Not the unhealthy outdated days in Mumbai

A number of the main gangs then had been the D-gang led by fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, adopted by the Rajan gang, first led by Rajan Nair aka Bada Rajan and after his loss of life, taken over by Rajendra Nikhalje aka Chhota Rajan. In 1993, Rajan cut up with Dawood and one other gangster, Chhota Shakeel, changed Rajan within the D-gang and began dealing with its operations. Dawood and Shakeel moved their base to Pakistan within the early Nineties, the place they proceed to stay and deal with their operations underneath the patronage of Pakistan’s ISI. One other dreaded gang was the Arun Gawli gang, which operated from the Dagdi Chawl within the Agripada space of south-central Mumbai. Brothers Amar and Ashwin Naik, too, operated their gang from the Chinchpokli space of south-central Mumbai.

Abu Salem, presently lodged in a Mumbai jail, was a crony of Chhota Shakeel and would make extortion calls to Bollywood celebrities, businessmen and industrialists. He later branched out on his personal and continued extortion killings in Mumbai. He shot to infamy with the broad daylight killing of music baron Gulshan Kumar. Salem was arrested in Portugal in 2002 and deported to India in 2005.

Aside from these figures, gangsters like Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Karim Lala, Guru Satam, Manya Surve, Ashok Joshi, Babu Reshim and Maya Dolas terrorised Mumbai. From smuggling operations within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, these gangs moved on to extortion, kidnapping and “supari” killings by the early Eighties. This transformation was helmed by Dawood Ibrahim and made the underworld way more dreaded.

Within the late Nineties, Mumbai Police awakened virtually in a single day, like a large from a deep slumber. I used to be posted as Joint Commissioner of Police in Mumbai in June 1998 and was made chief of the Mumbai Crime Department. Below the supervision of the then police chief, Ronnie Mendonca, Mumbai Police got here up with a multi-pronged technique to sort out the underworld menace. This caught the criminals fully off-guard.

One technique was to revive an already present legislation, which was gathering mud. The Maharashtra Prevention of Disruptive Actions (MPDA) Act, 1981, was resurrected. Armed with the MPDA, Mumbai Police recognized criminals, gangsters, historical past sheeters, and anti-social components and began appearing in opposition to them. As many as 1,600 gangsters had been put behind bars underneath MPDA. Many of the criminals detained had been extortionists. The Mumbai Police was additionally incentivised to mop up unlawful weapons floating within the metropolis. In three years, a report 2,500 unlawful weapons had been recovered, together with AK47s and hand grenades.

Immediate trials and correct follow-up in courts bought stringent convictions for criminals in pending circumstances — for instance, the J J Hospital shootout case (1992), by which Subash Singh Thakur was handed the loss of life sentence. It was later commuted to a life sentence.

Digital surveillance capabilities had been elevated and we might discover with better ease the plans of the gangsters overseas. The Mumbai Police waited exterior potential victims’ properties and places of work and neutralised the risk. This gave super confidence to Bollywood and enterprise personalities.

Many gangsters had been killed in police encounters, which additionally unfold worry within the underworld. The gangsters had been emboldened by the encounter petition filed by Abu Azmi and the findings of the Justice Aguiar committee. Judgments given by the Bombay Excessive Court docket, and later, by the Supreme Court docket laid down circumstances to be adopted in such issues.

Talent improvement coaching was organised by the Mumbai police with the assistance of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) for its officers within the artwork of surveillance, shadowing and intelligence gathering.

An in-depth research additionally revealed that legal guidelines just like the Prevention of Terrorists and Disruptive Actions (POTA) Act and the Terrorists And Disruptive Actions (TADA) Act, enacted particularly to maintain criminals in test, had failed. It was clear that Mumbai Police must arm itself with a brand new legislative weapon to tackle the mighty underworld. This got here within the type of the Maharashtra Management of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). This well-thought-out laws was enacted by the Authorities of Maharashtra (in a report time of two-three months). The impact of MCOCA was that the shootouts peaked at 101 in 1998, got here all the way down to 12 in 2001 and none after 2002. The killing of journalist J Dey in June 2011 is considered one of few exceptions.

After a battle of 5 many years, the Mumbai Police lastly destroyed the Mumbai underworld and organised crime. MCOCA has carried out its job and continues to take action to this point.

Though Baba Siddique’s killing has all of the indicators of a gangland killing, it’s naïve to time period it because the resurrection of the underworld. It’s at most a attainable begin to one thing sinister, however, whether it is tackled successfully and in a well timed method, it may be decreased to a one-off incident.

Mumbai Police has ample assets to take care of such a menace. It has the highly effective MCOCA at its disposal, as efficient at present because it was virtually 25 years in the past when it was first enacted.

Baba Siddique’s killing ought to come as a wake-up name for the Mumbai Police. It’s excessive time that it awakens the large inside.

The author is Director Basic of Police (DGP) (Retired), Maharashtra, former Police Commissioner of Mumbai and former chief of the Mumbai Crime Department, Joint Director of CBI and IB.