New Delhi: There has been no split in the D-company and underworld don and global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim is funding all legal expenses of his companion in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, Abu Salem presently lodged in jail in Portugal.

The underworld was agog with rumors after Salem's arrest in Lisbon two years back that there was a vertical split in the D-company and that Dawood Ibrahim was after Salem's life for "betrayal", CBI (Central Bureau of investigation) sources said.

The CBI had also started believing the rumors as Salem, during his extradition trial in Portugal, had pleaded that he wanted to hide himself in Lisbon because of the fear of Dawood Ibrahim, who was recently declared "global terrorist" by the US State Department.

However, according to intensive interrogation of some of the underworld people, who have been deported from Dubai, CBI officials came in for a surprise when one such detente, which was in close periphery of Dawood Ibrahim, told the investigating agency that the split between Dawood and Salem was stage-managed to divert police attention.

The deported D-company man revealed to the CBI that Dawood Ibrahim was doing the entire legal funding of Salem in Portugal, the sources said. Both Dawood and Salem are wanted by the CBI in connection with the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts which left 257 people dead and damaged property worth Rs 30 crore.