Bombay Underworld!!

 Bombay Underworld- the history, Gangsters, tears, blood and fear- 2021 updates

“Bombay underworld”, the name itself must have given goosebumps to you all especially if you are a 90s kid. Bombay underworld became much famous due to its representations in the films and media. Films like K.G.F are a recent example. Even though India had many underworlds all across the nation, Bombay underworld was at the top of all. Some of the Bombay gangsters became famous at an international level. Bombay was the old name of the city of Mumbai. We can classify the history of the Bombay underworld into classical and modern eras.

Classical era of Bombay underworld 

Kareem Lala

Kareem Lala, Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudaliar were the famous gangsters of the classical Bombay underworld. Kareem Lala was the most powerful one among them. He was an Afghan. Both Haji Mastan and Varadarajan Mudaliar were from Tamil Nadu. Kareem Lala mainly focused on narcotics, smuggling and gambling. From 1940-1960 the Bombay underworld was ruled by Kareem Lala.

Haji Mastan was from Ramanadapuram, Tamil Nadu and he came to Bombay with his father. At first he made his connections with some of the ships at Bombay port and then focused on smuggling gold, silver and electronics. In the beginning Haji Mastan was a part of Kareem Lala’s gang and later he made a gang of his own. When his gang became much more powerful he stepped into the world of cinema and started producing Bollywood movies with the black money he had. Many Bollywood actors were his close friends.

Haji Mastan

The third one, Varadarajan Mudaliar was popularly called ‘the savior of Tamil people in Bombay’ at that time. He built his empire by producing large amounts of arrack for all over Bombay when Morarji Desai banned alcohol in India. For the production and

Varadarajan Mudaliar

distribution of the arrack he used the Tamil immigrants. He made a huge profit out of this and used it for strengthening his gang and moved to smuggling and murdering. From 1960’s to 1980’s Bombay witnessed a trio battle between Haji Mastan, Varadaraja Mudaliar and Kareem Lala. By 1980 we could assume that the time of the classical era was over.

Modern era of Bombay underworld 

The modern era of Bombay underworld began in the 1980’s. The ‘D Company’ of Dawood Ibrahim gained his strength in this era. Dawood Ibrahim started with gold smuggling. Chota Rajan and Bada Rajan were the famous members of his gang. He has put all the money he got from smuggling in the Bollywood film industry. His relationships with the Bollywood stars and cricketers were so famous and we have seen his presence in the cricket betting and matches. From the beginning of the 90's he began to be known as a terrorist rather than a smuggler.

Dawood Ibrahim

He became one of the wanted criminals of Interpol for his involvement in the 1993’s bomb blast in Bombay. Interpol collected strong evidence against Dawood for working with Tiger Memon for the Bombay blast. During that time he was involved in weapon trafficking. When Interpol started searching for him he fled from India and many rumors about him started to spread. The latest news says that he is in Karachi, Pakistan. Another gangster who got famous in the modern era was Arun Gawli. His modus operandi was to kidnap and torture people to get money from them.

Bombay had witnessed a series of terror and damages during these times.  We’ll see more about the the all time underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in Part II