Hassan Habeeb was the father of Rana and Imran, and husband of Saira Habeeb. When Zeedan Nazir proposed to Rana they decided to bring the two families together to celebrate their engagement. However, the engagement party ended suddenly when Zeedan's grandmother Yasmeen exposed her husband Sharif's seven-year extramarital affair with her best friend, Sonia Rahman.
In light of his grandfather's betrayal, Zeedan began having doubts about his wedding to Rana. Even though Yasmeen had started pawning her valuables to pay for the wedding, and Saira and Hassan had already began to organise the ceremony, Zeedan confessed his true feelings to Rana - to which she furiously replied that she never wanted to see him again.
Hassan and Saira were not happy about the cancellation of the wedding and blamed Rana. Later, when it was revealed that Zeedan did actually love Rana, the Habeebs, Yasmeen and Leanne Battersby all helped to organise the wedding. Zeedan and Rana were married later that day and the Habeebs congratulated their daughter.
However, Rana was in fact struggling with her sexuality and her marriage to Zeedan, as she had feelings for Kate Connor. Because of her Muslim upbringing and strict parents, Rana was afraid. Hassan was ashamed to find out his daughter was having an affair with a woman, as it was incompatible with his Islamic values. Rather than divorce, so as to defend his family's reputation, Zeedan and Rana agreed to separate; but remain legally married and in return funding Zeedan’s new restaurant, Speed Daal. They all signed a contract, which assured that Rana would no longer see Kate and that this was to last a year.
Embarrassed at their discovery Kate and Rana were still in a relationship less than a month later, they tried to kidnap Rana to Pakistan, under the guise that Rana's aunt Reena was ill. A gullible Rana fell for her parents’ lie, as they had no intention for her to ever return home to the UK.
However, Zeedan's grandmother Yasmeen was sceptical about the authenticity of the story, so Imran called their cousin Rav in Pakistan, to check whether his aunt was actually ill, which turned out to be a lie. Zeedan, Yasmeen, Kate and Imran raced to the Habeeb family household, and caught Rana just in the nick of time; who was in the back of a taxi heading to Manchester Airport; oblivious to the fact her ticket was only one-way and that her parents were lying to her.
A furious Hassan told an upset Rana that she was disowned, whilst Imran sided with his sister and retorted to their homophobic father that he disowned their parents. parents. Both Hassan and Saira were devastated to hear this.
A few months later Hassan visited Imran at his law firm, not knowing Rana was also there. He ignored her, and invited his son to his birthday party. Despite the fact her parents had previously tried to abduct her, and subjected her to honor based abus and homophobia in the name and her parents’ faith, she was still desperate to out things right between them and was crushed when her dad dismissed her.
On the day of his 60th birthday in August 2018, Hassan suffered a stroke and was admitted to Weatherfield General. He passed away a week later on 17th August, just after Rana had lied to her Mum about her relationship with Kate just so she could be allowed to be at his bedside.
List of appearances
2016
2018