reuters Posted online: Monday, July 25, 2005 at 0935 hours IST
DUBAI, July 24: The daughter of a wealthy Indian fugitive accused by Washington of links to al Qaeda married the son of a top Pakistani cricketer in Dubai on Saturday, in a high society wedding with all the trappings of a Bollywood film.
Indian businessman Dawood Ibrahim, whose whereabouts are not known, was said not to have attended the ceremony in the glitzy city in the United Arab Emirates.
Former Pakistani cricket captain Javed Miandad confirmed earlier this month that his son Junaid would marry Mahrukh Ibrahim, whose father is accused by India of a wave of bomb attacks in Bombay in 1993 that killed 260 people.
Police with sniffer dogs patrolled the grounds of the Dubai five-star hotel where a small crowd of media and onlookers gathered on a balmy night after news of the venue was leaked.
News of the exact location had earlier been kept secret. Ibrahim, put on a U.S. Treasury list of global terrorists in 2003, would have risked arrest by turning up.
The UAE, which has a large population from the subcontinent, has worked closely with the United States in its "war on terror". Pakistan denies Indian claims Ibrahim is in hiding in Karachi.
One person at the ceremony said Ibrahim had not attended, at least not during the first hours of a long night.
The stream of guests arriving including Javed Miandad, dressed in a white suit. The hotel management cordoned the area off and refused to comment on the guest list.
Indian papers had said some guests, including prominent Indian cricketers and the chief of a hardline Hindu group, were unlikely to attend because of prying Indian and U.S. security agents.
"I'm very happy to get this chance to come," said Chawdry Zubeir, a Pakistani resident of Dubai who displayed his wedding invitation to Reuters on his way in.
"I'm not scared because the wedding is between two people, it's not about the families," he added. "Miandad is a Pakistani cricket player and a good person."
Ibrahim, a hugely wealthy Muslim businessman, was often seen in the company of Pakistani and Indian cricketers, film stars and politicians until the Bombay bombings.
"I just came for the thrill," said Babu Raj, an Indian resident of the city, watching the guests at a distance. "I thought some famous film stars would be here."
Junaid met Mahrukh in London, where he is studying.
