From Latif’s family to Sangh Parivar

AHMEDABAD:
He sits on the same chair of the Popatiyawad office in Dariapur that his dreaded
dad once used. But the last thing Mushtaq (31) wants is to follow the footsteps
of his father – Abdul Latif Sheikh – Ahmedabad’s last don who was killed in an
encounter in 1998.

Mushtaq, the
eldest of Latif’s six children, has joined a Sangh Parivar outfit in an effort
to wipe clean any taint that remains from his father’s underworld reign that was
at its peak in the 80s. He is one of the 15 members of the national committee of
the ‘Rashtravadi Muslim Manch’ (RMM), an outfit that approves of the
ideology of the RSS.

For the
last one year, Mushtaq has kept himself busy with programmes of the RMM, the
latest being the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of 1857 uprising. Mushtaq
is all for banning slaughter of cow progeny and abhors
terrorism.

Mushtaq claims the
RMM gets good response from Muslims in Gujarat and he is now working to gather
people for an RMM programme in the city next month. “We will call senior RSS
leaders to address the meet. People come and listen to them articulating the
Sangh ideology. Who would not like to live in peace after all?” he
asks.

Mushtaq says: “My father
never involved me in his business, yet it was difficult for me to create my
separate
identity. I could not even
do business properly. Everyone saw me in the light of my father. This
nationalist

activity has helped me
shed that image,” he says.

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