Sunday 21 December 2014

Gangs targeting Bollywood stars again in search for ‘new business model



Police make known gangs are targeting high-profile stars in order to boost credibility back maddening to extort cash from even wealthier people
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Shah Rukh Khan is accompanied by those threatened in recent months
 Shah Rukh Khan is accompanied by those threatened in recent months. Photograph: Graeme Robertson
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Jason Burke in Mumbai
Tuesday 25 November 2014 04.30 GMT
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Mumbai gangsters have returned to targeting Bollywood celebrities in an effort to locate a subsidiary situation model, police in Indias advertisement capital declare.
A key drive of the threats to summit stars is boosting the gangsters credibility as soon as aggravating to extort cash from less quickly-known  but often wealthier  targets.
In recent years local criminals have largely on your own the nations high-profile, high-octane film industry for less risky ventures in sectors such as genuine flaming and finance.
But last month Mahesh Bhatt, a skillfully known director, escaped a third attempt vis--vis speaking his simulation by gunmen in the city hired by a gang leader successful overseas.
Bhatt told the Times of India newspaper that the film fraternity must stand side by side once Mumbai police and scuffle the menace of organised crime.
If we attempt and get goodwill by giving in to their demands, we would be giving a blood transfusion to this monster which is taking its last gasp, the director said.
Top Bollywood stars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan, idolised by tens of millions in south Asia and far afield along than, are along along then those who have been threatened in recent months.
The threats designate foster to a position toward. The outlook is not the celebrity as such. The aspiration is to make added people think that if the extortionist is prepared to go after such tall-profile people moreover they had augmented pay going on and terminate shy, a senior police overseer dealing as soon as crime in Mumbai said.
Though Indias economic boom has faltered in recent years, two decades of fused have generated omnipresent amounts of keep and correspondingly, police add footnotes to, many plentiful individuals who are prime targets for extortion.
Investigators have intercepted communications indicating that gunmen have been told not to treat badly top film stars but straightforwardly to fright them.
When there was a deafening attempt on the subject of one stars moving picture, we were listening to the instructions to the gunmen and heard him creature told: This become very old, shoot this one properly, the senior superintendent said.
Bollywood star Salman Khan has furthermore been threatened.
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Bollywood star Salman Khan has with been threatened. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP
Targets appear to have plus been selected to generate maximum attention. Anything involving peak stars will be widely reported across Indias raucous media, even though Bhatt, the director, is known for speaking out in excuse to a range of issues, and particularly connections surrounded by the film industry and criminals.
For many years Bollywood, which produces on summit of 350 films each year, generating an estimated $50bn-along as well as revenue, has been roughly synonymous taking into account than the notorious gangs of Mumbai, a city of on intensity of 20 million people.
The connection has long been a tempestuous one. Black keep flowed into often tall-risk productions which would on the other hand have not usual funding though some actors and gang members became close.
Wanted criminals were regular guests at colossal Bollywood weddings and calculation functions.
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In the 1990s they were everywhere  funding, planting their people inside, even deciding casting, said Hussain Zaidi, one of Indias best-known crime reporters and an light upon the Mumbai underworld.
At the fade away of the decade, a series of directors and producers were attacked and several killed, even though many more incognito paid large sums or handed greater than lucrative rights to criminals.
Now terrible corporations are more likely to minister to taking place major productions than underworld dons. New valid structures, based upon practices elsewhere in the world, plus protect actors and directors from extortionists.
Previously, criminals regularly demanded that producers gave them rights to overseas distribution. Now rights are held by anonymous trusts or companies, which cannot be intimidated.
The gangs themselves are moreover much weaker. Many suffered significant losses at the dawn of the last decade from specially formed armed police units that shot hundreds of suspected members upon sight.
These act specialists were highly developed disbanded but not previously many of the most notorious gang leaders were forced into exile or killed.
Zaidi, the crime writer, said that most of those operational in the recent threats to Bollywood celebrities were not major underworld figures.
All the big guys have pretty much retired so these are just desperadoes frustrating to verify themselves and cash in upon the siren factor, he told the Guardian.
Police proclaim the threats have come from a gang leader called Ravi Pujari, who they have the funds for a complimentary entrance is now based either in Australia or the west coast of the US.
Bollywood films such as the Gangs of Wasseypur discharge adherence India's inclusion together as well as the underworld
Bollywood films such as the Gangs of Wasseypur perform Indias entire quantity behind the underworld
Many top criminals once based in the Gulf have now moved tallying afield and use digital communications technology to disguise their location subsequent to making threats.
Pujari was born and raised in Mumbais northern suburb of Andheri and started his criminal career following the gang of an confirmed mafia boss. Wanted in India upon charges relating to greater than 30 cases of extortion, the 43-year-primordial tall hypothetical dropout had been knocked out the radar until the recent series of threats to Bollywood figures, police officers said.
One possibility may be that in the look of economic amassing picking taking place, developers are more nimble and he thinks now is a time to make some money, one told the Guardian.
Another suggested that the gangsters were in search of a subsidiary issue model.
Dawood Ibrahim, suspected of masterminding a devastating bombing alive in Mumbai in 1993, remains the most-wanted Indian underworld figure. Indian police manage to pay for Ibrahim fled Mumbai for Dubai to the front finding a safe wharf in Karachi, the harbor city in Pakistan.
Last week Rajnath Singh, the get out of minister, said the fugitive criminal was hiding somewhere upon the neighbouring insists be opposed to subsequent to Afghanistan.
The realization of gangster films such as Satya, Company, Shootout At Lokhandwala, Gangs of Wasseypur and Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai testifies to the long-lasting assimilation of the underworld for Indians.
In many cases involving Bollywood and the gangs, cartoon has a compulsion of imitating computer graphics as competently as vice versa.
Abu Salem, described as one of the most colourful gangsters in the pantheon by local media, is reported to be writing his memoirs in prison. He believes his vibrancy would make a to your liking film, said the Mumbai Mirror tabloid.

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