Brazen shooting of politician revives fears Mumbai’s gangster past is returning

It was a murder unlike anything Mumbai had seen in almost three decades. Baba Siddique, a senior politician, was getting into his car in Mumbai’s affluent neighbourhood of Bandra on Saturday night when the air filled with firecracker smoke. As shots rang out, fired by three hooded assailants hiding close by, six bullets hit Siddique in the chest. He fell to the floor in a pool of blood. By the time he reached the hospital, Siddique was dead. The killing was quickly claimed by one of India’s most notorious gangsters. Lawrence Bishnoi has been in jail since 2014 but continues to control one of the country’s largest criminal empires from behind bars. His so-called Bishnoi gang has been linked to several high-profile killings in India, including of a famous Punjabi rapper, and is also accused of being involved in transnational terrorism in Canada. Mumbai police confirmed they were investigating the Bishnoi gang’s alleged role in the murder. The killing has led to fears that Bishnoi is attempting to fill a vacuum left by Mumbai’s most notorious gang leaders who mostly fled, were killed or jailed. “This horrifying incident exposes the complete collapse of law and order in Maharashtra,” said Rahul Gandhi, a leader in the opposition Congress party. To many in India’s thriving film and financial capital, the brazen killing was a chilling reminder of Mumbai’s dark criminal past and stirred up fears of a return of the gang violence and organised crime that reigned in the city for decades. Siddique, 66, was not only a well-known political face in Mumbai but was also known for his close relationships with Bollywood stars, with Salman Khan chief among them. It was this friendship, suggested one alleged Bishnoi gang affiliate in a Facebook post after the killing, that resulted in the politician’s assassination, linked to a feud going back to the 90s. “Salman Khan, we did not want this war but you made our brother lose his life,” said the post. Yet Mumbai’s police and the Maharashtra chief minister, Eknath Shinde, pledged that the killing would not mark a return to a time when Bollywood stars were often a prime target for criminal extortion and violence. “Be it the Bishnoi gang or any underworld gang, we won’t spare anyone,” said Shinde. By Monday night, several of the alleged shooters and alleged conspirators had been arrested by police but other key suspects remained on the run. Those arrested allegedly told police that Siddique’s son had also been on a list of targets, according to reports. The spark for the fuse From the 1970s to the late 1990s, the closure of Mumbai’s textile mills led thousands of unemployed men to join criminal gangs. Violent criminal overlords – Dawood Ibrahim the most famous among them – began to run the city, terrorising residents and extorting everyone from Bollywood stars to big business executives. The campaign of violence was ultimately brought under control in the late 1990s, but not before a series of bomb blasts left hundreds dead and after an all-out bloody war between gangs and police saw politicians, film directors and gang leaders among those shot in broad daylight. In the years since, the hold of the gangs weakened and Mumbai shed its reputation for criminality to become known as one of India’s safest cities. However, it was earlier this year that the Bishnoi gang – which previously operated mostly in north India – first made its presence known in the south Indian metropolis. It is an extraordinary long-running feud that appears to have brought Bishnoi’s gang to Mumbai, relating to one of Bollywood’s biggest stars, Salman Khan and a case dating back to 1998 where Khan was implicated in the hunting and killing of two blackbuck antelope. Twenty years later, the Bollywood star was convicted in the case and give a suspended five-year jail term. According to Bishnoi’s community in Punjab, blackbucks are considered sacred reincarnations of their spiritual leader and the mob boss had appeared to take Khan’s shooting of them personally. Bishnoi vowed to take revenge on the Bollywood star, openly stating at a court appearance in 2018: “We will kill Salman Khan”. The feud escalated further earlier this year when a member of Bishnoi’s gang fired shots outside Khan’s Mumbai residence. The Mumbai police said they had foiled two other assassination attempts on Khan and pledged to wipe out Bishnoi’s gang from the city entirely. Yet Saturday’s high-profile assassination, reportedly planned carefully for months, appeared to indicate that the Bishnoi gang has instead infiltrated Mumbai even further.