The attack on Tiger Shroff’s Mumbai location earlier this month has pulled Bollywood back into a conversation it hoped was closed: the industry’s relationship with organised crime. Shots injured Shroff’s driver, and an audio message warning that anyone who aligns with “us” or works with Salman Khan “will be killed” was circulated by presumed attackers. Police have not confirmed the claimed link to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.
The current threat
Since 2022, the pattern has widened. Shootings have been reported at Salman Khan’s apartment and Rohit Shetty’s Mumbai home, and at Disha Patani’s family home in northern India. Ranveer Singh reportedly received an extortion demand of nearly $1.1 million. A cafe owned by Kapil Sharma in Surrey, Canada, has been hit three times.
- Salman Khan’s apartment: shots fired since 2022
- Rohit Shetty’s home: shots fired since 2022
- Disha Patani’s family home: targeted in northern India
- Ranveer Singh: nearly $1.1 million extortion demand
- Kapil Sharma’s Canada cafe: attacked three times
The 1990s playbook
Mumbai’s underworld once treated Hindi cinema as a source of glamour, cash and legitimacy. Crime journalist S. Hussain Zaidi says gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim, Abu Salem and Chhota Shakeel “were totally obsessed” with Bollywood and invested in films to launder profits and control the business. The consequences of resistance were visible: T-Series founder Gulshan Kumar was shot dead in 1997, and filmmaker Rakesh Roshan was shot and wounded in 2000. Former Mumbai Police Commissioner D. Sivanandhan, who led the crackdown, says 101 businessmen were killed in 1998 alone—one “every third day”—mostly over extortion. The 1999 organised-crime law, surveillance and weapons seizures eventually broke the old syndicates.
A prison-run syndicate
Bishnoi is not a Mumbai don. The 33-year-old from a Punjab landowning family entered crime through violent student politics and, according to journalist Jupinderjit Singh, learned criminal operations inside jail: “He was introduced to the University of Crime through the jail.” Investigators say he directs operations from a Gujarat prison through concealed phones and messaging apps. In September 2025, Canada designated the Bishnoi gang a terrorist entity. Last month, the FBI placed Goldy Brar on its Ten Most Wanted list with a reward of up to $1 million.
Why Bollywood is the target
Part of the motive is personal: Bishnoi’s community reveres the blackbuck, and he vowed revenge after Salman Khan was accused of killing one in 1998. Singh reads the feud as a bid for moral standing. But money and intimidation matter more. With older gangs gone, Sivanandhan argues, the Bishnoi network sees an industry “loaded with money” and uses it “as an ATM.” Zaidi sees the attacks primarily as publicity—a way to create the fear on which extortion depends. A security professional quoted by DW put it bluntly: “The base material of extortion is: create fear.”
Not the 1990s, yet
Experts resist calling this a full resurgence. Zaidi notes that only Bishnoi’s faction is considered active in Mumbai, and digital payments have made large cash payoffs harder to hide. Sivanandhan disagrees, arguing that shootings followed by social-media claims are an extortion machine aimed at a cash-rich industry. The All Indian Cine Workers Association has written to Home Minister Amit Shah warning that Mumbai must not return to underworld days, and several stars have increased their security.
Source: Deutsche Welle
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