25 years on, Sidhu Moosewala killing revives memories of Gulshan Kumar's brutal daylight murder

It's been 25 years since Gulshan Kumar was killed in cold blood for not succumbing to the demands of extortionist ganglords. 

Mumbai: In a blood-splattered instance of life imitating art, a memory that Mumbai hasn't been able to shake off even after 25 years, 41-year-old music mogul and film producer Gulshan Kumar, founder of the Super Cassettes Industries, now famous as T-Series, was gunned down on August 12, 1997.

A religious man, Kumar was outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev Mandir in Andheri West, Mumbai, when 16 bullets were pumped into him by contract killers Daud Merchant alias Abdul Rauf and his brother Rashid Merchant. The man who started out as the maker of audio cassettes and then went on to build a music empire, succumbed to his injuries on the spot.

And as if that was not shocking enough, one of the main accused was music composer Nadeem Akhtar Saifi of the well-known Nadeem-Shravan duo, who had famously composed hit numbers for films such as 'Aashiqui', 'Saajan', 'Sadak', 'Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin', among several others under the T-Series label, and chartbuster albums out of the label, notably 'Phool Aur Kaante', 'Dilwale' and 'Dhadkan'.

In their 400-page chargesheet, the Mumbai Police named 26 people, including Nadeem and Ramesh Taurani, co-owner and managing director of Tips Industries; both were listed as co-conspirators.

Nadeem-Shravan formed the core of the T-Series creative team along with lyricist Sameer and the playback singer Anuradha Paudwal, who was said to be very close to Gulshan Kumar.