The Bombay High Court refused to grant emergency parole to underworld gangster Abu Salem to visit his ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh district to mourn the death of his brother, Abu Hakim Ansari. A division bench of Justices Ajay Gadkari and Shyam Chandak upheld the earlier order, maintaining that Salem would have to bear the cost of a high-security police escort estimated at over ₹17 lakh if he wanted parole.
Escort Cost Condition Blocks Parole
As Salem expressed inability to pay the amount, the court declined to relax the condition and did not grant him relief. Salem, convicted in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case and extradited from Portugal in 2005, had sought emergency parole citing humanitarian grounds after his brother’s death in November 2025. Authorities had cited security concerns and the sensitivity of his native area while insisting on full escort costs being paid by the prisoner.
1993 Blasts Convict Abu Salem
Abu Salem is an Indian underworld gangster who was associated with the D-Company crime syndicate led by Dawood Ibrahim. He rose to prominence in the 1990s and was later accused and convicted for his role in several major crimes, most notably the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts. Investigators found that Salem was involved in transporting weapons and logistics support ahead of the attacks, which killed 257 people and injured more than 1,400. He was extradited from Portugal to India in 2005 and was later convicted in 2017 by a special TADA court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
