Dispute that led to death of business rival

Published on Tuesday 23 July 2002 01:00

MOHAMMED Raja gave fellow landlords a bad name. He squeezed as many tenants as possible into his properties and had a reputation for poor maintenance; he ran up more than 100 convictions for breaching regulations.

But he was no Nicholas van Hoogstraten. As one landlord in the area pointed out, he did not deserve to die, in appalling pain, on his own doorstep.

Mike Simpson, the chairman of the Southern Private Landlords Association, knew Mr Raja and van Hoogstraten well and made the a clear distinction.

He said: "Let’s make this clear - he [van Hoogstraten] is a very nasty man. If people cross him, then he takes the law into his own hands. I would say to someone never, ever, do business with him or borrow money from him.

"That’s all Mohammed Raja did. I knew him very well. He was not a good landlord, and he used to pile them in and did not maintain his properties very well. But he was not a nasty man and he did not deserve to die."

But Mr Raja did die - and he knew who to blame.

As one of his grandsons looked on, he shouted in his native Punjabi language: "They are Hoogstraten’s men and they have hit me." Then, addressing his mother, who had died 14 years earlier, Mr Raja added: "Mum, they have hit me."

By then, Richard Knapp and David Croke were escaping down the driveway.

Mr Raja, who had six children, was born in Pakistan and moved to Brighton, Sussex, when he was a young man in the 1960s. He set up in business as a property developer, buying up houses in the town and renting them out to tenants.

He adopted a similar business philosophy to van Hoogstraten, paying scant regard to the legislation governing landlords. He ran up his cricket score of convictions, several of his properties were attacked by arsonists and he was known to have created several enemies during his business dealings.

Mr Raja first met van Hoogstraten in 1988 when he was seeking financial backing to buy more properties. Van Hoogstraten offered to lend money for the deals but insisted on holding on to the deeds as security until Mr Raja could pay him back.

As the arrangement developed, Mr Raja became increasingly unhappy with it and demanded to know from van Hoogstraten how much capital was outstanding.

Van Hoogstraten refused to comply and told him that he would change the locks on the properties on which he held the deeds.

Tenants in the properties then received letters saying Mr Raja had been made bankrupt and that rent payments should be made to van Hoogstraten in future.

In 1994, Mr Raja began a civil action against van Hoogstraten, alleging he had forged his signature on legal documents and accusing him of breach of contract. When he moved his family from Brighton to Sutton, Surrey, two years later, the dispute was still rumbling on.

Van Hoogstraten asked for Mr Raja's original claim to be thrown out of court, but failed. The court battle intensified when Mr Raja amended his accusation in 1999 to a more serious one of fraud.

Van Hoogstraten told Mr Raja’s son, Amjad: "Your dad is a maggot. He does not know what I am. We pick thorns who are a pain and we break them."

Mr Raja knew he was placing himself in danger by taking on van Hoogstraten and, in 1999, he told his grandson, Rizvan, they should check all the windows before answering the door to their home.

He also gathered his family together and warned them to take care. But then the hitmen called.

Yesterday, Mr Raja’s son, Amjad, insisted the family would continue the legal action which had led to his father’s death. He said: "This was a brutal murder. We knew van Hoogstraten was guilty from day one. He sent these killers."