THE GANGSTER’S EMPIRE
Shakeel is believed to have been worth about $300 million, but he started out as Mohammed Shakeel Babu Miyan Shaikh. His first career was running a travel agency in Dongri.
He still rarely drank alcohol, but would smoke hashish and marijuana.
He even bought a diamond mine in Sierra Leone. by African nationals, collected in Botswana, South Africa and Namibia, taken to Kenya, and thence to Dubai and Karachi.
He remained a key asset of the ISI, negotiating arms and other deals on its behalf. In fact, he tried to broker an iron mine deal in Guinea for a large mining company at the behest of the ISI, because of reported uranium deposits in the mine. The deal was scotched by the US, according to underworld sources.
His real-estate empire extended to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, the UAE, Kenya, Spain and South Africa, in addition to India, Pakistan and the US.
As with most gangsters through the ages, family life suffered the more successful he became. Of his two children with his first wife Zehra, the son reportedly abhorred his father and lives a life of anonymity in the US; his daughter settled in South Africa. Shakeel had a third child, Zoya with his second wife.
Shakeel’s movements were so restricted, said underworld sources, that he spent exactly three minutes at her wedding. His empire, it would appear, has no willing heirs.