Tiger Shroff shooting: Is Mumbai returning to Dawood's 90s underworld era?

Mumbai once fought a bloody war to crush Dawood Ibrahim's underworld. Decades later, the shooting targeting Tiger Shroff and the Lawrence Bishnoi gang's growing footprint have revived an unsettling question: Is the city staring at a return of the 1990s, when gangsters, extortion and fear stalked Bollywood? Find out.

In Short

• Early 1990s gang wars reportedly killed up to 125 people annually
• Police encounters killed over 500 gangsters amid scrutiny and tougher laws
• MCOCA and mass arrests gradually weakened organised crime across the city

For a city that once lived under the shadow of gang wars, extortion and public shootings, Mumbai had come to regard the underworld as a largely distant memory -- something immortalised in Bollywood films and crime novels rather than a threat on its streets.

But recent incidents, particularly the shooting on Mumbai’s streets targeting actor Tiger Shroff while he was inside his car, have raised an unsettling question: Is the fear of the 1990s returning, and how safe are Bollywood’s stars?

The concern is not just about individual attacks. It is also about the possibility of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang exploiting the vacuum left by an underworld that Mumbai spent decades trying to dismantle.

With no comparable rival gang standing in its way in the city, Lawrence may find it easier to establish a foothold. The murder of former Maharashtra minister Baba Siddique, which the Mumbai Police later attributed to Lawrence’s gang, has added to these concerns.

To understand why the prospect of an underworld revival is alarming, it is worth revisiting the Mumbai of the 1990s -- when gangsters, extortion and encounters were part of the city’s daily reality.

WHEN MUMBAI LIVED UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE UNDERWORLD

In the early 1990s, Dawood Ibrahim had already emerged as a major underworld don. Gang wars and police encounters regularly turned deadly, with an average of 100 to 125 people reportedly killed every year. Extortion was common in Bollywood and among builders, bar owners and businesspeople, big and small.

The Mumbai Police faced pressure from all sides. Eventually, it resolved to wipe out the underworld from the city. This marked the beginning of the encounter era, during which more than 500 gangsters were killed in police shootings. Several encounters later came under scrutiny, but they also brought a number of encounter specialists into the limelight.

The police crackdown was accompanied by demands for tougher laws to rein in organised crime. The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, or MCOCA, was among the measures introduced. Gradually, the crackdown began to show results.

Thousands of gangsters, from small-time operatives to prominent members of the underworld, ended up behind bars. By the turn of the millennium, Mumbai was slowly beginning to free itself from the underworld’s grip.

HOW MUMBAI'S UNDERWORLD FADED

The last shooting in Mumbai attributed to Dawood’s gang, also known as D Company, took place in November 2002. Arun Gawli’s gang committed its last murder in the city in 2008, while the 2011 murder of crime journalist J Dey was the last killing attributed to Chhota Rajan’s gang.

Gangster Ashwin Naik had left the underworld and become a builder. Abu Salem’s gang had fallen apart following his arrest in Portugal in 2002. With one or two exceptions, almost all the major dons and their associates had either been jailed or seen their operations weakened.

After Dawood’s younger brother, Iqbal Kaskar, was deported from Dubai and brought to Mumbai in 2003, D Company gradually scaled back its operations in the city, though it did not shut them down entirely.

Chhota Rajan, who was arrested in Bali and brought to India, is serving a life sentence in Tihar Jail. Abu Salem and Arun Gawli are also serving life sentences in separate cases. Gangsters such as Bunty Pandey and Ravi Pujari are behind bars as well.

For Mumbai, the underworld had become a distant memory, surviving largely through films and crime stories. The recent incidents have unsettled that sense of closure. The question now is whether Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang is trying to occupy the space left behind by the old underworld.

BABA SIDDIQUE'S MURDER

When Baba Siddique was murdered, the motive was initially unclear. Many found it difficult to believe that the killing was intended to intimidate actor Salman Khan. The Mumbai Police later acknowledged that Lawrence’s gang was behind the murder.

That raised a crucial question: if Lawrence’s gang was responsible, what was the motive? Was the killing connected to a larger ambition -- the gang’s entry into Mumbai’s underworld and its attempt to establish a presence in a city once dominated by Dawood and other dons?

The concern is sharpened by the way Lawrence’s gang has operated and expanded beyond its original base. Senior police officers who have worked on the underworld beat believe Lawrence wants to build a network bigger than D Company and take it international. Like Dawood, he is also believed to want a foothold in Mumbai.

FROM DAWOOD AND CHHOTA RAJAN TO LAWRENCE BISHNOI

The underworld’s divisions changed after the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai. It split into two camps, one portrayed as patriotic and the other as anti-national, with the divide also taking on a Hindu-Muslim dimension. Chhota Rajan projected himself as a patriotic don, while Dawood was branded an anti-national don after the blasts.

The trend of invoking nationalism in the underworld’s rivalries, which involved Dawood and Chhota Rajan, has now extended to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. Its social media posts frequently use slogans such as “Jai Shri Ram” and “Jai Bharat”, which, according to the account of senior police officers familiar with the underworld, serve a specific purpose.

The ambition attributed to Lawrence is not limited to Mumbai. According to these officers, he wants to build an international network comparable to -- and potentially bigger than -- D Company.

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