Thaindian News

Mumbai, July 5 (IANS) Fakhruddin T. Khorakiwala, the chancellor of New Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia and a business tycoon who founded the Akbarally’s chain of department stores in Mumbai, passed away here Tuesday afternoon after a brief illness, a family member said. He was 93.

Khorakiwala, who served as sheriff of Mumbai in 1992-93 and helped restore peace after the riots that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, breathed his last at the Bombay Hospital, his son Habil said in a statement.

He is survived by his sons Habil, who is the chairman of the Wockhardt Group, Hunaid and Taizoon.

Khorakiwala, who started the trend-setting Akbarally’s chain of departmental stores in 1956.

“In a short span of time, our family has lost both our parents. My father was a tower of strength to all of us. He was always positive and stayed committed to communal harmony and was extremely concerned about social upliftment,” Habil said in a tribute.

As sheriff, Khorakiwala had organized the longest human chain of 100 kms with over 150,000 Mumbaikars to spread the message of secularism and counter communal violence which had gripped the city in the wake of the Babri Mosque demolition.

Later, he pioneered the concept of ‘Mohalla Committees’ involving people from different communities to resolve their problems before they became unmanageable - today such committees are very popular to tackle unpleasant situations.

“FTK, as we all called him, was one of the most courageous and dynamic sheriff’s of Mumbai. His work with the sheriff’s platform on communal harmony during the 1992-93 riots brought harmony to a very divided Mumbai city,” said ad guru Alyque Padamsee after hearing of Khorakiwala’s demise.

“FTK was known to me for the past 40 years but more intimately since 1994 when he asked me to run the Mohalla Committee movement initiated by him. He always worked for communal harmony in our great city and his name will always be associated with efforts he made to ensure peace between the communities in Mumbai,” said former ambassador and top cop
J.F. Rebeiro.

Khorakiwala was born in a Dawoodi Bohra family in 1918 in Ahmedabad, brought up in Palanpur and migrated to Mumbai at the age of 6.

He acquired his lawyer’s degrees from the prestigious Government Law College and also took part in Gandhiji’s Quit India Movement on August 9, 1942 at the August Kranti Maidan.