Ali Budesh

Ali Baba Budesh (1957 – 14 April 2022) was an Indian criminal and extortionist who became active in the 1990s and was based in Bahrain. He left Mumbai in the late 1980s, reportedly to avoid action by the Mumbai Police, and subsequently established a base of operations in Manama. He later died while in a coma due to complications associated with diabetes. However, prior to his involvement in petty crime, Budesh is known to have studied at a boarding school near Pune. He allied himself with some of Dawood Ibrahim's enemies and went on to lead them against him. These are feared gangster from Vasai-Virar, Subhash Singh Thakur, who is currently lodged in New Delhi's Tihar Central Prison. Another former Ibrahim aide, Dilawar Khan, became Budesh's right-hand man. This alliance caused some major upsets to Ibrahim's declining empire.

On 21 January 2000, Rakesh Roshan was shot at by two Budesh gang members near his office on Tilak Road at Santacruz, Mumbai. The assailants fired two bullets at him, one of which hit him on the left arm while the other grazed his chest. As the director fell to the ground, the assailants fled the scene. The assailants were later identified as Sunil Vithal Gaikwad and Sachin Kamble. The attack on Roshan was not undertaken with the intent to kill, but to signal that the Shiv Sena could no longer protect its clients. Roshan had stonewalled demands from Budesh for a percentage of the profits from the overseas sale of the Hindi blockbuster, Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai.

Extorting politicians In 2018, several high-ranking Indian politicians claimed to have received extortion calls from Budesh.

Clashes with the law Budesh claimed responsibility for the hand-grenade attack near a hotel in Dahisar, a western suburb of Mumbai in June 1998. In the incident, some gangsters, when challenged, hurled the grenade at the police. In the blast and the subsequent police firing, two policemen and three gangsters were killed and several others were injured. However, Budesh's claim was dismissed by the Mumbai police. The following year, Tirupati Kotian and Austin Carvalho, two members of the Ali Budesh gang were shot dead in an encounter with the Mumbai police at Kandivali.

Open war with Dawood Ibrahim Budesh had a great falling out with Dawood over a property deal in Mumbai in 1997. Budesh, along with Uttar Pradesh don Subhash Singh Thakur, had hoped to extort money out of this deal from Natwar Lal Desai, a well known builder. The duo are now being seen as the most deadly threat that the D-company has ever faced, bigger than even Dawood's arch-rival, Chhota Rajan. They are in fact accused by the Nepalese and Indian authorities of being behind the murders of Dawood's three main agents in Nepal, i.e., Majid Manihar, Parvez Tanda and Jamim Shah, Nepalese media entrepreneur who was reputed to be the architect of Dawood's counterfeit currency racket in India. Dawood is believed to have entrusted his chief lieutenant, Chhota Shakeel to deal with Budesh.