Salman Mustaan–Abdel Khader Khan

Salman Mustaan’s relationship with Abdel Khader Khan is defined, after Khader’s death, by a striking form of loyalty: Salman turns the dead leader’s principles into the governing code of the mafia council. Nearly two years after Khader’s death, his influence still shapes the group’s everyday decisions, while Salman rules as the custodian of a criminal order built around limits on certain profitable trades. Their bond is therefore shown less through shared scenes than through the system Salman continues to uphold in Khader’s name.

Inheritance of Khader’s Principles

Abdel Khader Khan had forbidden his organization to deal in heroin and had allowed trade in it only among desperately addicted street users in areas under his control. He also regarded prostitution as a business that harmed women, degraded men, and damaged the surrounding community. His prohibition extended to pornography and prostitution beyond very low, discreet levels of activity, with offenders risking severe punishment. Under Salman’s leadership, these rules remained in force: Khader’s death did not immediately dissolve the moral and practical boundaries he had imposed on the organization.

The reach of that inheritance was territorial as well as ethical. Khader’s influence had extended across several square kilometres of streets, parks, and buildings, and Salman’s council continued to govern that district according to the same restrictions. Salman is presented as Khader’s devoted follower, carrying forward the older man’s judgments as the basis for his own authority rather than treating them as a dead leader’s obsolete preferences.

Salman as Successor and Steward

In practical terms, Salman Mustaan becomes the don and leader of Khader’s mafia. The narrator describes him as Khader’s man, body and soul, and says that he governs the clan as though Khader were still alive, advising and cautioning him in private sessions every night. The comparison makes Salman’s leadership feel like an ongoing conversation with an absent mentor: Khader no longer directs the council in person, but his precepts continue to constrain and shape its decisions.

That stewardship is institutional, not merely personal. Most of the men support Salman’s adherence to the old principles, understanding and accepting the rules as worth preserving. Meanwhile, Nazeer gradually prepares Khader’s young nephew, Tariq, for possible future responsibilities, but Tariq is considered too young for a council position or even to attend its meetings. Salman, not the boy with Khader’s family connection, holds the authority in the present. The arrangement distinguishes inherited kinship from effective succession: Khader’s legacy is maintained through Salman’s leadership while Tariq is introduced to that world gradually.

Public Legitimacy and the Cost of the Code

The council’s rules give Salman’s organization an unusual kind of local standing. In its district, residents do not necessarily regard the words goonda and gangster as insults. People see the group as more effective than the police at keeping heroin and sexually exploitative businesses off their streets, while the police are described as susceptible to bribes. The council itself pays police to look away when its men violently punish a stubborn heroin dealer or a pornographer. Khader’s moral code therefore survives not as lawful justice but as an alternative system of control, enforced through violence and sustained through corruption.

The narrator connects that authority to everyday signs of public acceptance. Older residents compare their relative calm with the disorder elsewhere; children admire young gangsters as local heroes; and restaurants, bars, and other businesses welcome Salman’s men as protectors of peace and comparatively high moral standards. The district’s rate of unsolicited information reaching the police is lower than in any other part of Bombay, a measure the narrator treats as evidence of public approval or disapproval. This support does not make the council legitimate in a legal sense, but it explains how Salman can present fidelity to Khader’s restrictions as service to the community as well as loyalty to his former leader.

A Legacy Under Pressure

That inherited order is already under strain. Rival councils grow rich from heroin and imported pornographic videos, using their profits to hire well-paid mercenaries and acquire guns. Their territorial expansion brings deaths and injuries in turf wars. Some of Salman’s own men, led by Sanjay, his oldest and closest friend, urge him to change policy in response to those rivals’ wealth and growing power. Their pressure exposes the unresolved tension at the heart of Salman and Khader’s bond: preserving Khader’s prohibitions sustains the identity and local standing of the organization, but it may leave the council at a material disadvantage against gangs willing to profit from the trades Khader rejected. The account establishes Salman’s fidelity and the challenge it faces, without resolving whether he will keep the code unchanged.