Low-cost, high-impact: Why Bollywood is back on the hit list

Hindi cinema has long been a soft and lucrative target for organised crime: high cash turnover, high visibility, and a fear economy that thrives on glamour and intimidation. From the 80s to the late 2000s, Bollywood operated under the shadow of the Mumbai underworld, with gangs led by Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan, Abu Salem and Ravi Pujari allegedly extracting protection money, shaping film finance, and threatening producers and stars.
Sustained crackdowns by Mumbai Police — encounter operations, network busts, and the stringent use of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) — eventually weakened that overt grip.