Chennai: Sridhar Dhanapal, the most wanted land Mafioso from TN, hunted by enforcement directorate and TN police, has shifted his base from Dubai, sources said here. “It looks like he had used a fake passport and shifted either to Sri Lanka or Malaysia,” a TN police officer noted.

He had shifted from Dubai after enforcement directorate started looking for him seriously. ED and police together had attached more than 125 properties worth around Rs.150 crore belonging to him after he was declared a proclaimed offender by a court in Kancheepuram, the district near Chennai, which had been witnessing real estate boom in last many years.

Police are not sure if he had gone to Sri Lanka or Malaysia. “Chance of him being in Sri Lanka is high,”a police officer noted but refused to disclose further details on his possible location.

Those who were referring him as Dawood Ibhrahim of Tamil Nadu, seem to have foreseen his disappearance from Dubai like the original Dawood, the Mumbai underworld don who operated from Dubai and later shifted his base to Karachi. Like Dawood, Sridhar too had been executing deals sitting in Dubai through his associates. He faces 43 cases including 7 murders in TN.

His growth from a bootlegger to a don based on Dubai has surpassed the expectation of even his rivals. Police say he can even now make a call from Dubai and arm twist landowners to make them sell their property at a price he dictates.

Even in the last week of July he managed to arm-twist a trader and forced to sell his property worth Rs.30 crore at a price of Rs.5 crore in Kancheepuram by making a phone call from Dubai.

He went to Dubai in the year 2013 after he came out off jail in a case. After that he never returned. Kancheepuram police and Enforcement directorate had tried putting pressure on him by detaining and questioning his daughter, a student of BBA in England when she visited her hometown beside his wife and brother.