Bhai power     

The underworld and Bollywood are inextricably linked. V. Gangadhar takes a look at how this equation has changed over the years.

Never write off the Mumbai mafia. After lying low for several months, there are reports that fresh threats were issued some time back against leading Bollywood producers, including Yash Chopra and Ram Gopal Verma. According to the Mumbai police, a breakaway section of the Abu Salem gang has been targeting leading Mumbai producers for foreign rights of their hit movies.

In the past, Abu Salem has been known to collect extortion money from producers and stars. For several months, he has been in a Lisbon jail on criminal charges and is awaiting deportation to India. And recently, someone in the group did not lose much time in issuing threats to producers like Yash Chopra whose latest film Veer-Zaara is a hit at the box office. After all, the business must go on. The Dubai-based breakaway faction is reported to be led by someone called ‘Major.’

Remember the horrifying scene in Godfather (book and the film) where a hotshot Hollywood producer wakes up from sleep to find the sheets soaked from blood seeping from the severed head of his favourite race horse Khartoum which cost $ 6 million? The punishment was inflicted by the New York-based mafia chief, Don Corleone, for not casting his favourite godson in the lead role in an expensive musical launched by the producer.

The ‘famous five’ families of New York made most of their money from gambling, night clubs, prostitution, extortion, bootlegging and rigged horse races. They also controlled unions in the Hollywood studios and could disrupt production. But not many of them made direct calls to producers making exorbitant demands for money or deciding the cast in the films.

In recent years, the local mafia has gone streets ahead of the crime syndicates. There is more news about the mafia-nexus than either the mafia by itself or of films. The links are now clearly in the open. While most gangsters threatening producers and actors are abroad, many of their agents in the guise of producers, directors, financiers and even music directors have been arrested and their trials in the court rooms are at various stages.

The most famous of these is, of course, Bharat Shah — a short, stocky diamond merchant from North Gujarat. Fond of dressing up in smart sport shirts, Shah has an incurable passion diamonds and Hindi movies. He loved films, stars and did not miss any major function where he could be close to the glamorous stars. Enormously wealthy, Bharat Shah was also one of the leading financiers of Hindi films. He loaned money to hundreds of film makers, who made mega movies like Devdas. "Films are an addiction for me," Shah had confessed. "I can’t live without them and I am friendly with most stars. And I am an easy touch on the issue, that’s why I loaned money to so many flops. But I don’t regret it."

Such interest in films is touching but it did not impress the Mumbai police which began to suspect the source of some of the diamond merchant’s money bags. The police arrested Shah in 2000 for allegedly using money from the underworld in financing the Salman Khan-Preity Zinta starrer, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke. Determined to nail Shah, the prosecution produced several tape recordings allegedly between Shah and underworld don Chota Shakeel. Facing charges under the TADA and then the amended MOCA, Shah was accused of links with the underworld, money laundering and involvement in hawala deals. The financier who spent nearly two years in jail had some of the best legal brains in the country, including Ram Jethmalani and Kapil Sibal, to defend him.

After a protracted trial, the Special Court — which found no ‘conclusive evidence’ against Shah — sentenced him to one-year imprisonment on minor charges. But Shah, having already spent nearly two years in police custody, was not sent to jail. Nasim Rizvi, the film’s director, was given a six-year sentence.

We do not know the extent of chori chori in the films but once the trial began there was hardly any chupke, chupke. The case was a bonanza for the media which focused heavily on the Bollywood-mafia nexus. Bharat Shah’s legal battles were always news, so were the extortion attacks, kidnappings and murder of some of the Bollywood stalwarts who failed to toe the mafia line. Many of the stars became marked figures and sought police protection but they would not reveal the sources of their threats. Cell phones became dreaded instruments

First came demands for money or other favours, warnings and then there were messages of fear and gun shots. There was a method in this madness. Producer Mukesh Duggal was gunned down in June, 1997. The same year saw the killing of music tycoon Gulshan Kumar. Leading lights of the film industry — Manmohan Shetty, Ajit Dewan and Rajiv Rai — survived assassination bids. Rai, whose banner had produced hit films like Tridev, fled India to live in London. In January 2000, Rakesh Roshan, producer of Kaho Na PyarHai was shot at in front of his office. He had refused to offer the overseas rights of his blockbuster to a don.

Threatening calls poured in. The leading villain of Hindi cinema, ‘Mogambo,’ refused to take them. Producers Ram Gopal Verma, J.P. Dutta, Subhash Ghai and many others asked for police protection. Aamir Khan and successful director of Lagaan, Ashutosh Gowarikar, were also on the list.

