On Sunday evening, Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff went to play football in Juhu, a leafy, affluent Mumbai neighbourhood where film stars live, fans congregate and celebrity sightings are a part of life.
asserted
sightings → go → life
But as the 36-year-old was leaving the ground in his BMW, shots rang out.
asserted
shots → leave → BMW
His driver was wounded, as was a vlogger who had come to film the actor.
asserted
who → wound → actor
Shroff, whose films usually include elaborate action sequences and choreographed escapes, had just survived an actual shooting attempt.
asserted
films → include → attempt
Four days later, the case still dominates headlines in India, with each new revelation spawning fresh theories, competing claims and a growing list of alleged conspiracies.
uncertain
revelation → dominate → conspiracies
Police have detained or arrested 10 suspects, with investigators tracing alleged weapon deliveries through several states and examining payments made to the alleged attackers.
asserted
investigators → detain → attackers
The attempted shooting has also brought the name of Lawrence Bishnoi, one of India's most notorious gangsters, back into the headlines.
asserted
shooting → attempt → headlines
Soon after the attack, a screenshot of a social media post purportedly made by an alleged associate of the Bishnoi gang circulated online, claiming responsibility.
asserted
screenshot → make → responsibility
A separate audio recording emerged in which a man identifying himself as Anil Pandit repeated the claim and said Shroff had been targeted over his alleged links to actor Salman Khan, who Bishnoi has been threatening for years.
uncertain
Bishnoi → emerge → years
Mumbai police have not verified the claims or established that the Bishnoi gang was behind the attempted shooting.
uncertain
gang → verify → shooting
Investigators are still trying to determine who ordered the attack and why.
asserted
who → try → attack
The targeting of Shroff follows a series of threats and attacks involving prominent Bollywood figures, including gunfire outside Khan's home in 2024 and filmmaker Rohit Shetty's house earlier this year.
asserted
targeting → follow → 2024
Together, the incidents have revived fears about the reach of organised crime into the film industry, stirring memories of a darker era in Mumbai's history.
asserted
incidents → revive → history
During the 1990s and early 2000s, the city's underworld exerted formidable influence over the film industry, financing productions, demanding protection money and sometimes using violence to enforce its demands.
asserted
underworld → exert → demands
It took years of police operations, and the gradual arrival of institutional financing, to loosen that grip.
asserted
It → take → grip
Now, as fresh allegations and theories emerge almost daily, a question that once seemed to belong to Mumbai's past has returned: is the underworld trying to control Bollywood again?
asserted
underworld → emerge → Bollywood
Those who confronted organised crime in Mumbai at its peak say the answer is not as straightforward as the attempt to shoot Shroff might suggest.
uncertain
attempt → confront → Shroff
D Sivanandhan, who took charge of Mumbai's Crime Branch in 1998, remembers a time when a phone call from Dubai, where some of the most notorious gang leaders were based, could decide the fate of a film - who starred in it, financed it or profited from its distribution.
uncertain
who → take → distribution
In 1997, music mogul Gulshan Kumar was shot dead outside a Mumbai temple.
asserted
Kumar → shoot → temple
Three years later, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan survived an assassination attempt.
asserted
Roshan → survive → attempt
Sivanandhan investigated the financing of Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, a Salman Khan film whose producer and his assistant were each sentenced to six years in prison under Maharashtra's organised crime law for underworld links.
asserted
producer → investigate → links
The film's financier received a one-year sentence for withholding information about those links.
asserted
financier → receive → links
Police seized the film's negatives, and its release eventually happened under court supervision.
asserted
release → seize → supervision
Gangsters were not always imposing themselves on a reluctant industry.
asserted
Gangsters → impose → industry
Some filmmakers willingly sought their money, Sivanandhan recalled, in arrangements that could benefit both sides and proved difficult for police to dismantle.
uncertain
police → seek → sides
But Sivanandhan is reluctant to see the latest violence as a return of the mafia he once fought.
asserted
he → see → mafia
The men he pursued - Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel, Arun Gawli and others - belonged to criminal networks rooted in Mumbai, even when their leaders operated from abroad.
asserted
leaders → pursue → Mumbai
"This is not the Mumbai mafia which we know in the last 60 years," he said.
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he → know → years
"
That something else has become inseparable from the name Lawrence Bishnoi.
asserted
something → become → name
A gangster with roots in northern India who has been in jail for years, Bishnoi has acquired an aura of folkloric menace: a prisoner said to command gunmen across continents, his name invoked in threats and claims of responsibility that spread almost instantaneously online.
uncertain
that → acquire → responsibility
Bishnoi has publicly threatened Khan over a 1998 poaching case involving blackbucks, a species of antelope revered by the Bishnoi community.
asserted
Bishnoi → threaten → community
In April 2024, gunmen fired five rounds outside Khan's Mumbai home.
asserted
gunmen → fire → home
Six months later, Baba Siddique, a politician close to Khan and other actors, was murdered.
asserted
Siddique → murder → Khan
Mumbai police have linked both attacks to the Bishnoi gang, though they have not established any personal involvement by Lawrence Bishnoi in Siddique's killing.
asserted
they → link → killing
Some allegations against his network are backed by police investigations; others remain untested.
asserted
others → back → investigations
But the distinction between what the gang has demonstrably done and what is claimed in its name can become blurred in the public imagination, doing little to diminish Bishnoi's notoriety.
asserted
what → do → notoriety
Rakesh Maria, a former Mumbai police commissioner, has cited Bishnoi as an example of a new generation of gangsters who are more technologically adept and internationally connected than their predecessors.
asserted
who → cite → predecessors
"The old underworld was visible and territorial, but the new one is dispersed, fluid, making it harder to pin down," Maria told The Print, external last year.
asserted
Maria → make → Print
"They no longer need to reside in the city to command it."
The relationship between gangsters and Bollywood has changed in another way, too, in who gets to shape their image.
asserted
who → need → image
In the 1990s, Bollywood itself helped turn Mumbai's feared underworld figures into objects of fascination.
asserted
Bollywood → turn → fascination
…and 13 more, not listed.
The Aporia
