Dhurandhar: Real-life Rehman Dakait killed mother at 15, was Lyari’s ‘king’ at 21, this is what happened after his encounter

Akshaye Khanna’s viral moment to Fa9la song in Dhurandhar.

Former Lyari SP Fayyaz Khan told BBC: “Among the many gangs involved in the same business, there was rivalry as well as territorial conflict. These rivalries often turned into bloody clashes. In one such clash, Rahman Baloch’s uncle Taj Mohammad was killed by the rival Baboo Dakait gang.”

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Rehman stabbed a man at 13, killed mother in his own home

Rehman Dakait’s rise in the world of crime was swift and decisive. He stabbed and injured a man who did not allow him to burst crackers in Lyari; he was 13 then. Two years later, he killed two rival drug peddlers with whom he had a dispute.

In 1995, months after he escaped from the police, he shot dead his mother Khadija inside their home. While he told police he murdered his mother as ‘she became a police informant’, it is widely believed that he thought she was in a relationship with a rival gang member, something Dhurandhar also shows.

Rehman’s arrest and rise in power

Arrested in 1995 for possession of weapons and drugs, Rehman spent two and a half years in jail but escaped while in transit from Karachi jail to a court. He fled to Balochistan and started setting up the foundation of his rise in Lyari. By 2006, he had amassed both clout, properties and wealth, and had married thrice. He had 13 children. It is said that he even owned property in Iran besides Karachi and Balochistan.

Lyari gang wars

Rehman’s rise to power was marked with massive bloodshed and violence. While he and Haji Lalu were running the drugs and gambling business in cahoots, they soon fell out, leading to a massive wave of violence in Lyari in which over 3500 people were killed as per estimates. Early 2000s saw Rehman decimating opposition and emerging as Lyari’s self-appointed ‘king’.
Reporting about Rahman’s rise and violence in Lyari, Pakistan newspaper The Express Tribune wrote in 2021, “Rehman was involved in extortion, kidnapping, drug smuggling, the sale of illegal arms and more. For nearly a decade, gang war left life paralysed in Lyari as Rehman and his gang battled it out with rival Arshad Pappu and his acolytes.”

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It was at this time that he started having political aspirations of his own. Not happy with ruling the underworld, he decided he wanted to be more than a political kingmaker. He was now Sardar Abdul Rahman Baloch and formed his Peoples Aman Committee.
As his ambition became bigger so did the scale of violence. Lyari had been the hub of MQM and People’s Party – coincidentally both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and daughter Benazir Bhutto rose to Prime Ministership from Lyari.

Lyari Task Force and Chaudhry Aslam

Lyari Task Force was set up in 2006 under Chaudhry Aslam, with its aim to clean Lyari of gangs. The role is essayed by Sanjay Dutt in Dhurandhar, who is shown as a trigger-happy cop. In June that year, they managed to arrest Rehman Dakait but it was never recorded officially.

Sanjay Dutt’s character is inspired by the real-life Pakistani police officer SP Chaudhry Aslam.
(Photo: Chaudhry Aslam, Facebook)

However, moments later Aslam reportedly received a phone call from PPP’s Asif Ali Zardari, who later went on to become Pakistan’s President. “Don’t kill him. Don’t do anything wrong. Present the cases in court. Don’t do an encounter,” Zardari reportedly told Aslam, as per the BBC report. After that Rehman was kept at homes of police officers in secret but managed to escape.

How Rehman Dakait really died

Rehman’s reign of Lyari continued even as his rivals multiplied. In 2009, Lyari Task Force was close to arresting him again, after having tracked his movements based on phone data. Reports claim that police intercepted him close to Quetta and he showed a fake ID. When told to speak to a senior officer, Rehman approached a vehicle and the moment he opened the door, he found Chaudhry Aslam in front of him. He was put in the same vehicle and detained.

According to the claims, Rahman offered money to settle the matter, but Aslam refused. Rehman Dakait and three of his associates were later killed in a police encounter in 2009. Police later issued a statement that he was wanted in over 80 cases, including those of murder and kidnapping.

Maulana Abdul Majeed Sarbazi, who served as the chairman of the People’s Aman Committee, told Express Tribune after the killing, “The autopsy reports say that Rehman was fired at a distance of three feet. That’s not how people die in encounters. It is extremely sad that for seven years there was a fight going on between two groups no one interfered, and when things got better they killed Khan bhai. We don’t understand why this happened or who was behind it.”

What happened after Rehman Dakait’s encounter

Dhurandhar ends with Rehman Dakait’s encounter killing and Dhurandhar 2, which will release next year in March, will open with its aftermath. As per reports, Rehman received the biggest funeral Lyari has ever seen. Rehman’s widow also approached the Sindh High Court, claiming the encounter was fake. Based on the court’s order, the police was asked to file a report but the case was never resolved. Chaudhry Aslam was killed in a Taliban suicide attack in 2014.