Four decades apart, Dawood Ibrahim and Lawrence Bishnoi have been linked to Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati Central Jail at crucial junctures in their criminal careers. In 1983, a bullet wound brought Dawood to Gujarat, where his arrest led to a battle over his detention and an alleged attempt on his life during a prison transfer.

Since May 2023, Sabarmati has been Lawrence Bishnoi ’s place of confinement as agencies pursue cases linked to his alleged criminal network. The prison offers a rare point of intersection between two generations of India’s underworld.

Dawood’s Sabarmati jail stint is recounted by B V Kumar, then Gujarat’s Commissioner of Customs and later Director General of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), in his book DRI & The Dons: The Untold Stories.

In June 1983, Dawood was returning to Bombay (now Mumbai ) after travelling to Jam Salaya and Porbandar. He was travelling in a car belonging to Lallu Jogi Patel, driven by Patel’s driver, Gulab.…