A terror-funding accused and underworld gangster Chhota Shakeel’s brother-in-law Arif Abubakar Sheikh alias Arif Bhaijaan, died at the state-run JJ Hospital here following a cardiac arrest. Sixty-three-year-old Shaikh had been rushed to the JJ Hospital on Friday night, after he complained of acute breathlessness at the Arthur Road Jail where he was lodged. He suffered a heart attack and died while undergoing treatment at the hospital.

Arif Khan, one of his relatives, claimed that Shaikh had no health issues and was in his pink of health. “Shaikh was hale and hearty. He had no health problems as such. The jail authorities are not telling anything. The information that we gathered was from the hospital,” Khan said. The jail authorities handed over Shaikh’s body to his relatives for his last rites on Saturday afternoon, after completing necessary formalities.

Sheikh and his brother Shabbir were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in May 2023 in connection with a terror-funding case filed in February 2022 against the absconder mafia don Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar, Chhota Shakeel and others. Shaikh had been lodged at the Arthur Road jail since his arrest.

They were also accused of being involved with international terrorist organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Al Qaeda.  Shaikh and Shabbir were charged with arms smuggling, narco-terror, money-laundering, printing and circulating fake currencies, acquiring assets with the ill-gotten wealth, among other offences.

Ahead of Shaikh’s arrest, the NIA had attached his property  at Gaurav Green Cooperative Housing Society in Mangal Nagar in the Mira Road area adjacent to Thane district was attached by the NIA as part of the proceeds from terrorism under section 25 (1) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. The NIA’s case is that Shaikh, Shabbir and Mohammed Salim Qureshi had allegedly  extorted huge sums of money in the name of D-Company through property dealings and dispute settlements to raise funds for the gang’s terrorist activities.

Three month the arrest of Shaikh and Shabir, the police arrested in August 2023 on charges of taking control of the syndicate’s business after the death of Dawood’s sister Haseena Parkar. Haseena died of a massive heart attack at Habib Hospital at Dongri in south Mumbai, on July 6, 2014.

Haseena used to live at Gordon Hall building at Nagpada in south Mumbai. Daughter of a police constable Ibrahim Kaskar from the coastal Konkan region, she was one among the 12 Kaskar children.