Ram Gopal Verma's fictional character Bhiku Mhatre in Satya stands on a cliff overlooking the sea, and further, at Mumbai’s uneven spread of high-rise concrete, and famously asks, “Who is the king of Mumbai? (Who’s the king of Mumbai)?”
“Bhiku Mhatre,” he shouts out gleefully.
Can the iconic scene be replicated in real life now, with notorious gangland character Lawrence Bishnoi asking the same question? Of course, it wouldn’t be from a cliff but from the high-security Sabarmati Central Jail of Ahmedabad.
Also read: Bishnoi’s Men: How a pool of thugs carried out Baba Siddique’s killing
The question has cropped up as Maximum City grapples with the dramatic killing of Baba Siddique, a prominent politician who was also a serious real estate player.
Has Bishnoi gathered enough muscle power? Does he have a network in Mumbai, or local knowledge of the city? Can he lord over the underworld like the gangsters of an earlier era, such as Dawood Ibrahim, Chota Rajan, Varadarajan Mudaliar and Arun Gawli?
Bishnoi’s journey
To answer these questions, it is important to trace Bishnoi’s journey from small-time gangsterism to international notoriety.
Police officials say Bishnoi is a gangster from North India, initially active in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. He first hit the national headlines by threatening to kill Salman Khan when the actor appeared in court in Jodhpur.
Watch: How is Salman-hater Lawrence Bishnoi calling shots with ‘impunity’ from prison?
Salman was accused of hunting and killing two blackbucks while filming the family drama Hum Saath Saath Hain in Rajasthan in 1998. The Bishnoi community protested against Salman in Rajasthan.
The community considers protecting the blackbuck their spiritual duty because it’s seen as a reincarnation of their 14th Century spiritual leader Guru Maharaj Jambaji. The community abhor any aggressive display of power over animals.
Threat to Salman Khan
Initially dismissed as a publicity stunt, Mumbai police was forced to take notice of the threat to Salman after Bishnoi’s key aide Sampat Nehra was arrested by Haryana police in June 2018.
Nehra had gone to Mumbai and surveyed Salman’s Galaxy Apartments residence in Bandra to see what kind of weapon would be suitable to target the Bollywood star. He took photographs of Salman’s balcony, from where sometimes the star greets his fans gathered outside.
Police officials say Bishnoi had tasked Nehra with targeting Salman. But Nehra was arrested just in time to thwart the attempt. But, since then, an emboldened Bishnoi has ramped up his efforts to target Salman.
Also read: Salman Khan gets death threat, Rs 5 crore sought to ‘end enmity’ with Lawrence Bishnoi
After the killing of singer Sidhu Moosewala in 2022 by the Bishnoi gang, Salman again received a threatening letter saying he would meet a fate similar to the singer.
Earlier this year, shots were fired at the filmstar’s residence. In February, the police got to know of another plan to target Salman around his farmhouse in Panvel. The police arrested members of a hit team stationed there.
Bishnoi in jail
While all this mayhem has been unleashed by the Bishnoi gang, the kingpin himself has been lodged in jail for the past nine years, following his arrest in 2015, said a police official, who has interrogated Bishnoi at length in many cases.
“We have been filing FIRs against him (over recent incidents). But he can plead innocence, in all these cases, on the ground that he has been in jail, under the surveillance of jail authorities, and could not have masterminded all these crimes,” the official told The Federal.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, added that going forward, too, police may find it difficult to pin all these cases on Lawrence since he is in custody.
Also read: Siddique killing | Why Mumbai police is unable to secure Bishnoi’s custody
“He doesn’t need to speak to foot soldiers now. And many times, he doesn’t even know the identity of the foot soldiers who carry out the killings on his behalf. It is likely that he orally passes on instructions to someone in the jail itself. These are further passed on to his associates sitting outside the country and they gather a hit team to execute an operation,” the official explained.
NIA roped in
After the killing of Moosewala, the Union Home Ministry decided to bring in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to probe the gangster-narco smuggling-terror nexus.
“It was found that Bishnoi was easily manipulating the jail system by greasing the palms of key jail officials to run his criminal empire without hindrance,” a retired police official, who had been part of the probe against the Bishnoi gang, told The Federal. “Keeping jail officials happy would also ensure his protection inside the jail.”
Union Home Minister Amit Shah directed the transfer of the probe on the gangster-narco-terror nexus to the NIA, added the official.
“It was decided to send Lawrence to Sabarmati jail to cut off his access to his aides. Given a chance, Lawrence would not have been shifted to Sabarmati jail. He was very much against the move,” added the former police official.
But Baba Siddique’s murder indicates that Lawrence managed to find a way to continue with his activities even from Sabarmati Jail.
Motive for Siddique’s murder
The key question for Mumbai police, however, is – why Siddique was targeted? What was the motive?
According to a Maharashtra police official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, on the face of it, as claimed by the Bishnoi gang, it looks like the politician was targeted because of his closeness to Salman Khan.
“This is the most credible line of probe that has emerged. But, so far, we have only interrogated the foot soldiers in the case who don’t have any inkling about the real motive of Siddique’s murder. We can get more clarity on this when we interrogate Lawrence himself and his key aides who planned the murder,” the Maharashtra police official told The Federal.
Builder-politician nexus
There is another angle as well. Police officials say Siddique was involved in a public spat with authorities over slum redevelopment projects in the Bandra-Kurla Complex area.
Was Siddique’s opposition to these redevelopment projects a motive behind his murder? Mumbai police is not willing to comment on this yet except saying all angles are being probed.
Also read | Moosewala murder: Gangs, not guns, at root of Punjab’s violence
Sources say a strong lobby of builders and politicians is interested in these redevelopment projects but they had been stalled due to opposition from Siddique.
A former Mumbai police official, who didn’t wish to be named, told The Federal that today, one may not see overt underworld activity in Mumbai similar to the 1990s. But, if one scratches just below the surface, a strong nexus of builders, politicians and police is still operating to ensure real estate projects in tricky areas are completed without hindrance in the city.
It’s just that blood has stopped spilling on the streets since it’s not in anyone’s interest, he added.
Calm in Mumbai
In this backdrop, Siddique’s murder may be Bishnoi’s attempt to gain a foothold in the Mumbai underworld. It gives him more notoriety and shows his reach.
“But there are vested interests who don’t want to disturb the calm in Mumbai,” said the former Maharashtra police official quoted above. “Besides, one needs a local network with intimate knowledge of local areas and people to gain a footing in the Mumbai underworld, which Lawrence lacks. In Mumbai, you cannot gauge the worth of a person sitting next to you in the local train, so it will be difficult for an outsider to operate without a network.”
He added that the chances of Mumbai falling back into those dark days of 1990s, when the underworld ruled the city, are negligible.
No doubt, Baba Siddique’s murder is a wake-up call for authorities but the killing is an aberration, he said, adding that the local police needs to investigate the Siddique murder thoroughly to ensure that it does not happen again.
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