Patna: A pall of gloom has descended on Sheikh Toli in Gopalganj district—the native village of NCP leader and former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique a day after he was shot dead in Mumbai. Mourning villagers didn’t prepare food in their homes on Sunday and prayed for the peace of the departed soul.
While his political career flourished in Maharashtra, Siddique maintained strong ties with his ancestral home through various ways—launching many welfare programmes for the villagers, donating money for the wedding of poor girls and helping the people in distress during the Covid-19.
On the other hand, Siddique’s journey from a watchmaker’s son in Bandra to three-term MLA and state minister was a source of pride and privilege for the villagers. Siddique, too, never let them down. Through his Facebook post on June 25, 2020, he himself had once broken the news that how his father belonged to Gopalganj’s Manjha block and he still had faint memory of childhood at his village.
“None in the village has cooked meals since coming to know about his demise. He was so close to us. Everyone is deep grief since they are apprehensive about the fate of welfare schemes that he had launched for the poor,” Siddique’s cousin Mohammad Gufran Siddique told the TOI over phone on Sunday.
Gufran said Baba Siddique had been running free education institutes for the poor children at 40 places across the state, including three in Gopalganj alone. “Barely four-five days back, he had called me up to discuss about a proposal regarding opening a marriage hall to allot the space free of cost for solemnizing the wedding of the poor people. Alas, the disaster came midway,” he said.
“Although he lived in Mumbai, he had dedicated his life for the well-being of the people of his state,” Shah Alam, his another relative, said.
The last time Siddiqui had visited his native village was in April 2022 to launch a trust dedicated to his father Abdul Rahim Siddique, his family member said. “This trust has been imparting free education to poor children at the village. Currently, around 300 children are enrolled in it,” a local villager Mohammad Furkan said.
Meanwhile, netas of the state questioned the law and order situation in India’s financial capital. “It is a very sad incident. The way he was murdered is very sad. We hope that the mastermind gets caught soon. Baba Siddique was from my home district Gopalganj,” opposition leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav said on Sunday reacting to the incident.