Why did the gangland bosses focus on the world of Hindi cinema? With the splitting up of the gangs and the emergence of new ones, overall control passed into the hands of several gangsters. More cash was needed to operate the gangs. The new bosses were greedy and accustomed to a lavish lifestyle. Traditionally, the corrupt builders’ lobby in Mumbai had provided funds to the mafia. With the slump in real estate business, there was very little money from the builders. New sources had to be found.

The film industry had overcome threats from television and cable channels. The number of flops was on the rise, while the ‘hits’ made a staggering amount of money. Further, there was the lure of overseas markets and rights for the music of the films. The recording companies were making enormous profits and even mediocre films were making pounds and dollars in the West. The mafia, sensing easy pickings, moved in for the kill.

While traditional and dedicated movie-makers from the 1970s found their financial sources drying up, it was the time for a new legion of brash, young producers many of whom did not know anything about making movies. This new breed did not care from where their money came from and willingly opened their arms to the mafia’s interference. Criminal gangs perceived Bollywood as the proverbial golden goose and began to play a more important, menacing role in the making of films.

Mumbai had always witnessed a love-hate relationship between crime and films. To start with, one saw ‘gangsters’ and their molls only on the screen. Remember the menacing K.N.Singh who only had to raise his eyebrows to make one’s legs go jelly? The intrusion of gangsterism into films began and ended with their portrayal on the screen. Movie journals of those days wrote that dons like Haji Mastan and Karim Lala were avid film watchers and interacted easily with the showbiz crowd. Bollywood repaid them with films on the lives of some of the leading dons. Deewar was the story of Mastan, who began his crime career as a coolie in the Bombay docks.

Bollywood accepted gangsters as long as they they did not resort to anti-national activities. Mastan, Lala and Mudaliar were ‘respectable’ gangsters with friends in the industry. Dawood Ibrahim, to start with, was in this category, even after he had fled to Dubai. He lorded over the Sharjah cricket matches and had Indian players and film stars seated at his feet. Young Bollywood starlets like Komilla Virk, Mandakini and Monica Bedi were ready for romantic liaisons with the maifa dons. Mandakini, the heroine of the Raj Kapoor film, Ram Teri Ganga Maili, reportedly married Ibrahim and produced a son. The communal fury which followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid, disturbances all over the country and the Mumbai riots during the early 1990s changed the situation dramatically with Dawood and co on the run. They were accused of being anti-national, and the cosy relationship between the mafia and Bollywood was over. Actors like Sunjay Dutt who had many friends of ‘doubtful repute’ came under the police dragnet. Dutt is now awaiting the final judgement in a Tada case.

The gangsters having once tasted the fruits of Bollywood would not let go so easily. Some of our movie makers retained a magnificent obsession for the gangsters. So followed a series of ‘real-life’ mafia films like Vastav, Company, Satya and so on. Portraying a don on the screen was the new challenge of the aspiring Indian hero and it opened up the doors for Manoj Bajpai, Ajay Devgan and Vivek Oberoi.

It is not known how the new crop of dons reacted to these films. But they began to interfere more, demanding money, overseas rights, a share in profits from music sales and even roles. Some of the producers were more than willing to accommodate these demands. Maker of the David Dhawan-directed comedy Jodi Number 1 agreed to replace the existing heroine of the film with starlet Monica Bedi, wife of Abu Salem, who also named his sons after Bollywood stars. Following Salem’s arrest in Portugal, he and Monica Bedi were declared ‘outlaws’ by the Government of India.

Many stars who had received telephone calls, including threats from the dons, were too scared to talk openly. In the Bharat Shah case, almost every top-ranking star ‘turned hostile’ and did not cooperate with the prosecution. The notable exception was Preity Zinta, who admitted that gangsters had demanded Rs 50 lakh. Men who might be involved with the mafia dons found ready sympathy with some top names in Bollywood. Director Mahesh Bhatt was an able defender of Bharat Shah and the stars who received extortion threats.

Spokesmen for the industry pointed out that the rising production costs had made money scarce, making some of the makers turn to the mafia. "It is not easy when your hero demands Rs 3 crore and your heroine wants only slightly less," lamented a producer, "At this rate, not many can make films under Rs 15 crore. Banks and corporate houses promised to help us out, but have not done much." Unless film production costs come down, the mafia influence will not go away.

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