Bishnoi spectre in Mumbai and some questions

On a timeline, the 2011 murder of Mumbai journalist Jyotirmoy Dey — a hit commissioned by Chhota Rajan — would mark the end of the underworld’s sway in the city. Its dismantling, though, began on March 12, 1993, when Dawood Ibrahim unleashed horror upon Bombay: Twelve bomb blasts in a span of hours that left 250 dead and the city devastated. It was the day the underworld came over the ground. The D Company crossed the red line when it committed an act of terror against the Indian State.
The decade that followed was Mumbai’s bloodiest. There were weekly shootouts on the streets, each more cinematic than the other. With the might of the State now behind them, the Mumbai police force hunted down gangsters who grew even crueller in their desperation. Sensational killings of industrialist Sunit Khatau, politician Ramdas Nayak, the owner of East-West Airlines, Thakiyudeen Wahid, music baron Gulshan Kumar, and trade unionist Datta Samant were met with counter-killings by the encounter specialists. Over 600 underworld operatives were shot dead in this period.
Slowly, steadily, bloodily, the State prevailed.
Last week’s killing of former minister Baba Siddique on the streets of Bandra in Mumbai, allegedly at the behest of Lawrence Bishnoi, has stoked fears of the return of the underworld in Mumbai. To be sure, the manner of Siddique’s killing was statement-making much like the 1990s underworld. The affable Baba Siddique was at the heart of the trifecta of Bandra — politics, real estate and Bollywood. The biggest superstars of the Hindi film industry went to him for troubleshooting. He was also deeply invested in the city’s real estate, the source of much of his clout. For decades, Bandra (East) where Siddique was shot dead, was literally and metaphorically on the other side of the tracks from Bandra (West), which is called the Queen of the Suburbs and where the city’s Beautiful People live. But the rise of the Bandra Kurla Complex as India’s most expensive commercial arena, and the proposed redevelopment of adjacent Dharavi has sent the value of land in Bandra (East) soaring. Baba Siddique, who had spent his life and career in Bandra (West) as a three-term MLA, was edged out to the East when BJP’s Ashish Shelar supplanted him in 2014. In 2019, Siddique’s son Zeeshan became a first-time Congress MLA from Bandra (East).
In recent months, like in the rest of Mumbai, vast swathes of slum land in Bandra (East) are up for redevelopment. Ahead of the Maharashtra assembly election, the Siddiques, who had since migrated from the Congress to the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party, and were still consolidating their position in Bandra (East), had been opposing the redevelopment of at least three slum parcels spread over 53 acres of prime real estate on either side of Bandra. Multiple real estate sources value these projects at ₹45,000 crore (the recently-inaugurated Mumbai Metro 3 in comparison cost ₹37,000 crore to build). These projects involved several developers, each with their own formidable political clout.
Mumbai police’s preliminary investigation points to the involvement of Lawrence Bishnoi who sits inside Sabarmati jail. Brazen killings of Sidhu Moose Wala, Karni Sena chief Sukhdev Gogamedi, the hazing of Salman Khan, and his snazzy gangsterism have elevated Bishnoi’s popularity among young men with vagrant energy. He now has a gang of 700 such men. One of the main conspirators in Siddique’s killing, Shubham Lonkar, had created a WhatsApp group which avidly discussed eliminating all rapists. As reported by this newspaper, Lonkar was arrested at Akola in January this year under the Arms Act, and despite critical evidence linking him to Bishnoi, was released on bail within a month and lost sight of thereof.
Director Ram Gopal Varma who made Satya and Company, the two most authoritative films on Mumbai underworld, and who enjoys his own cult following on X, has announced his fascination for Bishnoi on social media in anticipation of a possible biopic: “I don’t know a single FILM STAR who is more GOOD LOOKING than B,” he posted.
But Varma is also best placed to know that Bishnoi is nothing like the Mumbai underworld. The gangs — Dawood’s, Chhota Rajan’s, Arun Gawli’s or Amar Naik’s — were run as organised business enterprises with investments in films, real estate, cricket betting, hotels and prostitution. “Ganda hai par dhanda hai” as he said in his own film. Bishnoi’s business model, on the other hand, appears non-existent. Senior police sources maintain they are unaware of Bishnoi’s investments in the city and officially, there is not a single complaint of extortion against him or his men in Mumbai. If the police’s assessments are indeed true then they leave the troubling question about Baba Siddique’s murder: Was Bishnoi, operating from jail, merely used as the sword arm of those in Mumbai who wanted Baba Siddique out?
The views expressed are personal