{"id":5486,"date":"2016-07-23T13:09:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-23T07:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5486"},"modified":"2016-07-23T13:09:04","modified_gmt":"2016-07-23T07:39:04","slug":"mumbai-and-its-complicated-relationship-with-the-underworld-mumbai-mirrored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5486","title":{"rendered":"Mumbai and Its Complicated Relationship With the Underworld"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span><\/p>wenty-seven years ago in September 1992, Shashilal K Nair\u2019s <\/span>Angaar<\/span><\/i>, a mafia drama speculated to be based on the life of Karim Lala, the leader of the \u201cPathan gang\u201d that operated from the crime-infested Muslim ghettos of Dongri and Nagpada, released in the theatres. By the advent of the \u201990s, filmmakers being fascinated by the cult of real-life ganglords and modelling the characters in their films on them, was routine affair. But <\/span>Angaar<\/span><\/i>, starring Jackie Shroff, Nana Patekar, and Dimple Kapadia was followed by an unfortunate coincidence.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThere\u2019s a sequence in <\/span>Angaar<\/span><\/i> where gangsters plant bombs in the city. Six months later, a similar situation unfolded across Mumbai when a series of 12 bomb explosions took place in the course of a single day on March 1993. It was a day that not only altered the course of Mumbai. For instance, until the blasts, the Mumbai underworld was said to have been secular, a status that changed after the blasts. Soon, gangs became communalised, and so did pockets in the city.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\n\nIf in the \u201990s, the Mumbai underworld came above ground and fostered a complicated, yet codependent, relationship with the city, then in the late \u201970s, it was just beginning to take shape. According to Julio Ribeiro, the retired Police Commissioner, this was the time when ganglords \u201cused to be afraid of the police\u201d and would never come in front of the inspector. In a <\/span>conversation<\/span> with Mumbai Mirror<\/a>, Ribeiro takes a pragmatic walk down memory lane, describing the situation as a<\/span> \u201cthree-legged stool,\u201d which involved the criminal, the politician, and the police.\u00a0<\/span>\n\n