In the early 1990s, when the rest of Mumbai's encounter specialists were beginning to cut to size Mumbai's dreaded underworld, Khan was busy doing something tougher.
He was hammering the final nails into one of independent India's bloodiest episodes - the Khalistan movement.
The militants, who were facing the heat in Punjab, had begun to flee to Mumbai and regroup to fight another day. Khan, who was the head of the anti-terrorism squad, was given responsibility of flushing out the militants.
The swift and ruthless manner in which he rooted out the menace saw his stock soar.
Soon, he got mired in controversy as quickly as he had rose to fame.
In 1992, a residential complex bore the brunt of more than 700 rounds of ammunition, resulting in five dead gangsters.
The truth of what happened there was never known.
One side maintains that the killed gangsters were renegades from Dawood Ibrahim's group and that Khan and his colleagues bumped them off as a favour to the don.
The other side says that these were really Dawood's men and they were killed because they retaliated.
It was also alleged that the cops made off with Rs 70 lakh, which the criminals had extorted from a businessman.
As allegations flew from all sides, Khan resigned from the police force. He was in the course of time exonerated in three of the four investigations initiated against him.
Cashing in on his image, he dabbled in politics for a while before setting up a private security firm.
Image: Aftab Ahmed Khan.
Also read: 'I've done 83 encounters'
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