Slum landlord Mohammed Sabir Raja was one of Brighton and Hove's more notorious figures. But he did not deserve to die.

Certainly, he accumulated almost 100 convictions for health and safety violations in his property empire and almost as many enemies.

But he was also a dedicated family man, devoted to his three sons, three daughters and grandchildren.

Few tears would have been shed for Raja by his tenants when the 62-year-old was gunned down on his doorstep.

But the brutal and abrupt end was even harder for his relatives as he was killed in front of his two grandsons.

Raja had built an empire out of property and was among the city's biggest landlords when he died in July 1999.

A self-made man, he had grown up in the tiny village of Tatral, near Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

He married in 1951 and after having three sons in the 1950s, he left Pakistan in 1962 for Brighton to study business.

Raja took on a number of menial jobs, promising to bring his young family over when he could afford to.

In 1967, he bought his first property, at Lorna Road, Hove. Three years later, he brought his family to the UK.

Raja steadily built his empire over the next three decades and, by the time of his death, owned more than 100 properties. Many were in Sussex but his empire extended to London and even Manchester.

However, he was rarely far from controversy.

In 1981, Raja was fined £750 with £600 costs for attempting to bribe a council rent officer.

But he said it was a "clear misunderstanding" and he was not used to dealing "in the English way".

Five years earlier, Raja had been criticised for housing up to 16 tenants in a property at Goldstone Road, Brighton, which had just two toilets and one bath.

In September 1989 The Argus carried out a special investigation into the man dubbed "the worst landlord in Brighton".

We revealed properties beset with damp and mould problems, tenants who had to cover their walls with bin bags to keep the room dry and a widow whose draughty flat contained exposed wires and no hot water.

But Raja was unrepentant.

Hesaid: "Tenants, including the young people and those who are on the dole, they have nothing to do except fight each other and damage the property.

"Some of the dossers are so irresponsible.

"It is the local people who live like this. There are no foreigners in my houses.

"Pakistanis and Jews work hard and get on. I have. If people want to live in a doss house or a palace, it is their choice."

In December of the same year, arsonists struck three times at a house owned by Raja and managed by his son Amjad.

One elderly man was taken to hospital, suffering the effects of smoke, and about ten other tenants were evacuated.

Amjad Raja said he thought it was possible someone who read the investigative report was retaliating against the family.

However, complaints about Raja's properties continued.

In 1991, Raja and Amjad Raja let out a room to a sick widower without hot water, a cooker or fridge. Magistrates found both men guilty of letting the property in Ditchling Road to too many households.

In 1995, Raja was fined £10,500 for 17 counts of breaking housing regulations at a property in Goldstone Villas, Hove.

But the following January, Judge Malcolm Devonshire overturned six of the convictions and reduced Raja's fine.

The same year, Raja moved to Sutton in Surrey to be nearer to his mostly London-based family.

It was there, on July 2, 1999, he was killed.

After a funeral at the Croydon Mosque, Raja's wife, Starbie, and their children flew his body to Pakistan.

There in the village of Tatral, which he had worked so hard to escape, he was finally laid to rest.