The Life and Sudden Death of Baba Siddique

IT WAS LATE one Sunday night back in 2013 when Baba Siddique appeared in the lobby of Taj Lands End in Mumbai, beaming at waiting journalists. He had just fin­ished hosting his Iftar party where he had managed to goad Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, who had stopped talking to each other after a brawl several years before, into something of a reluctant embrace. The photographs and videos of that embrace had spread rapidly on television channels and social media platforms. And Siddique, well aware of the news value of that moment, had brought himself before the journalists, presenting himself as the peacenik who had resolved Bollywood’s biggest dust-up.

“Allah Miya shows the way,” he said, with more than a touch of mock humility, as though the divine had intervened—through him—in the fight of two middle-aged men. “This [embrace] must have been in both their [Shah Rukh’s and Salman’s] hearts.”

It was a moment that perfectly encapsulated Siddique himself. He was a bridge between things. Whether it was serving as a link between the gritty world of hardnosed politics and the beautiful people of Bollywood; a connection between, it was often alleged, the murky worlds of real estate, crime and politics in Mumbai; or even the manufacture of patch-ups between sulking stars.

The killing of Siddique, who grew to be one of the most recognised faces in Mumbai’s political and glamour cir­cuits, has led to a number of questions. Who killed him and why? Was it really the work of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, just to send a message to Salman Khan? Or was it personal vendetta, perhaps emerging from some squabble over real estate projects? Or something else altogether?

“He [Siddique] was just a young man, often on his scooter, always travelling on some errand for his father,” Asif Farooqui says. Farooqui, who currently serves as general secretary of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee, became acquainted with Siddique long before either of them had stepped into politics, when they were young, carefree boys—Siddique a few years older than Farooqui—growing up in Bandra’s Pali Village neighbour­hood. “We were your typical Bandra boys, you know. Always out and about, always busy doing something or the other,” Farooqui says. In Siddique’s case, as Farooqui remembers it, it was often revolving around errands his father, often involved in commu­nity work around the neighbourhood, sent him on.

Baba Siddique was born Ziauddin Siddique to a Muslim family in Bihar’s Gopalganj area that had migrated to find livelihood in Mumbai. Siddique’s father Abdul Rahim ran a modest watch repair­ing shop in the city’s Fort neighbourhood. Although the father ran a modest operation, he was, Farooqui says, someone deeply involved in the affairs of the Muslim commu­nity in the locality and had built a lot of goodwill. “We didn’t have a mosque in our area, and, I remember, his father [Abdul] would always set up a facility in his building area for the people in the neighbourhood to offer prayers during Ramzan,” Farooqui says. “It was different kinds of things like this, always help­ing out the community, and he would have Siddique involved, whether it was to check with the police for permissions, or things like that.”

This was Siddique’s early exposure to commu­nity work in the neighbourhood of Bandra, and through that to the politics of the area. Bandra has a large Muslim population, much of it made up of migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. “Most of the members of our community are poor. They need good leaders to represent them. And also, since Siddique’s family was from Bihar, his family was involved in helping those who had come from there,” Farooqui says.

Asif Bhamla, a former Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and an old friend of Siddique, recalls that at one point the two of them were also running a video cassette library, and would use the money to pay for their college fees.

Siddique started small, joining the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of Congress, in his teens. A sharp politically minded youth from the Muslim community was an asset, and he rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming a key member of the Mumbai Youth Congress by the late 1980s, and a corporator in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) by 1992. “Back in those days, everyone needed some help, whether it was to secure admissions into some college or school, or to deal with the municipality for something or the other, and Baba’s doors were always open to everyone,” Farooqui says.

His affability and the image he developed helped him rise in the city’s politics. “He had a very cosmopolitan image. He was a Muslim leader, and that was very helpful to his politics, but he also appealed to other communities in Bandra. And coupled with the connections he made in Bollywood, this enabled him to rise into prominence,” says Surendra Jondhale, a professor of political science at the University of Mumbai.

