Dear Bollywood, if you’ve run out of scripts, maybe it’s time to look a little closer to home. While your latest spy thriller drops Ranveer Singh into Karachi’s Lyari portrayed as the global epicenter of terrorism—the truth is that your own backyard in Mumbai is overflowing with stories far more cinematic, dangerous, and real. Instead of inventing tales to paint Pakistan in a negative light, why not mine the true underworld dramas of Mumbai? Gang wars, notorious dons, daring cops – these stories are stranger than fiction and already proven hits.
Here are five real-life underworld stories from Mumbai that could easily rival any thriller – no imagination required:
1. The Gentleman Smuggler: Haji Mastan’s Rise and Bollywood Connection (1960s-1970s)
Haji Mastan Mirza arrived in Bombay as a poor young boy from Tamil Nadu and started his career working as a porter at the city’s docks. This position offered him a golden opportunity: the flourishing business of smuggling. Due to high import duties, gold, silver, and electronic goods became highly lucrative black-market items.
Mastan quickly became a master smuggler, but his unique story lies in his demeanor. Unlike the brutal Pathan gangs of the time, Mastan avoided bloodshed and was known as a “Gentleman Don.” He cultivated a glamorous public image, always dressed immaculately in white, driving white Mercedes cars, and wearing expensive gold watches.
His greatest power move was establishing deep ties with Bollywood. He invested his black money into film production, gaining influence and celebrity status. He would openly hobnob with famous actors and directors, turning him into the city’s first “celebrity gangster.” This allowed him to operate with a layer of legitimacy and protection that other criminals lacked. Mastan was instrumental in brokering a peace treaty between the three major dons of his era—himself, Karim Lala, and Varadarajan Mudaliar—effectively dividing Bombay into harmonious criminal territories.
2. The Parallel Judiciary of Varadarajan Mudaliar (“Vardha Bhai”) (1960s-1980s)
Varadarajan Mudaliar was another pillar of the original underworld trio. He started his criminal life by stealing dock cargo and selling illicit liquor, but he soon became a feared and respected figure in areas like Dharavi and Matunga, which had a large Tamil population.
Varadarajan’s claim to fame was running a “parallel court”—an unofficial but binding justice system for the poor. When residents in his strongholds faced local disputes, property arguments, or family quarrels, they often bypassed the notoriously slow and corrupt police system and went to “Vardha Bhai.” His verdict was considered the final law of the land.
He blended his criminal empire with community service, notably through organizing lavish and highly publicized Ganesh Chaturthi festivals at Matunga station. These acts cemented his status as a “Godfather” among the marginalized, giving him immense local support. It was only when a determined police officer, Y. C. Pawar, launched a systematic crackdown on his operations in the early 1980s, targeting his dens and jailing his men, that Varadarajan’s power waned, eventually forcing him to flee Bombay.
3. The Pathan Gang War and the Birth of D-Company (Early 1980s)
The old guard’s dominance was shattered by the ruthless ambition of a young man named Dawood Ibrahim. Dawood and his older brother, Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar, formed a fledgling gang called the D-Company. This immediately brought them into direct conflict with the reigning power: Karim Lala’s formidable Pathan Gang.
The Pathans, known for their intimidating physique and brute force, initially saw the Ibrahim brothers as little more than upstarts. The rivalry turned bloody and personal in 1981 when the Pathan gang, led by Samad Khan, ambushed and brutally murdered Shabir Ibrahim Kaskar at a petrol pump in Prabhadevi.
Shabir’s killing became the pivotal moment in the Mumbai underworld’s history. Dawood’s grief transformed into a relentless, icy quest for revenge. He systematically hunted down and eliminated Samad Khan and the key members of the Pathan gang. This gruesome gang war, often fought with impunity, effectively crushed the Pathan power structure and elevated Dawood Ibrahim from a local hoodlum to the undisputed, most powerful crime lord in Bombay, making the D-Company the new face of organized crime.
4. The Schism: Chhota Rajan and the Rise of Communal Gang War (Post-1993)
The 1993 Mumbai serial bombings, orchestrated by Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company, forever changed the nature of the Mumbai underworld, transforming it from a money-driven smuggling enterprise into a nexus of crime and terrorism.
This act of mass terrorism appalled many of Dawood’s associates, most notably his trusted second-in-command, Chhota Rajan. Born Rajendra Nikalje, Rajan had risen through the ranks under Dawood. Infuriated by the use of his criminal network for such a catastrophic act of violence, Rajan split from Dawood.
This schism divided the Bombay underworld into two major, warring factions: Dawood’s predominantly Muslim D-Company (now operating from Dubai/Karachi) and Chhota Rajan’s largely Hindu gang. The ensuing decade was marked by a relentless, violent turf war fought across Mumbai and Southeast Asia, focused on targeted assassinations and shootouts. The rivalry reached its peak when Dawood’s men attacked Rajan in a hotel in Bangkok in 2000, leaving him severely injured but alive—a stark story of betrayal, revenge, and the underworld’s new, dangerous communal edge.
5. The Police vs. Underworld War: The Rise of the ‘Encounter Specialists’ (1990s-2000s)
As the gang wars of the 1990s escalated, with daily shootouts terrorizing the streets, the Mumbai Police decided to fight fire with fire. A controversial group of officers, later known as “Encounter Specialists,” emerged.
These specialists, including figures like Pradeep Sharma and Daya Nayak, adopted the tactic of “encounter killings”—the planned, often extrajudicial, killing of alleged criminals. The police argued that the traditional judicial system was too slow and ineffective against the well-connected dons, and that only this ruthless method could restore order.
The specialists became both feared and celebrated. They systematically targeted and eliminated hundreds of gangsters, often using their own sources within the gangs (including Chhota Rajan’s faction) to locate the rivals. This period was effectively a war waged by the police, which, while highly controversial and often accused of human rights violations, succeeded in physically dismantling many of the major gangs and permanently breaking the traditional, centralized structure of the Mumbai underworld.
There’s a fine line between storytelling and propaganda and Bollywood seems determined to blur it.
Why does every “high stakes thriller” demand a Pakistani villain, a Pakistani city, a Pakistani crisis? Why can’t India tell a compelling story without painting us as the problem?
Why does India repeatedly reach for our cities, our people, our history only to reshape them into caricatures? With Mumbai’s own underworld, political labyrinth, and real life crime sagas, is Pakistani fiction the only way left to spark drama?
Is Bollywood intentionally feeding its youth a simplified, fear driven version of Pakistan? One where we’re always the villain, always the threat, always the convenient enemy? Is it because if you keep telling the same story long enough, people stop questioning the script and start believing it?
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