foreign Ministry has reached out to the UK with extradition requests for several persons in high-profile cases over the past few years.. The only person extradited so far was Gujarat riot accused Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel in October 2016.