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.
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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.