A shooting in Juhu, a warning for Mumbai

Mumbai is still some distance from a return to the dark days of the 1990s, when gang violence and extortion were an almost routine feature of the city’s life — that is precisely why the recent incidents must not be dismissed as aberrations.

The guilty must be brought to book, and the institutional gaps that allowed the threat to come to the fore must be addressed.

3 min readOct 20, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Oct 20, 2026 at 06:00 AM IST

The bullets that shattered the calm in Mumbai’s Juhu on Sunday, when assailants opened fire at actor Tiger Shroff, injuring his driver and a bystander, have also underlined a question mark on the city’s preparedness to deal with a new, yet dangerously familiar, threat to law and order. In the two years since the firing outside actor Salman Khan’s house was connected to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, several other incidents including, notably, the killing of former Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Baba Siddique in Bandra in 2024, have been linked to the outfit. The shootings — including the firing outside filmmaker Rohit Shetty’s home in Juhu in February — and threats and extortion calls reportedly received by other film personalities are a chilling reminder of the years when Mumbai’s underworld held the city hostage. The quick apprehension of three suspects in the latest shooting is welcome, but the recurrent attacks raise disquieting questions.

To begin with, how can these crimes be properly investigated if the Mumbai Police’s access to the alleged leaders of the gang, Lawrence Bishnoi (lodged in Sabarmati Central Jail in Gujarat) and Anmol Bishnoi (currently in Tihar Jail in Delhi), is made difficult? Repeated attempts to obtain physical custody of the duo by Mumbai Police have evidently failed, with the Ministry of Home Affairs orders barring investigative agencies from taking the brothers out of jail “for any purpose”. The second question concerns what Mumbai Police is doing to reassure the film industry, which is a soft target for organised crime. An attack on a film personality guarantees publicity and can amplify the psychological impact of the threat. The police must make it clear to industry figures that threats and extortion calls will be taken seriously and that those who report them will receive protection. The third and more fundamental question concerns governance in Mumbai. The claims of good governance made by the three-party Mahayuti government, which has all too frequently been preoccupied by internal friction, turf battles and one-upmanship, cannot be insulated from questions about whether the state is able to prevent organised crime from regaining a foothold in the city.

Mumbai is a long way from a return to the dark days of the 1990s, when gang violence and extortion were an almost routine feature of the city’s life — that is precisely why the recent incidents must not be dismissed as aberrations. The guilty must be brought to book, and the institutional gaps that allowed the threat to come to the fore must be addressed.