Karim Lala (1911 – February 19, 2002), born as Abdul Karim Sher Khan in Kunar province of Afghanistan, was self-proclaimed ‘don of Mumbai’ in India. He is recognized as the founder and pioneer of the Indian mafia in the Mumbai area. He went to work in Mumbai’s docks in the early 1940s via Peshawar, but he rose to prominence, along with Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudaliar. Karim Lala and his fellow Mafia leaders were based in Mumbai.
They were involved in smuggling jewellery, running gambling and liquor dens, extortion rackets and selling Hashish. Karim Lala was an ethnic Pashtun, he died on February 19, 2002, at the age of 90.