The media recently flooded us with information about a man called Farid Tanasha. Every newspaper, every channel was full of him. No, I had never heard of him before and it’s unlikely I will ever hear of him again since he is dead, shot by two men in his plush Tilak Nagar residence.
Tanasha, we were told, was a Chhota Rajan aide running his crime syndicate here since Rajan, like many other dons who rule Mumbai’s dark underbelly, lives overseas in some picturesque resort from where he plots how to extort the rich in this city and murder his rivals, all clamouring for a share of the huge loot he collects every year. I saw photographs of Tanasha, his home, a slightly out of focus picture of his wife, and lots of snaps of Rajan splashed in the media. So much was said about Tanasha that by now everyone knows everything about him, including the fact that police suspect he was killed by one Bharat Nepali, also a fugitive gangster. In fact, I am confused whether Tanasha was a world leader or not in his spare time because, apart from Barack Obama, I doubt if anyone has got so much media in this city as Tanasha. (Well, no, I’m not counting Amar Singh.)
While reading reports on Tanasha, I have had the privilege of also discovering that aides of different criminal gangs run different parts of Mumbai, killing, extorting, kidnapping, threatening, beating up innocent people who go around doing their normal day to day jobs. Some of their victims are local builders. Others, small businessmen. Anonymous people who live perfectly ordinary lives till they suddenly find themselves targeted by the underworld. Gangsters are openly named. Their pictures are printed. Their hits are listed. What’s never discussed is the simple question: If the police know so much about these guys, why don’t they just pick them up and lock them away? Or why we don’t go to Interpol and get these fugitives back and put them on trial?
In a country where it takes 25 years to reach a verdict on an industrial disaster that killed 15,000 people and destroyed the lives of another 5,74,000, I seriously doubt if such trials which will be quickly concluded. This could mean the law enforcers can use the time such trials take to break these underworld gangs and save the city from further deterioration in its law and order. It shouldn’t be difficult, like the Mossad does with such unerring charm, to outsource the assassination of these gang lords wherever they may be running their empires of crime from. Even simpler is to inspire them to kill off each other, if the reports we read of their animus against each other are true. In short, the solutions are simple if we really want to clean up the city and stop these rackets of extortion, intimidation, contract killing, and harassment of innocent people whose only crime is that they are either perceived as wealthy or have inherited some property that the underworld is now eyeing at the behest of a builder or a politician.
This is where the answer to my question lies. These criminal syndicates are protected by powerful people who use them when they are needed. The underworld exists because our politicians and law enforcers allow them to and the media thrives on these gangster tales while our movies romanticise them. Actually there was a time when Haji Mastaan, Karim Lala, Varadarajan Mudaliar would drop in to see me at my office in The Times. No one raised an eyebrow because their crimes were economic offences in a controlled economy no one respected. The blood that splattered on the streets was only that of their own men killed in internecine disputes. The common man remained untouched by it.
But that was another time, another season. Today, the crime scene’s infinitely worse and everyone’s involved, from powerful netas to law enforcers to builders and businessmen. You have in this city now a Dial a Crime service to meet any demand. Tenants to be chucked out? An old parent who refuses to gift you his property or a lonely nonagerian widow in a sprawling Bandra bungalow who refuses to die? A mill that needs to catch fire? A slum to be destroyed overnight? A quick call and it’s done.
But the problem with crime is once you protect it, you can’t control it. That’s what’s happening here. If the media can write such elaborate stories on guys like Tanasha and their exploits, if they can tell us in such graphic detail where the ganglords are holed up, if we have such good intelligence, such informed reporting why can’t we just clean it up? A pro-active Chief Minister, a tough Home Minister and the job’s done. What stops Ashok Chavan or RR Patil to divert some of their enthusiasm that goes into distributing FSI or shutting down beer bars to focussing on the city’s biggest problem, crime? Or is Mumbai already Gotham City?
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