D Sivanandhan: Mumbai Police has a lot of answering to do

When smugglers like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Vardharajan Mudaliar ruled the roost they were truly the underworld—operating from the shadows. Then Bollywood began to glorify them. Films like the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer ‘Deewar’ based on the early life of Haji Mastan or Mani Ratnam’s ‘Nayakan’ based on Vardharajan Mudaliar’s life turned them into larger-than-life figures

Sunday’s attack on film star Tiger Shroff in Mumbai raises the worrying spectre of the return of the underworld in Mumbai following a lull of 22 years from 2002–2024. Why is this happening now? Had the underworld been eliminated or had it merely receded in the background?

Mumbai, India - April 15, 2016: Subhash Patil, D. Sivanandhan, Former Director General of Police, Maharashtra, Fu Qi, Director of Qingdea Committee of the Chinese People Political Consultative, during the " Making our cities safe and secure" at BRICS Friendship Cities Conclave 2016 at Trident, in Mumbai, India, on Friday, April 15, 2016. (Photo by Bhushan Koyande)

When smugglers like Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Vardharajan Mudaliar ruled the roost they were truly the underworld—operating from the shadows. Then Bollywood began to glorify them. Films like the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer ‘Deewar’ based on the early life of Haji Mastan or Mani Ratnam’s ‘Nayakan’ based on Vardharajan Mudaliar’s life turned them into larger-than-life figures.

Rendered heroes on celluloid these mafiosi figures turned on Bollywood in turn. Dawood Ibrahim began using films to launder black money while his cronies like Chota Shakeel, Abu Salem along with Dawood’s younger brother Anees Ibrahim tried to reign over Bollywood by funding and producing movies, forcing producers and directors to give work to certain actresses of their choice.

By late 1990s, the underworld had a chokehold on the Mumbai film industry. When I took over the reins of the Mumbai crime branch in June 1998 under the leadership of commissioner of police RH Mendonca, we decided to once and for all end the dominance of these gangs. A team of dedicated Mumbai Police officers took several steps, including implementing the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), which broke the financial back of the gangs. From 1998 to 2001, in a span of three years, more than 1600 criminals were detained under Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities for a year, several hundred firearms were confiscated which resulted in disarming the gangsters. The impact of these measures and the police encounters was such that there was no attack on a film personality after the attack on filmmaker Lawrence D’Souza in 2002 until 2024.

Quite clearly there is no known connection between Tiger Shroff and Salman Khan, apart from being industry colleagues they do not have any known professional association in the past nor have they announced any work to be done in the future. The reason to target Tiger Shroff is only to spread fear and panic in Bollywood so that they can be easy extortion targets.

Another question that begs an answer is this: Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi has been lodged in the Sabarmati Jail in Gujarat for the past so many years, so how is he able to run his gang and criminal activities with such ease from inside the jail? Why haven’t the police questioned him despite his name being involved in almost every attack on a film personality in Mumbai?

The Mumbai Police, already under tremendous pressure to control these attacks on Bollywood, has a lot to answer for. Even though they along with Rajasthan police have managed to apprehend the shooters who fired on Tiger Shroff within a few hours of the firing incident, they clearly need to do a lot more and provide answers to bigger questions that are looming large about the impunity with which Lawrence Bishnoi and his gang are operating.

The writer is retired Director General of Police (DGP), Maharashtra, and former Police Commissioner of Mumbai. He is also the author of ‘The Brahmastra Unleashed: A first person account of how the Mumbai underworld was annihilated’.