"In the entire film industry, whoever works without aligning with us, or works with Salman Khan, will be killed." This warning was delivered in an audio message by presumed attackers on Indian actor Tiger Shroff in Mumbai earlier this month, as they claimed responsibility for the shooting. The apparent perpetrators said they were connected to Lawrence Bishnoi, a student-politician-turned-gangster who has been in prison since 2014. Notably, police have not confirmed the gang's involvement.
The shots fired at Shroff, which injured his driver, were only the latest in a string of attacks targeting prominent figures from the Mumbai-based film industry, popularly known as "Bollywood". Since 2022, gunmen fired shots at actor Salman Khan's apartment and at the home of filmmaker Rohit Shetty in Mumbai, as well as actor Disha Patani's family home in northern India. Actor Ranveer Singh also reportedly received an extortion demand of nearly $1.1 million (around €980,000).
The attacks have spread to the other side of the globe, with a cafe owned by comedian Kapil Sharma in Surrey, Canada, also hit three times. For an industry that once lived in the shadow of organized crime, the attacks have revived old fears, harking back to the crime bosses of the 1990s. But experts say the threat facing Bollywood today looks very different from the one it faced three decades ago.
In the 1990s, Mumbai's underworld was deeply entangled with the Hindi film industry. "The mafia was always fascinated with the movie industry," said S. Hussain Zaidi, crime journalist and author of "Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia," who has covered organized crime in the city for over three decades.
Gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim, Abu Salem and Chhota Shakeel "were totally obsessed" with Bollywood, he told DW, much like mafiosi who sought a foothold in Hollywood. To the gangsters, films offered glitz and glamor, but also a way to launder their profits. They invested in films "so that they could control the industry and have a legitimate way of making money," Zaidi added.
When producers didn't cooperate, the consequences could be fatal. In 1997, music mogul Gulshan Kumar, founder of the label T-Series, was shot dead. In 2000, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan, father of Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan, was shot and wounded.
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