Chhota Shakeel
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Chhota Shakeel (born name Babu Miya Shaikh) is a key assistant of Dawood Ibrahim, the leader of the D-Company (Dawood Company), one of the biggest mafia in South Asian organized crime.
Initially Shakeel ran a dubious travel agency in Dongri, Mumbai. He was one of the early members in the D-Company along with Bishal Cheetah, Johnny Akhawat and Liger Bhai or Mushu Bhai. He joined Dawood in Dubai in 1988. In those days, Sharad Shetty managed the match fixing, betting and hawala deals for Dawood while Chhota Rajan managed the gang's criminal activities in Mumbai. After the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts and the Dawood-Chhota Rajan split, Shakeel took over the day-to-day operations of the D-Company. He was a mentor to Abu Salem and entrusted him the responsibility of Bollywood film financing and acquiring overseas film rights. Later they had a fallout and Abu Salem branched out on his own.
In September 2000, Shakeel admitted to having planned an attack on Chhota Rajan.[1] In 2001, he accepted his involvement in financing Hindi films in an interview to India Today magazine.
In September 2016 Shakeel was interviewed by Amber Sharma of Mowgli Productions for his series Life Of Mafia. This is the first time Shakeel openly talked about his personal life which he had previously kept secret.[citation needed]
He has openly pledged to assassinate Chhota Rajan, another leading figure in Ibrahim's network who lived in Indonesia until his arrest and extradition to India in November 2015.[2]
Shakeel is alleged to have claimed responsibility for the killing of influential social activist businessmen S M Khalid, the Bombay Bakers Association President, in 1997 at Dongri.[3]
References
- ^ "rediff.com The Rediff Interview/Chhota Shakeel". Retrieved 22 September 2007.
- ^ Zeeshan Shaikh (24 December 2015). "Chhota Shakeel planned Chhota Rajan murder in Indonesia by undercover female assassin!". India.com.
- ^ "My men shot baker dead, says Shakeel", The Indian Express, 17 February 1997, as reproduced at Hindu Vivek Kendra website accessed 18 September 2017.
Further reading
- Thomas Blom Hansen (2001). Wages of Violence:Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-08840-3. — pp. 222
- Clifford Sawhney (2004). Strange But True Facts. Pustak Mahal. ISBN 81-223-0839-2. — pp. 31