Attack on actor Tiger Shroff is dark reminder of Bollywood's gangster past

Attack on actor Tiger Shroff is a grim reminder of Bollywood's gangster past

Actor Tiger Shroff, who made his debut in 2014, is known for his action roles

On Sunday evening, Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff went to play football in Juhu, a leafy, affluent Mumbai neighbourhood where film stars live, fans gather and celebrity sightings are part of everyday life. But as the 36-year-old was leaving the ground in his BMW, gunshots were fired. His driver was injured, as was a vlogger who had come to film the actor.

Shroff, whose films typically feature elaborate action scenes and choreographed escapes, had just survived a real shooting attempt.

Four days later, the case still dominates headlines in India, with every new detail producing fresh theories, rival claims and a growing list of alleged conspiracies.

Police have detained or arrested 10 suspects, while investigators trace alleged weapon deliveries across several states and examine payments made to the alleged attackers.

The attempted shooting has also put the name of Lawrence Bishnoi, one of India's most notorious gangsters, back in the spotlight. Shortly after the attack, a screenshot of a social media post allegedly made by an associate of the Bishnoi gang spread online, claiming responsibility. A separate audio recording then surfaced in which a man identifying himself as Anil Pandit repeated the claim and said Shroff had been targeted because of his alleged links to actor Salman Khan, whom Bishnoi has been threatening for years.

Mumbai police have not confirmed the claims or established that the Bishnoi gang was behind the attempted shooting. Investigators are still working to determine who ordered the attack and why.

The targeting of Shroff comes after a series of threats and attacks involving major Bollywood figures, including gunfire outside Khan's home in 2024 and filmmaker Rohit Shetty's house earlier this year. Together, these incidents have revived fears about organised crime's reach into the film industry, stirring memories of a darker chapter in Mumbai's history.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the city's underworld wielded enormous influence over the film business, funding productions, demanding protection money and sometimes using violence to enforce its demands. It took years of police action, along with the gradual rise of institutional financing, to weaken that hold.

Now, as new allegations and theories surface almost daily, a question once thought to belong to Mumbai's past has returned: is the underworld trying to control Bollywood again?

Those who battled organised crime in Mumbai at its height say the answer is not as simple as the attempt on Shroff might imply.

D Sivanandhan, who took over Mumbai's Crime Branch in 1998, recalls a period when a phone call from Dubai, where some of the most notorious gang leaders were based, could determine a film's fate - who starred in it, financed it or profited from its distribution.

In an industry reliant on private money, the boundary between investor and extortionist could be dangerously thin. And the threats were real. In 1997, music mogul Gulshan Kumar was shot dead outside a Mumbai temple. Three years later, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan survived an assassination attempt.

Sivanandhan investigated the financing of Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, a Salman Khan film whose producer and assistant were each sentenced to six years in prison under Maharashtra's organised crime law for underworld links. The film's financier received a one-year sentence for withholding information about those links. Police seized the film's negatives, and its release eventually took place under court supervision.

Gangsters were not always forcing themselves on a reluctant industry. Some filmmakers willingly sought their money, Sivanandhan recalled, in arrangements that could benefit both sides and were difficult for police to break up.

But Sivanandhan is hesitant to view the latest violence as a return of the mafia he once fought. The men he pursued - Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel, Arun Gawli and others - were part of criminal networks rooted in Mumbai, even when their leaders operated from abroad.

"This is not the Mumbai mafia which we know in the last 60 years," he said. "This is something else."

Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi has been locked up in prison since 2015

That something else has become closely tied to the name Lawrence Bishnoi. A gangster with roots in northern India who has spent years in jail, Bishnoi has developed an aura of folkloric menace: a prisoner said to command gunmen across continents, with his name invoked in threats and claims of responsibility that spread almost instantly online.

Bishnoi has publicly threatened Khan over a 1998 poaching case involving blackbucks, a species of antelope revered by the Bishnoi community. In April 2024, gunmen fired five rounds outside Khan's Mumbai home. Six months later, Baba Siddique, a politician close to Khan and other actors, was murdered. Mumbai police have linked both attacks to the Bishnoi gang, though they have not established any personal role by Lawrence Bishnoi in Siddique's killing.

Some accusations against his network are supported by police investigations; others remain untested. But the line between what the gang has clearly done and what is claimed in its name can blur in the public mind, doing little to reduce Bishnoi's notoriety.

Rakesh Maria, a former Mumbai police commissioner, has pointed to Bishnoi as an example of a new generation of gangsters who are more technologically skilled and internationally connected than their predecessors. "The old underworld was visible and territorial, but the new one is dispersed, fluid, making it harder to pin down," Maria told

"They no longer need to reside in the city to command it."

The relationship between gangsters and Bollywood has also changed in another respect: who gets to shape their image.

In the 1990s, Bollywood itself helped turn Mumbai's feared underworld figures into objects of fascination. Films such as Satya (1998) and Company (2002) brought a gritty, visceral realism to that world, while Manoj Bajpayee's portrayal of gangster Bhiku Mhatre in Satya became, in the words of film scholar Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram, "mythologised and talismanic".

The fear and fascination of that period were "seared into the collective consciousness", Devasundaram told the BBC.

Each new attack brings those memories back, he added. But today's gangsters no longer need cinema to build their mythology. Social media lets them shape their own image, spreading threats, claims of responsibility and carefully staged photographs to audiences far beyond Mumbai.

After the latest shooting, police reportedly increased security outside the homes of Khan and Rohit Shetty. The All Indian Cine Workers Association called for stronger protection, asking: "Today it is Tiger Shroff. Who is next?"

So far, there is little evidence that criminal networks have regained their former influence over Bollywood's finances and decisions. But the latest attacks have revealed a different weakness.

Gangsters may no longer need to control an industry to unsettle it. A single shooting attempt, amplified across millions of phone screens, can spread fear far beyond its intended target.

Sivanandhan, who spent years confronting Mumbai's gangsters, understands the limits of even the strongest security.

"There is always a crack in the armour," he said.