After working as a staff artist for All India Radio, Mamoon joined the Indian Police Service in 1977.

[2] Mamoon's poetry collection Aafaaq ki Taraf won the 2011 Sahitya Akademi Award for works in Urdu.

Though his earlier career as an Editor of Saughat and Azkaar is quite well known, his later poetry has hardly been read or appreciated, partly due to his self-imposed anonymity and an aversion to public contact.

He nonetheless carefully published many of these poems in two voluminous poetry collections, 'La Ilah' and 'Andherey Ujaley Mein'.

Shivaprakash, Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University resigned from the Karnataka Sahitya Academy in protest of government interference in an autonomous body.