[1][2][3][4] He was given a National Award[clarification needed] by the government of India in 1993 for writing a series of short stories called the "Teesri Aankh".

[5] Abid Surti was born in a Gujarati Muslim family on 5 May 1935 at Vavera, near Rajula, Gujarat, India to Gulam Hussain and Sakina Begum.

He has also been writing for Hindi and Gujarati newspapers and magazines for over 40 years and received a National Award for his short-story collection Teesri Aankh in 1993.

When his first love broke down due to family pressure, the teenaged Aabid had no one to confide in – so he began putting his story on paper.

[9] His latest novel, Sufi, describes the parallel lives of two friends: the author himself and a man called Iqbal Rupani, who rose to become the kingpin of the Mumbai underworld in the 1960s and 1970s.

[1] He has together with his son Aalif Surti and Chandrika Vyas, Rima Kashyap also penned a controversial and hard-hitting novel called In Name of Rama inspired by a true incident during the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

[6] Recently, he has sued the makers of the Bollywood film Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge, which he says used his Gujarati novel Bauter Varas No Babo, published in 1976 and later translated into Hindi as Bahatar Saal Ka Baccha.

[14][15] He has written graphic children's novels in Hindi, including Buddh kyun muskuraye 2500 saal baad (Why did the Buddha smile after 2500 years).

In his early years, he invented an innovative technique called "mirror collage" which won critical acclaim in Japan.

It consisted of a comic feature of four pages in colour with three prominent characters – a boy, a girl and a monkey, entitled Rang Lakhudi.

Raj Kapoor once wanted to make a film based on Inspector Azad, showing that the popularity of his comic strips were high.