Long before Aishwarya Rai made her mark in the Bollywood, people in Mumbai associated Mangalore (now Mangaluru) with mainly two things – audacious entrepreneurs, some of them runaways, who opened restaurants wherever they could in the financial capital and gangsters who joined the reigning underworld dons in droves. While the former cooked their way into the hearts of Mumbaiites, the latter dished out terror on the city’s streets.
Cut to the present. Aishwarya Rai, now with an extended surname post her marriage, is past her days of glory, and other actors with Mangaluru origin who entered the film industry after her with much hope have either faded out or are managing to just hang on. Restaurateurs are still in business, but the underworld has shifted base. So have the gangsters from Mangaluru and other coastal parts of Karnataka, who now control their operations in India from their havens abroad.
So, while Dawood Ibrahim is sitting pretty in Pakistan, and his sworn enemy Chhota Rajan is in the custody of Indian security agencies, where he feels safe, the battle for the underworld pie is being played out in distant Mangaluru, a coastal city also known for its unique cuisine and a heady concoction of communal fissure and divisive politics. The recent gang war in the Mangaluru district jail that ended in the murder of two inmates, both said to be associates of Dawood man Chhota Shakeel, only serves to emphasise the ongoing turf fight that threatens to turn bloodier in days to come.
The Mumbai underworld, controlled by the likes of Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, Chhota Rajan and Dawood, had always relied on the coastal region of Karnataka for a steady supply of henchmen, some of whom later graduated to become dons in their own right. Sadhu Shetty, Sharad Shetty, Muthappa Rai and Ravi Poojary are among those who branched out and set up their own gangs, but they still owed their allegiance to their former masters. It was quite natural then that these gangs spread their tentacles to Mangaluru, terrorising local businessmen and extorting at will.
But the game turned dangerous when the mafia began cashing in on the region’s communal divide. With Dawood actively branching out into terrorism under the patronage of Pakistan’s ISI, the Hindu dons grew apprehensive about their association with the ‘D’ gang and started drifting away. Some of them, who proclaimed to be, and are considered, patriotic despite continuing their nefarious activities inimical to national interest, declared fighting and finishing off the Dawood gang their sole mission. It’s this Hindu dons versus Muslim dons war that’s leaving its footprints on the sands of coastal Karnataka.
The recent murder of a Bajrang Dal activist in Moodbidri, near Mangaluru, the subsequent threat to two Karnataka ministers by a man claiming to be Ravi Poojary and the jail murder of Madoor Yusuf and his associate Ganesh Shetty on November 2 – all are pointers to gangs trying to wrest control of the lucrative underworld operations along the coast. Bajrang Dal activist Prashant Poojary was killed on October 9 by a gang, apparently irked over his campaign against cattle slaughter. While the investigation was on, Congress ministers Ramanath Rai and Abhayachandra Jain received calls, accusing them of shielding the accused in the murder and threatening to finish them off.
Then came the jail violence in which a group of inmates wielding lethal weapons, believed to have been thrown in from outside the jail, murdered Yusuf and Shetty after a quarrel. Police believe the killings were pre-planned and Vicky Shetty, another gangster from the region now said to be based in Australia, lost no time in claiming credit. Interestingly, these developments also coincided with Rajan’s arrest in Bali.
Mafia dons with coastal origins have always nursed an ambition to dabble in local politics and play a godfather-like role in their communities and the region. Sadhu Shetty even launched a political party, but fell to police bullets before he could make a mark. Muthappa Rai runs a social organisation that is widely expected to assume political colours.
Police believe there are two crucial angles to underworld activities in Mangaluru these days – the ‘D’ gang’s designs to rope in wayward Muslim youths for terror-related activities and Hindu dons’ plans to widen their footprint by playing on religious sentiments. Security agencies are wary of the underworld’s communal games, and rightly so, considering the region’s religiously-charged atmosphere.
Unlike Aishwarya Rai and others of her ilk, who remained wherever they found their calling, Mangaluru’s other export to Mumbai, the gangsters, are paying more attention to their hometown than it deserves, casting an uneasy cloud over the fragile peace in a region that has witnessed much bloodshed in the name of faith.