Ali Budesh

Ali Baba Budesh (born 1957-14th April 2022) was a notorious Indian extortionist and underworld mobster, based in Bahrain.

He was mostly active in 1990s.

Fearing backlash from the Mumbai police, Budesh fled to Bahrain in the late eighties, where he opened up his new base of operations in the capital city of Manama.He died in coma as he was suffering from sugar related illness.

Most of the details of Budesh's early life and background are unclear.

Born to an Indian mother and Arab father, he made his entrance into the Mumbai underworld as a petty pickpocket and a street ruffian.

The police in Vikhroli, a north-eastern suburb of the city, had registered a case of assault against him.

However, prior to his involvement in petty crime, Budesh is known to have studied at a boarding school near Pune.

Ali Budesh died on 14 April 2022.

His death news was widely spread after Amber Sharma investigative filmmaker & founder of Mowgli Productions broke the news.

Ali Budesh was admitted to Army Hospital on 12th March 2022 he was suffering from high sugar levels and went into coma.

On 14 April 2022, he was pronounced dead by Doctors.

Ali Budesh was getting treatment at Bahrain Defence Force Hospital.

While living in the slums near the Pankheshah Baba shrine at Ghatkopar (W), Budesh came into contact with some of Dawood Ibrahim's gang members who were on the run from the police, and sought shelter in the labyrinthine slums of the Vikhroli Parksite area.

Budeshi was rewarded for his initial assistance of these men, when he was sent to Dubai and met Dawood Ibrahim, the infamous head of the D-Company and India's most wanted fugitive.

Budesh later split from the D-Company, together with other key aides of Dawood Ibrahim such as the Pakistani smuggler Shoaib Khan, Irfan Goga, and Ijaz Pathan, and formed his own separate gang with its headquarters in Bahrain.

He allied himself with some of Dawood Ibrahim's enemies and went on to lead them against him.

These a feared gangster from Virar-Virar, Subhash Singh Thakur, who is currently lodged in New Delhi's Tihar Central Prison.

Another former Ibrahim aide, Dilawar Khan, became Budesh's right-hand man.

This alliance caused some major upsets to Ibrahim's declining empire.

He also began informing on members of the D-Company to law enforcement.

The detention of Dawood Ibrahim's brother, Anees Ibrahim at the Bahrain International Airport at Muharraq in 1996 is believed to have been due to a tip-off from Budesh.

Dawood spent over Rs 5 lakh for his brother's release.

Similarly, the month-long incarceration of Abu Salem, another key underworld figure at the UAE's Al-Rafa detention centre was attributed to Budesh.

Budesh also began informing on other Indian NRI gangsters such as Chhota Shakeel, Noora Ibrahim, etc., forcing them to flee the UAE for Pakistan, where they are believed to have made their base of operations in Karachi.

In spite of the falling out with his former mentor, Budesh's policy in his extortion rackets closely follow Dawood Ibrahim's modus operandi.

His targets include builders, diamond merchants and figures within the Bollywood film industry.

His demands from builders include an annual fee or a few flats in their projects.

From diamond merchants, he seeks deposits in numbered accounts in Swiss banks.

However, the biggest contributors to his extortion racket have always been the Bollywood film figures.

Those who usually refuse to pay the extortion money or hafta as it is called in the Mumbai underworld jargon, are dealt with in a severe manner.

For instance, when Natwarlal Desai, a local Mumbai based builder refused to pay the hafta being demanded by Budesh's gang, he was later shot dead on 18 August 1997 at Nariman Point by the Budesh gang members.

Those businessmen who were reluctant to pay the hafta to Budesh's enforcers, paid up with alacrity after the Desai killing.

After this incident, no other killing by the Budesh gang was reported for a long time.

On April, 1998, Keith Rodrigues, the chief steward at the Copper Chimney restaurant at Saki Naka was shot dead by Ali Budesh's gunmen.

The murder was done as a warning to the restaurant's owner, Satish Bansal, who had been dodging Budesh's demand for Rs 5 lakh for months.

Some leading Bollywood film producers also became victims of Budesh's extortion tactics.

He made threatening calls to Rakesh Roshan, Mukesh Bhatt and Boney Kapoor, and demanded up to 2 khokha (Rs. 2 crore) from each of them.

The Tips Cassette Company owner, Ramesh Taurani, was also being extorted for the same amount.

On 21 January 2000, Rakesh Roshan was shot at by two Budesh gang members near his office on Tilak Road at Santacruz West.

The assailants fired two bullets at him, one of which hit him on the left arm while the other grazed his chest.