Akbar Ahmad Dumpy: Brash, controversial, connected… and now in the twilight of a colourful career

Dumpy was born in Lucknow to IPS officer Islam Ahmed, who served as the IG of Uttar Pradesh Police in 1971 — the first Muslim to hold the top police position in the state (the state police chief was then known as IG).

What introduced Dumpy to more rarefied circles was his schooling at Doon School in Dehradun, where he met Sanjay Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family. After continuing his studies at Canning College in Lucknow, and then a stint at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, London, Dumpy returned home and found his way into politics.

Author and senior journalist Rasheed Kidwai recalls Dumpy as someone from a “good, aristocratic family”, but also very temperamental and prone to rash actions without thinking them through.

Opinion is almost uniform that Dumpy would not have come to spotlight though for his adventures and misdemeanours had he not met Sanjay again in a chance encounter at a wedding, after a gap of 18 years. This was 1976. When Sanjay, Indira Gandhi’s equally rash and politically ambitious son, urged him to join him and the Congress, Dumpy accepted the offer.

In 1980, Dumpy was elected as an MLA from Haldwani (now in Uttarakhand) on a Congress ticket. The death of Sanjay in an airplane crash in June of that year could have halted Dumpy’s career. His decision to side with Maneka, involved in a tussle with Mrs Gandhi – the Prime Minister at the time — both elevated and sealed his fate.

In 1982, as camps and rivalry began forming around her hand-picked successor Rajiv, and Maneka, Mrs Gandhi suspended Dumpy. When Maneka launched the Sanjay Vichar Manch, in turn, she appointed Dumpy as its convenor.

In 1987, Dumpy again got elected, this time as an Independent MLA, in a by-election from Kashipur.

Later, with Maneka’s career remaining stalled and her eventual drift towards the BJP, Dumpy joined the BSP. He was elected twice on the party ticket to the Lok Sabha from Azamgarh.

However, as he got pushed further away from the political limelight, Dumpy faded from view. Now not active in politics, the 74-year-old who is settled in Delhi with his wife Naina Balsaver Ahmad, an actress, model and the winner of the Femina Miss India, 1976, leads a quiet life – more or less.

In February last year, Dumpy was in the news when BJP leader Shazia Ilmi filed an FIR against him for allegedly misbehaving with her during a dinner hosted by cigar baron Chetan Seth in Delhi. The FIR was registered under Sections 506 (criminal intimidation) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the IPC.

Before that, in 2020, Dumpy found himself in the news when a party organised by him in Lucknow saw the participation of Bollywood singer Kanika Kapoor, who tested Covid-positive. The high-profile attendees included BJP MP Dushyant Singh, his mother and former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje, and former Uttar Pradesh minister Jai Pratap Singh.

Dumpy responded by self-isolating at his farmhouse at Kichha in Uttarakhand for 14 days.