Mukhtar Mohidin made history by becoming Britain’s first National Lottery multi-millionaire in November 1994, after he scooped the first rollover jackpot, winning the then unimaginable sum of £17.9 million which at the time was the biggest lottery win.
Mukhtar was 42-year-old and working in chemical factory, living with his wife, Sayeeda, and their three young children, in a redbrick terraced house in Blackburn, Lancashire when he bought the magic ticket in Tesco.
As soon the massive cheque been deposited in his new account at the Yorkshire Bank his relatives were riven by jealous feuds as they fought for a share of the spoils.
Mukhtar arrived in Britain in the Seventies and settled in Blackburn with his parents, he was working in a chemical plant and earning money by renting out a workshop he had bought. While His wife earned £100 a week in the local factory.
After his National Lottery win he donated £300,000 to build a local community centre in Plane Street but they refused to accept offers of donations from him.
Mukhtar was shunned by his local Muslim community after the win and fled Blackburn with his wife Sayeeda and children to start a new life in the Home Counties. Rejected by the community, family changed their names, and his wife obtained a court injunction preventing their children from being identified. Thereafter, they vanished into obscurity.
Indian-born Sayeeda who had always been more Westernised than her husband, started splashing out money on trips, luxury hotels and shoppings, but Mukhtar complained on it.
Sayeeda was embarrassed after they checked them out of an expensive hotel and into a cheap package resort by Mukhtar. Their differences over how the millions ought to be spent continued on foreign trips.
Mr Mohidin
But his marriage to wife, Sayeeda, quickly fell apart amid rows over spending and their lifestyle. Then in 1998, after he reportedly hit her and threatened her with a gun, Sayeeda obtained a divorce.
She received a £5 million settlement, plus possession of the house and £60,000 per year in maintenance for each of their children. Sayeeda was left to care for the pair’s three children after the divorce.
After they divorced in 1998, the multi-millionaire recreated himself as ‘Mike’ – a wealthy investment banker. Mukhtar started going off alone on trips.
Without friends or a family home, and cut off from his roots, Mr Mohidin drifted from club to bar to casino, using his cash to buy company.
Mukhtar gambled in London’s top casinos and spend time women who he lavished with presents and luxury holidays to impress them.
Mukhtar fell in love with an Anglo-Indian £800-a-night girl named Charlotte Doyle and she gave birth to his love child who is now a teenager. Doyle had described him as a ‘troubled and confused’ man.
Mukhtar fell ill because of to his debauched lifestyle, including kidney failure, liver cirrhosis and heart disease, died on August 23 2017, at a hospital in Berkshire. He was believed to be 63 at time of his death.
His funeral took place today at Slough Cemetery with prayers at the Jamia Masjid in the town, there was nothing special about his funeral, no limousines or grandiloquent speeches.
Like most of the mourners, the imam who conducted the service knew nothing of the extraordinary life he had led. Having turned his back on his family life and working-class roots today he lies in an unmarked grave in Berkshire. Mohidin is now just plot Q1147.
