Hashim Baba: Delhi’s gangster who directs bloodshed from behind bars

Gang leader Hashim Baba, after splitting from rival groups, orchestrated killings from jail, maintaining influence in Delhi's crime scene despite MCOCA charges.

In June 2018, two notorious gangs that operate in northeast Delhi — one led by Abdul Nasir and the other by Irfan alias Chhenu Pehalwan — held a meeting at a mosque to end their decades-long rivalry and resolve their differences.

Hashim Baba (HT Photo)

During the meeting — attended by Nasir and relatives of both gang lords, along with at least 10 clerics — the two criminal groups reached a consensus: they would divide their areas of operation, and would not interfere with each other’s businesses, senior Delhi Police officers aware of the matter told HT.

The outcome of this meeting was mostly positive — skirmishes between the two gangs had led to the death of at least 17 people, but after June 2018, the bloodshed stopped, and the police could sigh with relief, officers said.

However, one consequence of the peace between the two groups was that Nasir’s lieutenant and key confidant Ashim Ahmad — better known as Hashim Baba — split away from his boss, forming his own gang that continued hostilities with the Chhenu gang and emerging as one of the most notorious criminals operating in north India, according to a senior officer from the Delhi Police special cell.

Hashim Baba wields a considerable influence on the streets of Delhi, said police, linking him to several murders in the Capital post his arrest.(HT Print)

“What followed after Hashim Baba splitting away was a series of killings and attempted killings that he committed along with his associates in eastern and southern parts of Delhi in a bid to establish himself as the new undisputed king of Delhi’s crime and illegal betting world,” the officer said, declining to be named.

“The killings would have continued had a special cell team not arrested Baba after a shootout in Shahdara on November 12, 2020,” the officer said.

But even from behind bars, Hashim Baba wields a considerable influence on the streets of Delhi, said police, linking him to several murders in the Capital post his arrest, including the gunning down of Nadir Shah, a gym owner, outside his Greater Kailash-1 establishment on September 12 this year.

His brazenness also caught the eye of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who operates north India’s largest criminal syndicate, said the officer quoted above. The two met while both were lodged in Tihar jail, and Hashim Baba is now considered one of Bishnoi’s closest allies, the officer said.

Making of a murderer

Hashim Baba was born in 1982 to a poor Muslim family in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. In the early 1990s, his father moved the family to Delhi in an attempt to better their fortunes and started a footwear manufacturing business.

It was here, in the Capital, that a young boy — then still known as Ashim Ahmad — started committing petty crimes, police said. He was a juvenile, so no records of his crimes were kept. But soon, this boy — now known as Hashim Baba — joined the Nasir gang and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a hitman for the group.

Officers said his role in the gang came into the limelight in 2013, after his name was mentioned in the failed assassination of rival Akil alias Mama — who was supported by the Chhenu gang — during a funeral in Jafrabad.

Hashim Baba’s rise in the gang did not stop there — after Nasir’s arrest in April 2017, he led the gang in his leader’s stead, continuing the rivalry with the Chhenu gang.

However, Nasir’s release from jail in June 2018 and decision to make peace with the Chhenu gang did not sit right with Hashim Baba, and he split away from his one-time mentor, said police

Today, Baba is involved in more than 35 serious crimes — including 12 murders — and is presently lodged in jail, the officer quoted above said.

Operating from behind bars

On September 12, Nadir Shah was gunned down outside his gym on a busy GK-1 street. At least nine people have been arrested in connection with the case so far.

“An interrogation of the arrested accused revealed that the killing was orchestrated by Hashim Baba from inside Mandoli jail. The investigating team sought his custody from jail and interrogated him. However, investigators are finding it difficult to nail him down in the case due to insufficient evidence,” an officer from the Delhi Police crime branch said, on condition of anonymity.

But this is not the first time that Hashim Baba has been linked to a crime while still being incarcerated — according to police, there have been at least four more high-profile murders on the streets of the Capital between June 2023 and August this year that were carried out at the behest of the jailed gangster.

One of these incidents was the brazen murder of a 32-year-old man at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital on July 14: four thugs — allegedly Hashim Baba’s associates — burst into a ward and shot Mohammad Riyazuddin. It would later emerge that the murder was a case of mistaken identity — the assailants’ actual target was 33-year-old Waseem, a rival of the gangster, who was undergoing treatment in the same ward of the hospital.

Three members of the Chhenu gang have also been murdered in this period, police said.

In addition, while behind bars, Hashim Baba also became associated with Bishnoi — police first learnt of their association during the investigation into the May 2022 murder of singer Sidhu Moosewala in Mansa, Punjab. The special cell officer quoted above said that the probe revealed that Hashim Baba had sent his associate Shahrukh to gun down Moosewala.

In December 2021, Shahrukh had been assigned the job to kill Moosewala, for which he and seven others conducted a detailed reconnaissance of the Punjabi singer’s daily movements and activities. However, Shahrukh aborted the plan to assassinate him in January 2022 because the singer was always surrounded by security personnel, the officer said, quoting the disclosure statement of Shahrukh, who was arrested in April 2022.

The crime branch officer quoted above said the bloodshed has intensified since Hashim Baba was moved to Mandoli jail, which is in northeast Delhi.

As Hashim Baba’s role emerged in all these murders, as well as in other serious crimes such as extortion, the police invoked the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against the gangster and eight of his associates on September 16, a second crime branch officer said.

“But it’s highly unlikely that the invoking of MCOCA will curb his illegal activities as he anyway feels more secure operating from behind bars,” the officer said.

A senior Delhi prisons official said that high-risk prisoners like Hashim Baba are shuffled between the three jails in the Capital — Tihar, Rohini and Mandoli — on a regular basis for security reasons. “The constant shifting of such prisoners also helps prison officials ensure that high-risk inmate does not get familiar with prison staffers and use them to his advantage,” the official said.

“Under the same protocol, Hashim Baba was transferred from Tihar to Mandoli, and now has been moved back to Tihar,” the official added.