The darkest chapter in the history of the Indian Intelligence Agency is related to the name of Dawood Ibrahim. IB missed a rare opportunity to catch Dawood in Dubai. The incident was in 2005. The loss was a product of collusion between the Mumbai Police and the IB. The prevailing talk even today is that it was Dawood's shills in the Mumbai police who worked behind the busting of that secret operation.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister at that time and Ajit Doval was the Joint Director of the Intelligence Bureau. News spread at that time; Dawood's daughter Mahrukh and Pakistani cricketer Javed Miandad's son are getting married. IB decided to use this opportunity at any cost to end Dawood. Ajit Doval took charge of the operation.

Chota Rajan was approached by Doval to close Dawood's chapter forever. Rajan had become Dawood's biggest enemy at that time. The two had separated after the 1993 Mumbai blasts. Dawood had also made multiple attempts to kill Rajan. After discussions with Doval, Rajan enlisted his most trusted sharpshooters Vicky Malhotra and Farid Tanasha to kill Dawood.

However, Mumbai police made arrangements to arrest Vicky and Farid at the same time. Meeran Chadha Borwankar, a woman IPS officer, was the then commissioner. Based on Meeran's instruction, Deputy Commissioner Dhananjay Kamalakar left for Delhi. Mumbai Police arrested Vicky and Farid who were attending a meeting with Doval at a hotel in the country's capital. Moreover, the police forced Doval to abandon the project.

However, in a recent interview with the media, Meeran Chadha Borwankar termed the incident as a lack of coordination between the two agencies. She has denied all the allegations levelled against Mumbai Police in connection with Dawood. Many industrialists used to receive threat calls from underworld gangs at that time. Vicky and Malhotra were arrested as part of this. Meeran revealed that Doval did not inform them that it was a secret operation and only told them to not arrest Vicky and Farid. The former commissioner also recalled that Doval told her that he would teach her a lesson when she did not agree with him. Borwanker has written about this in more detail in her autobiography Madam Commissioner.