Chotta Rajan is the boss of a major crime syndicate based in Mumbai. He was a former key aide and lieutenant of Dawood Ibrahim. Starting as a petty thief and bootlegger working for Rajan Nair, also known as Bada Rajan (Big Rajan), Chota Rajan took the reins of Bada Rajan's gang after Bada Rajan's murder. Later, he was affiliated with and operated at the behest of Dawood in Mumbai and eventually fled India to Dubai in 1988. He is wanted for many criminal cases that include extortion, murder, smuggling, drug trafficking, and film finance. His brother is said to produce films financed by Rajan. He is wanted in 17 murder cases and several more attempted murders. Chhota Rajan was arrested in Bali by Indonesian police on 25 October 2015.[21] He was extradited to India on 6 November after 27 years on the run and is currently awaiting trial in CBI custody.[22]
Arun Gawli's gang is based at Dagdi Chawl in Byculla, Mumbai. Gawali started his criminal activities there and used the rooms there for keeping kidnapped persons, torturing them, extorting money from them, and murdering them. The police raided the premises several times and finally broke his operations. He has been arrested several times for criminal activities and detained for long periods during a trial. However, he could not be convicted in most of the cases as witnesses would not depose against him for fear. He was finally convicted for the murder of Shiv Sena leader Kamalakar Jamsandekar by a court in August 2012. Gawli and eleven others were found guilty of Jamsandekar's murder.[23]
Thuggee were crimes carried out by organized gangs of robbers and murderers which operated in the northern and eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent.[25] Thugs were gangs of highway robbers, who tricked and strangled their victims with a handkerchief or noose.[26] They would then rob and bury their victims. Sometimes they mutilated the corpses of their victims to avoid detection.[27] The leader of a gang was called a 'jemadar'. The usage of military ranks like 'jemadar', 'subedar' and 'private' suggests that these gangs had military links.[27] Although strangulation was their main method of murder, they also used blades and poison.[28] The thugs comprised some who had inherited thuggee as a family vocation, and others who were forced to turn to it out of necessity.[28] The leadership of many of the groups tended to be hereditary with family members sometimes serving together in the same band. Such Thugs were known as aseel.[29] Not all thugs were trained by their family but rather by experienced thugs called 'guru'.[30] While they usually kept their acts a secret, female thugs also existed and were called baronee in Ramasee, while an important male Thug was called baroo.[31]
There are families with blood feuds with each other in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh and parts of eastern Karnataka in India, and associated with alleged Mafia Raj. It is locally referred to as "factionalism" and involves various crimes. Activities like illegal mining are common and one of the major social and environmental issues in the region. It also persists due to illiteracy and lack of environmental awareness in the region and public inactivity, having led to severe deforestation and desertification in the region. The vendetta between the groups originated historically during the Vijayanagara empire. This often co-exists with mafia states. Much of the mining and real estate mafia in the region is run by such families, and to avoid punishment, they are often involved in corruption and local politics. There have been numerous murders committed by rival families, including the murders of noteworthy politicians. Factionalism is one of the main reasons for which vendetta politics is widely practiced in Andhra Pradesh, and is also a major cause of rioting and domestic terrorism in the region.
Gang members tie up family members, during robberies, and murder anyone who resists. They often arm themselves with rods, axes, knives, and firearms. When they rob a house, they sometimes eat and leave their excrements. The gang members often rent cars to get around,[41] and are suspected of robbing temples.[42]
In the cinema of India, particularly Bollywood, crime films and gangster films inspired by organised crime in India have been produced since 1940. Indian cinema has several genres of such crime films.
The dacoit film was a genre of Indian cinema that began with Mehboob Khan's Aurat (1940) and gained popularity with its remake Mother India (1957) as well as Dilip Kumar's Gunga Jumna (1961). A subgenre is the Dacoit Western, popularized by Sholay (1975). These films are usually set in rural India, and often inspired by real dacoits.
