The frenetic pace of “so-called development in Bengaluru”, which has continued unbated, creating an insatiable appetite for land, leading to land grab, encroachment of public, forest lands and lakes provides a fertile ground even today for rowdy elements to carry out their mafia activities through threats, blackmail and extortion.
Some feel that organised underworld activities in Bengaluru have diminished owing to relentless police action, including a few encounters.
Experience shows that in the long run, rowdy activities are not sustainable owing to the cycle of criminal cases, arrests, interrogation, custody, detention, trials, an occasional jail sentence and the constant threat from splinter groups and rival gangs.
However, this reality has not deterred new gangs from mushrooming, as human greed and a criminal mindset get the better of reason.
Bengaluru was touted as the fastest growing city in Asia during the 70s. From Garden City to education hub to a prominent centre of public sector units to IT City, growth has surpassed all expectations. Population explosion and industrialisation were inevitably followed by a real estate boom spawning large scale underworld activities, mafia syndicates and extortion rackets.
The successive ganglords of Benglauru were a colourful lot. Jairaj, Kotwal Ramachandra, Oil Kumar, Muthappa Rai, Ravi Pujari and Sunil have ruled the underworld in the past. Some of them have interesting nicknames and prefixes, such as Hebbettu Manja, Onte Sunil, JCB Narayana, Korangu, Sunil, Kurup Vinni and Dobber Murthy continued the legacy of their predecessors.
While many of them met a violent end owing to gang wars, some cleverly morphed themselves as reformed characters in due course, but nevertheless, indulged in criminal activities covertly even after their ‘reformation’.
Most of them indulged in extortion, but some specialised in specific acts of crime. For example, Oil Kumar was a dreaded rowdy whose gang pilfered huge quantities of petrol and diesel, thereby making a fast buck. JCB Narayana used his backhoe ruthlessly and occupied land by force.
It goes without saying that almost all of them enjoyed political patronage.
Some boasted of their political connections and even offered to ensure transfer and postings of middle level police and prison officers. The underworld thrived in an environment of weak laws, a lax criminal justice system, pliant police and political interference.
Bengaluru had powerful lobbies at work at various points of time. There was the liquor lobby, followed by granite, housing cooperatives, real estate and developers, to name a few. The underworld took advantage of these thriving businesses and used extortion tactics.
In the mid-eighties, one of our former CMs, Ramakrishna Hegde, famously referred to the rowdy activities in Benglauru as the ‘chaku churi’ culture. In order to control the menace, a new law called The Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-Offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slumgrabbers Act (Act 12 of 1985) was enacted during his tenure as it was felt that the existing laws were inadequate.
A couple of decades later, a more stringent The Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act was enacted on the lines of The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime act (MCOCA) in order to bring down the activities of the underworld.