From Bihar to Bandra

Brut India

He harboured political aspirations from teenage. But his status as a socialist overshadowed his path as a politician. This is the story of Baba Siddique.

Transcript

00:00His star-studded Iftaar parties became a mainstay.

00:03The politician's image as a socialite preceded him.

00:08But who was Ziauddin Siddiqui, better known as Baba Siddiqui,

00:12the man with roots in Bihar, who made it big in Mumbai?

00:18He was born in Patna in 1958, but was raised in Mumbai.

00:22While his father repaired wristwatches at a stall in the Fort area of South Mumbai,

00:27he was nursing an itch for politics.

00:30He was all of 19 when he joined the Congress party in 1977.

00:34Proving his mettle by building trust among the local electorate,

00:37he became the President of the Mumbai Youth Congress by the age of 30.

00:42Four years later, he was elected as a municipal corporator.

00:46In the political field, he cultivated a close relationship

00:49with actor Sunil Dutt, who was a Lok Sabha member.

00:52It was through the veteran actor that Siddiqui came in contact with others in Bollywood.

00:57Sunil Dutt helped him secure a ticket to contest the Legislative Assembly elections in 1999.

01:03Siddiqui became an MLA from the Bandra West constituency and served three terms until 2014.

01:09He was also a minister in the Maharashtra government from 2004 to 2008.

01:14Siddiqui mentored Sunil Dutt's daughter Priya in politics.

01:18She described him as a fun-loving person.

01:21He was a Muslim leader who didn't just appeal to the Muslims but to everyone.

01:25He was a secular man, she said.

01:27He also became a friend of a brother and actor Sanjay.

01:31Sanjay was friends with Salman Khan and connected him with Siddiqui,

01:34which was the beginning of a long-standing friendship between the Bollywood star and the politician.

01:40He helped Khan through troubled times, be it the hit-and-run case or the Black Buck case.

01:45Whenever there was a hearing for Khan's case,

01:47Siddiqui was either with him in the courtroom or with the family.

01:55His annual Iftar parties also drew celebrities from different quarters.

02:08It was at this party in 2013 that the famed reunion

02:11of Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan happened after their fallout in 2008.

02:16On the political front, Siddiqui built influence in slum areas.

02:20This helped him enter the slum redevelopment business,

02:23which also became a thorn in his side as it drew the

02:27Enforcement Directorate's attention towards him for charges of money laundering.

02:32At age 56, his political decline began when he lost his seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate

02:38Ashish Shehlar in 2014.

02:41Nine years later, he departed from his 48-year-long association with the Congress

02:45Party and joined the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party.

02:50The same year, three assailants shot him dead on 12 October 2024

02:55as he was leaving his son's office in Bandra East.

02:58The angle to the murder wasn't clear by the time of publishing this report,

03:24but this was the first high-profile murder in about 30 years,

03:27raising concerns about the revival of political assassinations in Mumbai.

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