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| Level of underworld activity goes up | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, JUNE 13: India's notorious mafia gangs have regrouped. Higher-ups in the Union Home Ministry have point out that the rise in criminal activity in the country's financial hub, Mumbai, is all too real and it has police and other officials worried that notorious gangs have regrouped.
It could be a move script--hitmen shooting police informers, mafia bosses collecting protection money from Bollywood actors and producers! Mafia gangs are back. And this time it appears to be a new generation of young mob bosses bent on making a name for themselves who are trying to cash in on a property boom in Mumbai and a cash-flush Bollywood, the world's largest film industry by ticket sales which is headquartered in Mumbai.
Police as well as intelligence agencies admit that the level of underworld activity has gone up in the past few months. Besides known mafia dons who terrorised Mumbai in the past, younger gangsters have risen to fill a vacuum created after a determined campaign by police forced the old mob to lie low. Now, Mumbai's notorious mafia -- said to be remote controlled by bosses based in Dubai, Karachi and Malaysia -- is reviving itself, police say, as gangs find it difficult to resist the spoils of India's booming economy.
Mumbai has been in the thick of a national real estate explosion with new shopping malls, apartment blocks and entertainment plazas being built over the last three years. For Bollywood, the past two years have been its best ever with filmmakers making huge profits and actors bagging enormous fees. Last month, a mob boss boasted on a national television channel that three Bollywood personalities, including two top filmmakers, were on his hit list because they were refusing to pay him protection money.
According to statistics available with the Union Home Ministry, police have arrested at least five assassins on contract killing missions in recent months and received an increased number of complaints of extortion calls. Two weeks ago, a young man was shot dead in a crowded bar, the latest among several police informants killed recently. Mumbai's police chief, DN Jadhav, has been quoted as aying: "Let us not generalise, but there could be some more instances of criminal activity than the previous years. There are some particular cases where the underworld activity has come to our notice".
In the 1990s, Mumbai, then known as Bombay, faced a tide of mafia killings, abductions and extortion demands with rich builders and Bollywood being the prime targets. But during a decade of violent confrontations, police busted hideouts and shot dead at least 350 suspected gangsters, breaking the back of gangs and sending mobsters on the run. This time, the problem has compounded because younger gangsters are increasingly trying to establish their turf and grab a share of the booty.
While the Bollywood set has always been an easy target, gangs are now attracted by Mumbai's property business, one of the hottest in the world where real estate prices equal those in New York or Tokyo. The mafia's nexus with Mumbai's builders and Bollywood is a badly kept secret. While some builders turn to gangsters to secure prime real estate, settle disputes and even bump off rivals, many Bollywood producers have borrowed money from the mafia and even used it to entice box-office actors to perform in their films, according to official information.
Realising the kind of big money involved in both the construction and the movie industry, the mafia has even began bankrolling projects. The police began cracking down on Mumbai's mafia after the 1993 bombings in Mumbai, India's worst, which were blamed on a Muslim crime boss and India's most wanted man, Dawood Ibrahim.
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