Haji Mastan - Rise As The Don of Mumbai

Rise As The Don of Mumbai

The windfall came in 1956 when Mastan came in contact with Sukur Narayan Bakhia, a resident of Daman, and the biggest smuggler in Gujarat. Bakhia and Mastan became partners and divided certain territories among themselves. Mastan handled the Bombay port and Bakhia the Daman port. The smuggled items would come to Daman port from the Persian Gulf and to Bombay from Aden. Mastan took care of Bakhia’s consignments.

His rise was phenomenal. But the Emergency took the wind out of his sails. The smuggler was incarcerated. When he was released after 18 months in jail, he was a reformed man and surprisingly emerged a hero. During his jail term, he studied Hindi, the prominent language in Mumbai. Mastan Mirza began to introduce himself as Haji Mastan. Using the prefix of "Haji" refers to those devout Muslims who have been to Hajj in Mecca.

Haji Mastan planned his own foray into films with a project titled Mere Garib Nawaz, followed by other movies. He was a successful distributor and excelled in the cinema business.

He was a smuggler and a shrewd man who rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty of his era, be it Karim Lala or Varadarajan Mudaliar, Dilip Kumar or Shashi Kapoor. He had excellent relationships with the who's who of Bollywood, names such as Dharmendra, Feroz Khan, Raj Kapoor and Sanjeev Kumar. Salim Khan and Amitabh Bachchan often visited him while the movie Deewar was in the pipeline. He also had many friends in the world of politics. Being a notorious smuggler, he was apprehended and jailed by agencies many time around. Although he possessed a huge mansion in a posh locality off Peddar Road, opposite Sophia College, he virtually lived his life in a small room built on the terrace of his bungalow. He worshipped the sea and had a clear view of the ocean from his terrace abode.

But once out of his home, Haji Mastan was a man of style. Always clad in pure white designer wear, sporting a pack of imported cigarettes in hand, Mastan used to travel in a chauffeur driven white Mercedes-Benz, a status symbol in those days.

His room used to be full of Tamil newspapers, specially flown in from Chennai as that was the only language that Mastan knew to read.

He made millions through smuggling gold, silver and electronic goods and was once arrested and detained under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities (COFEPOSA) Act during the Emergency. He also has close links with C. Pasupathy Pandiyan from Thoothukudi, a well known Dalit leader with criminal records, for his underworld sea contacts in southern Tamil Nadu. During the Indian Emergency (1975-77), Haji Mastan helped many Leaders escape to Tamil Nadu through C. Pasupathy Pandiyan.

After all the cases against him were disposed off, Haji Mastan never indulged in smuggling again. He floated a political party and devoted time to holding periodic meetings with the poor and the needy in the minority community-dominated localities of south Mumbai and held public rallies at Mastan Talao near Nagpada police station. He also joined hands with anti-drug abuse activists like Dr Yusuf Merchant and implored the youth to stay away from killer drugs.

In the meantime, he courted a few Bollywood starlets and even tied the knot with a starlet called Sona. He financed a few films for her. He gifted her a bungalow situated near actor Dev Anand's house at Juhu. He was a lonely man and had few but staunch friends. No wonder that when don Vardabhai (Varadarajan Mudaliar) died in Madras, Mastan chartered an Indian Airlines plane and brought his friend's body to Mumbai for last rites as per Vardabhai's wishes.

In 1994, he died in Mumbai from cardiac arrest.