Gulshan Kumar

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Gulshan Kumar,( गुलशन कुमार ) (?– August 12, 1997) was an Indian Bollywood movie producer.

He was the son of a fruit juice seller in Darya Ganj market in Delhi.

He founded Super Cassette Industries, a small videocassette pirating operation which soon grew to be very big. Later he started a music production company in Noida, near Delhi. He is said to have started the practice of exploiting a loophole in the Indian copyright law, and creating cover versions of popular songs.

To counter exorbitantly priced poor-quality audio tapes which used to be marketed by reputed music companies, Gulshan brought out in the late 1970s very reasonably priced music cassettes with adequate quality. He exported quality music cassettes when his business grew.

Gulshan also introduced religious music cassettes at highly subsidized prices with the idea of promoting religion among fellow Hindus. He produced some movies and TV series which covered Hindu mythology.

The Indian music industry used to be controlled by a few high-profiled singers. Gulshan introduced young talented singers to the music world, Sonu Nigam, Anuradha Paudwal, and Kumar Sanu being the prominent ones among them. He also introduced some new actors and music directors.

Gulshan established a bhandara, serving free home style food to pilgrims who hiked to the Hindu shrine of Shri Mata Vaishno Devi. He became an example for Indian businessmen by sharing his wealth with the community.

Gulshan was said to be the highest tax payer in India in the financial year 1992 - 1993.

[edit] Assassination

As a movie producer, Gulshan became involved with the Indian Mafia (known as the Mumbai Underworld), which was a fixture in the financing of Bollywood movies.

On August 12, 1997, he was assassinated outside the Jeeteshwar Mahadev Mandir (a Hindu temple) in the Juhu suburb of Mumbai. The police accused Nadeem of the music duo Nadeem-Shravan of having paid for the assassination. However, on January 9, 2001, Abdul Rauf (known as "Raja") confessed to being the assassin. On April 29, 2002, Sessions Judge M L Tahilyani sentenced Rauf to life imprisonment (stating that he was not imposing death penalty because the prosecution had failed to prove that Rauf was a contract killer).

[edit] Movie Production

[edit] See also