The crackdown on Dawood's properties is being carried out by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the Income Tax (IT) Department.

Official sources say the aim of the operation is to cripple Dawood's continuing financial strangle-hold on the underworld, despite his base shifting to Karachi. The properties in question include 28 buildings and apartments in Mumbai, and 17 in Bangalore. Investigations into their ownership showed that a majority of the sale-deeds were registered in the name of people who ostensibly had nothing to do with Dawood -- they were peons working in Government offices, petty shop-keepers, and rickshaw pullers. Some ``owners'' were discovered to have died almost a decade ago.The list of 100properties includes three in Delhi. While two of them are located in East Patel Nagar, the third one is a complex of three shops in Karol Bagh.

Similar inquiries in Mumbai and Bangalore led the CBI team to confront what sources describe as the ``most unlikely'' owners of the properties. After the investigation, the claims of ownership were found to be fake. In some cases, the verification of claims through the tortuous maze of benami transactions took as much as one year. In Bangalore, where Dawood reportedly owns 17 properties, some of his ``identified contacts'' were found to be living in the houses. In one such house, a former film actress from Mumbai was found to be staying