In the early 1970s, a new genre of Indian crime films and gangster films arose, set in urban India: Bombay underworld films, later called Mumbai underworld films. These films are often inspired by real Mumbai underworld gangsters, such as Haji Mastan, Dawood Ibrahim and D-Company. These films are often set around Mumbai slums such as Dharavi or Juhu, and gangsters in these films often speak with a Tapori or Bombay Hindi street dialect.
By the mid-1970s, gritty, violent crime films and action films about gangsters (Bombay underworld) as well as bandits (dacoits) had become popular. The writing of Salim-Javed and acting of Amitabh Bachchan popularized the trend, with films such as Zanjeer and particularly Deewaar, a crime film inspired by Gunga Jumna[46] that pitted "a policeman against his brother, a gang leader based on real-life smuggler Haji Mastan" portrayed by Bachchan; Deewaar was described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema" by Danny Boyle.[53] Along with Bachchan, other actors that rode the crest of this trend include Feroz Khan.[54]
The popular crime films written by Salim-Javed and starring Amitabh Bachchan reflected the socio-economic and socio-political realities of 1970s India, channeling the growing popular discontent and disillusionment among the masses, and the failure of the state in ensuring their welfare and well-being, in a time when prices were rapidly rising, commodities were becoming scarce, public institutions were losing legitimacy, smugglers and gangsters were gathering political clout,[48] and there was an unprecedented growth of slums.[50] The cinema of Salim-Javed and Amitabh Bachchan dealt with themes relevant to Indian society at the time, such as urban poverty in slums, corruption in society, and the Bombay underworld crime scene,[51] and was perceived by audiences as anti-establishment, often represented by an "angry young man" protagonist, presented as a vigilante or anti-hero,[52] with his suppressed rage giving a voice to the angst of the urban poor.[50]
Later milestones in the genre include Ram Gopal Verma's Satya (1998) and Company (2002), based on the D-Company, which both offered "slick, often mesmerising portrayals of the Mumbai underworld" and displayed realistic "brutality and urban violence." Another notable film in the genre was Black Friday (2004), adapted from Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings.[53][55][56][57]
The genre later inspired the film Slumdog Millionaire (2009), which drew inspiration from Mumbai underworld films. Its influences included Deewaar,[58][59] Satya, Company, and Black Friday.[53][55][56][57] 1970s Bollywood crime films such as Deewaar and Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) also have similarities to the heroic bloodshed crime genre of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema.[60] Deewaar had a Hong Kong remake, The Brothers (1979),[61] which went on to inspire John Woo's internationally acclaimed breakthrough A Better Tomorrow (1986),[62][61] which set the template for the heroic bloodshed genre in Hong Kong cinema.[63][64]
Neeraj Grover was a television executive working for Synergy Adlabs, a Mumbai based production house.[1] He was found dead in May 2008, a crime for which actress Maria Susairaj and her boyfriend Lieutenant Emile Jerome Mathew were arrested.[2] Mathew was eventually found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and for destroying evidence. Susairaj was acquitted of the killing itself, but found guilty of destroying evidence.[3] The killing and subsequent trial received significant press coverage in India.
Maria Susairaj was a new and small-time South Indian film actress and Lieutenant Emil Jerome Mathew was her boyfriend. Both were said to be getting engaged two months later. Neeraj Grover was helping Susairaj to establish a foothold in the television industry and had also arranged few auditions for her. Susairaj had once told Mathew that Grover had a crush on her but she did not reciprocate. She had reportedly also stayed at Grover's apartment for a few days. At the time of the incident, Susairaj was moving into her new rented apartment and Grover was helping her with the move.[4]
Maria Susairaj, along with Jerome Mathew, on her way to Manor in a friend's borrowed car (to dispose of Grover's body) accidentally answered a call on Grover's mobile while she was pulling it out of her denim pocket to see who the caller was. She had kept Grover's mobile with her after the murder. Although she immediately disconnected the call, police were able to trace the location at which the call was answered. This turned out to be a key lead for police as Susairaj, during questioning before her arrest, had told the police that she was shopping in Dadar when she was actually on her way to Manor.[6]
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