What was particularly important to his growth was the connections he built with Bandra’s then famous actor-politician Sunil Dutt. Through him, and his son Sanjay Dutt, he got wider access to Bollywood. With Dutt’s patronage, he went on to contest and win the Bandra West constituency in the Maharashtra Assem­bly elections in 1999, something he would repeat in 2004 and 2009.

Krishna Hegde, a former MLA and currently a spokesperson for the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena, was, like Siddique, closely connected with Dutt when he was a member of Congress. But he knew Siddique even earlier, from the time Siddique, then a young NSUI leader, would frequently drop by his house to meet his father who served as Mumbai Congress’ general secre­tary. Hegde points to the constituency of Bandra West, and how this neighbourhood—the so-called queen of the suburbs and home of some of India’s biggest celebrities—propelled his rise. “Bandra has always been a high-profile constituency. And if you see, there have been some high-profile leaders from here, whether it is Ashish Shelar [BJP MLA] currently, Ramdas Nayak [former BJP city unit president and MLA of Kherwadi, a part of Bandra East], Sunil Dutt, or Dilip Kumar [actor and Bandra resident who was nominated to Rajya Sabha] earlier. And then this area has always had famous filmstars, right from the time of Rajendra Kumar, Johnny Walker, Waheeda Rehman, and others,” he says.

Siddique built strong connections with the locality’s famous residents. According to a crime journalist, he became the go-to person for several Bollywood personalities, whether it concerned help in dealing with authorities or threats from the underworld.

There was, however, always a whiff of scandal around Siddique’s rise. There was talk of corruption and his real estate links, especially around slum redevelopment projects, and connections to the underworld. His political career grew at a time when Mumbai’s real estate market, especially the locality of Bandra, was taking off, and Siddique became one of the biggest names in the locality’s real estate market.

“Most politicians have some links to real estate, and money from real estate does flow in. But what was different with Baba was that he got into real estate himself directly,” says an individual who knew him. In 2003, he got into a partnership with a devel­oper to form Vertical Developers, and in 2004 he floated his own venture called Zears Developers. This was also the period when the city’s slum rehabilitation policy was taking off, opening up vast areas in prime locations to developers with connections.

One such project, the redevelopment of a slum in Bandra Reclamation named Jamaat-e-Jamoori had became the subject of a Directorate of Enforcement (ED) investigation against him. It was alleged that Siddique, then chairman of Maharashtra Hous­ing and Area Development, the state’s housing board, had used his influence to give the developers more floor space index by introducing fictitious slum dwellers and that the developers were a front for Siddique himself. But the case fell through later. Even recently, Siddique’s son Zeeshan made news for obstructing the survey of an SRA (Slum Rehabilitation Authority) project in the Bandra Kurla Complex.

There were also allegations of connections with the underworld. One such instance that came out into the open was in 2013 when, on the basis of a complaint by Siddique, two individuals were arrested. According to news reports from that time, the dispute was over a developing a property in Bandra, and Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel wanted him to back out of the deal.

For all his influence in Mumbai’s politics, Siddique was how­ever feeling the squeeze in recent times. He lost Bandra West to Ashish Shelar in 2014 and, perhaps aware he would lose again, chose not to contest the next time. “He was able to read what was going on politically very well. He realised his chances were better in Bandra East; so he moved his political focus to that area and helped his son win the [Assembly] seat [in 2019],” Farooqui says.

Earlier this year, Siddiqui ditched Congress to join the Ajit Pawar-led faction of NCP. According to one source, this was because he was not being nominated to the state’s Legislative Council. Jondhale believes that Siddique probably thought his best bet at a political revival lay in joining Ajit Pawar’s NCP faction. “Ajit Pawar is a big leader with a mass base, and after his [Siddique’s] loss [in 2014], he probably thought, as part of NCP, he could revive his career,” he says.

No one can tell now whether that would have been possible or not.

Baba Siddique's murderBollywoodLawrence BishnoiMumbaipoliticsSalman KhanShah Rukh Khan