Dawood Ibrahim: The man, myth and most wanted in mainstream culture

Earlier this week, the nation woke up to the news that Dawood Ibrahim, India’s most wanted terrorist had succumbed to poisoning and passed away in Pakistan. A few hours and a widely circulated fake exalted obituary allegedly posted on X by Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq Kakar later, reports began to trickle in that Dawood Ibrahim was not dead or even in a hospital. A few hours after that, rumours began to circulate that he might not even have been poisoned, with his close aide Chota Shakeel, publicly denouncing all claims of ill health. Typical of the tenebrous shadowy contours of the India-Pakistan relationship and its contentions, covert operations, and diplomatic dialogue. We don’t know for sure what exactly went down and whether the man is above or below the ground, but Dawood Ibrahim is once again dominating headlines in the country. Gen Z might go Dawood Who, but to older generations, Dawood Ibrahim is undeniably what you call a star villain just a shade more real than Mogambo. A man of myth, legend and horrors that persist long beyond the trauma of his actions, suffered collectively as a nation. In a deeply macabre fashion, in a way he is the poster child for post-Independence India-Pakistan’s intertwined and complicated relations, shared history and trauma followed by the eventual antagonism and conflicts. Born in Ratnagiri Maharashtra, in 1955 not even a full decade after the midnight of 1947, to a Konkani Muslim family, Dawood rose through the ranks of a crime syndicate and communal tension instigated lawlessness fast. He meteorically rose through the crime ladder and became a dreaded terrorist and mobster, the face of Mumbai’s mob culture. Eventually, he is known to have masterminded the 1993 Bombay blasts, post which he fled the country to Dubai onto Karachi, Pakistan, which is his last known residential address. He was designated a global terrorist by India, the US as well as the UN Security Council in 2003 with a $25 million bounty on his head for his role in the 1993 blasts in Bombay and connections to Al Qaeda.  He has since then consistently been on global “Most Wanted Lists”, with even Pakistan recently listing him and 87 others to escape FATF (Financial Action Task Force) sanctions. Widely regarded to be living in Karachi for several decades now, his interest and connections with India remain alive as ever with keen professional, commercial and personal interests in the two pillars of our country as a community, cricket and Bollywood. As the legend goes, he is reported to be deeply invested till today(if he’s alive) in the financing and racketeering businesses of these two institutions, that ironically hold our country together, the only ones where religion, caste and community have never been a factor. He is our Osama bin Laden, but born in our very own country, and ironically the son of an Indian policeman. This curious dichotomy has almost made a fable out of the monster, inspiring countless Hindi films, mentions in pop culture and the glamorising of Mumbai’s gangster culture, the dreaded D company. All these occurrences and circumstances have led to an almost fetishism of his life, actions and the mystery of his personality as an individual, in mass culture. Wild rumours and stories have always swirled around about his private life, him strangely being hailed as a romantic. He was said to have relentlessly wooed his first wife Zubeen Zareen also known as Mehjabeen Sheikh, the daughter of an associate of his family in Mumbai in the 1990s which led to a marriage and children, their love story dramatized in movies such as Once Upon a Time in Mumbai. The dreaded gangster would often throw lavish parties attended by many members of the Bollywood fraternity during his prime in Mumbai, where he was said to have met many young actresses whom he had frequent romances with. There are stories of a certain young actress Sujata who enjoyed a romantic liaison. Later, more famously, he was said to have met Mandakini, a top Bollywood actress of her time and gotten besotted with her. The ruthless mobster was said to have fallen so hard for her, that he pursued her aggressively till she gave in to his advances. In his passion for her, he allegedly murdered film producer Javed Siddhique who had rejected Mandakini for a coveted project. Once he fled India for Pakistan, he was known to have a heated romance with Anita Ayoob, a Pakistani model and actress. His many romantic dalliances and larger-than-life personality have made him fodder for many hit Bollywood films such as D-Day, Once Upon A Time in Mumbai, and its sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, Shootout at Wadala etc, all romanticising the life and times of the erstwhile crime lord turned feared international terrorist. Not just him, even his family and siblings have been the subjects of common folklore, with the Shraddha Kapoor starrer Haseena released in 2017, based on his sister Haseena Parker also referred to as Haseena Apa. Public imagination is so utterly captivated by his image and its thrills that even his closest rival, gangster Arun Gawli had a movie made on him Daddy, which was released in 2017, with Farhan Akhtar playing the character of Maqsood, based loosely on Dawood. There is even a 2018 video game called Hitman 2, which features a Mumbai crime lord active in show business called “Dawood Rangan”, presumably a reference to the real Dawood Ibrahim. It is unprecedented for such a high-level gangster/crime lord/terrorist responsible for the deaths of so many and one of the biggest tragedies of a country to have so many references in modern mainstream culture devoted to him, his family and his associates. But his journey as a young boy to an international terrorist in hiding for decades now, with new stories of his death surfacing every few years and the emotional blind spot spurred by any connection between India and Pakistan, complemented by his involvement in the entertainment and sports industries for so many decades, has led him to become the most “popular” and mainstream antagonist of our country in almost half a century. Whether he is truly dead or alive, we might never know as Pakistan will never officially acknowledge his presence on their soil now, below or above, but the man has left a cruel, tragic and calamity-filled legacy that will always be the subject of and stranger than fiction. The author is a freelance journalist and features writer based out of Delhi. Her main areas of focus are politics, social issues, climate change and lifestyle-related topics. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.