Tiger Shroff's escape echoes 90s Bollywood nightmares. Is Mumbai's underworld back, or did it never die?

Mumbai's underworld, particularly in the 1990s, was synonymous with Bollywood extortion, contract killings and fear. Today, the old gangs might have evolved in terms of how they function in Mumbai, but has the threat really disappeared? The shooting involving actor Tiger Shroff raises the question if the Lawrence Bishnoi gang is trying to revive those dark days.

In Short

• Old underworld networks increasingly favour real estate, film rights and smuggling
• Experts doubt the claims that 200 Bishnoi gang shooters operate across Mumbai
• Impoverished youth remain vulnerable to recruitment in gangs through social media

As actor Tiger Shroff's car pulled away from Mumbai's Jamnabai Narsee Ground in Juhu, where fans had gathered for a glimpse of the actor, three shooters allegedly linked to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang opened fire on his car, injuring his driver and a passerby. Shroff escaped with minor injuries from sparks caused by the gunfire. The shooting has revived a question that has haunted Mumbai from time to time — is the city slipping back into the 1990s, when the underworld dominated by Dawood Ibrahim, Arun Gawli, Karim Lala, Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar, treated Bollywood as both a cash cow and a battlefield?

The shooting incident has also raised questions about how much of Mumbai's old underworld survives today, and whether a new set of players is trying to revive its influence.

Senior journalist and defence expert Sandeep Unnithan, who recently interviewed a shooter from gangster-terrorist Abu Salem's gang, Arif Mohammad Shaikh, on his independent digital platform Chakra News, flagged the possibility of a return to that era. In the interview, Shaikh told Unnithan that the days of underworld targeting of Bollywood were over. "Seems he was mistaken. Is Mumbai back to the 1990s? Hope not," Unnithan said in a post on X.

Unnithan reconstructed the shooting incident's sequence with clinical detail. He pointed out that the second shooter appeared to struggle with his pistol, raising the possibility that the weapon had jammed. "They meant to kill him — that much is clear. It's a miracle Tiger Shroff survived," Unnithan wrote on X, sharing the video of the shooting attempt.

So, is the Lawrence Bishnoi gang attempting to fill the vacuum left by Mumbai's older underworld networks, using targeted attacks to establish its presence and build a reputation beyond its traditional strongholds?

To answer that, India Today Digital spoke to Vivek Agrawal, an investigative journalist who has covered Mumbai's underworld, terrorism, and homeland security for more than three decades, and has authored over a dozen books on these subjects.

CLASSIC UNDERWORLD IS DEAD, AND YET IT'S ALIVE IN MUMBAI

"The absolute clear point is that in Mumbai, now the classic underworld activities — killing, hafta collection, spreading terror in the minds of people — have all ended," Agrawal told India Today Digital.

The old playbook of contract killings, systematic extortion, and public intimidation wound down around 2001. "It has never been officially declared by anyone that the underworld is finished, but we know that after 2001, there has been only very small, petty criminal activity by any gangster. No major incident, no real shoot-out," Agrawal said.

According to him, what remains of the old networks has shifted into white-collar and smuggling operations. Agrawal explained, "Whether remnants of the Dawood Ibrahim network, the Arun Gawli gang, or others, they have largely gone into real estate business and buying film rights."

"But the old underworld networks are still involved in smuggling gold, arms, mobile phones and electronics," Agrawal said. Another lesser-known trade, he added, is smuggling Viagra from India to the US and Gulf countries, where it sells for six to eight times the Indian price.

Agrawal's account reveals that the underworld networks, therefore, have not disappeared in Mumbai, they have evolved.

ARE 200 SHOOTERS REALLY ACTIVE IN MUMBAI?

An alleged Lawrence Bishnoi gang operative, Anil Pandit, who operated from the US, claimed in an audio message soon after the shooting incident on Sunday (October 18) that the gang has 200 shooters active in Mumbai alone.

However, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has described Lawrence Bishnoi as the head of a 700-member criminal enterprise, including 300 operatives from his home state, Punjab. "So, 200 shooters alone in Mumbai doesn't make any sense," said Agrawal.

There are also logistics involved. "Maintaining 200 active shooters in a city like Mumbai requires a sea of money," Agrawal said, adding that the claim is ridiculous.

Maharashtra's former DGP, Praveen Dixit, told India Today Digital, "Police will definitely investigate the claim... Easy money, attraction for weapons and having no skills lure many to this 'adventurous' activity."

This raises another question, about how gangs like Lawrence Bishnoi's recruit and draw young men into their ranks.

GANGS STILL RECRUIT THE SAME WAY AS IN THE 1990s

Recruitment patterns of the underworld have changed little over the decades. It is often young men from impoverished backgrounds who are recruited to do the dirty work, as appears to be the case with the shooters in the Tiger Shroff case, according to the news reports.

"Even 40–50 years ago, the Mumbai underworld was built not by the rich but by people living hand to mouth. Karim Lala, Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar, Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan, Arun Gawli, Amar Naik — all started small. The human pipeline opened wide during the great mill strikes of the 1970s and 1980s. Mass unemployment pushed young men into hafta collection and contract killing while women from the same households entered dance bars. The same logic continues today — gangs still pull recruits from poor families in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana," explained Vivek Agrawal.

"Pretty much every gang operates like this," Agrawal noted.

Former Maharashtra DGP Praveen Dixit pointed to the role of social media in this process, saying, "The fact [is] that through social media, many are being identified to be recruited, and few others get attracted [to gangs] because of the image."

IS LAWRENCE BISHNOI GANG TRYING TO ESTABLISH ITSELF IN MUMBAI?

Just over two years after NCP leader Baba Siddique was shot dead in Mumbai's Bandra East in October 2024, the shooting involving Tiger Shroff has once again raised questions about the Lawrence Bishnoi gang's activities in the city.

Reports of the gang conducting a recce of actor Salman Khan's residence have also surfaced over the years. So, could Lawrence Bishnoi establish himself as the city's new underworld don?

Agrawal is sceptical about the Bishnoi gang's ability to establish itself in Mumbai. "It is very difficult for people working from outside Mumbai, who are outsiders to the city, to become gangsters here. Apart from the Mumbai Police's reach and its battle-hardened force, the city's topography also plays a role here," he explained.

"Most Indian cities grew as inkblot patterns, radiating outward with dozens of escape routes in every direction. Mumbai is linear, running essentially south to north with limited east-west depth. After a crime, the number of viable getaway corridors is far smaller. Plus, the level of intelligence now is unmatched compared to the 1990s. Success requires intimate, lived knowledge of the city's lanes and rhythms, something an outsider organisation finds hard to acquire," Agrawal said.

What remains possible, Agrawal suggested, are sporadic, attention-seeking incidents. "With sustained political patronage, the Lawrence Bishnoi group can continue small operations, build a name through fear and extract money from other cities. One classic example is the Gulshan Kumar murder case. On the day Kumar was murdered, threats from Abu Salem reportedly led to Rs 12.5 crore in hawala money being moved from the film industry before dawn the next day. This is a game of creating fear," Agrawal said.

The Tiger Shroff episode, in this reading, does not signal a revival of the 1990s underworld. The old machinery of public terror and systematic extortion has largely shut down. What persists is a thinner, more opportunistic network that still knows how to recruit the desperate, still trades in smuggled goods, and still understands that a single high-profile case can keep a name alive.

But that, sometimes, is enough to restore the old nightmares Mumbai has lived through.

- Ends