Baba Siddique was tragically shot multiple times by three assailants on Saturday in a shocking incident near his son’s office in Bandra East. He sustained critical injuries to his chest and abdomen and was rushed to Lilavati Hospital, where he later succumbed to his wounds. The Mumbai Crime Branch reported that six rounds were fired at him, with three bullets striking their target.
Bollywood and the underworld’s relationship has been several decades old; be it good or bad. But it was Karim Lala whose primary business was extortion, kidnapping contract killing and narcotics. He was the go to peron if they needed justice. Karim Lala would invite film celebrities for his Eid celebrations. Dilip Kumar was close to him and often attended his events. It is a well-known fact that Dilip Kumar had to take Helen to meet Karim Lala. Helen had alleged that PN Arora had duped her of large sums of money. Lala solved her problem and Arora immediately gave her money.
There were times when actors delayed shooting and slowly the producers started taking help of the goons to scare Bollywood, which led to the entry of the underworld into the film industry. It was not about just threatening them but they got a chance amongst the glitz and glamour of the film industry.
Although Karim Lala and Varadrajan Mudaliar got involved in the film industry, WOMEN WERE A BIG NO No for them. But then when Haji Mastan came on the scene he simply loved the glamourous women especially Madhubala so much so that he ended up marrying her lookalike and even financed films.
When Dawood Ibrahim entered the scene, the notoriety of the Underworld rose further than extortion, contract killing, drug trafficking, smuggling and real estate deals. He corporatized the underworld, hired people on salaries and jobs were assigned to them. It was during his time that the filmstars were summoned to Dubai to perform. We have seen that those videos keep surfacing on the news channels every now and then. Slowly, extortion increased and also demand for overseas distribution rights of films were demanded by them.
Not only did the underworld start demanding rights of films, Dawood Ibrahim’s brother Noora turned lyricist with the Salman Khan film Patthar Ke Phool and then began taking interest in women of the film industry and two top heroines ended up becoming part of their harem. The underworld not only began asking for protection but also had industry insiders who became informers for them and helped them.
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Abu Salem was assigned to tackle Bollywood and began to threaten all the top actors and producers of the film industry. Manmohan Shetty, Rakesh Roshan, Subhash Ghai and many more. Some conceded into paying the protection money and those who didn’t were targeted. Rajiv Rai had fled the country after he was threatened by Salem and did not return to India for a really long time.
Like Haji Mastan, even Abu Salem found Monica Bedi and started forcing producers to cast her in their films, some of them being Haseena Maan Jayegi and Jodi No 1.
The relationship between underworld and Bollywood soon was seen as a nexus and there was evidence of actors and singers performing for the Don. When the pressure on the police grew after threats for extortion increased Bharat Shah was arrested under MOCA by the Mumbai police for aiding the underworld and a lot of actors had to depose before the court. Preity Zinta made headlines when the investigating officer had called her the only male in the film industry to accept and say that she had gotten extortion calls while her male colleague denied it.
Dawood and Chhota Rajan slowly stopped threatening Bollywood but small time goons like Ravi Poojari started threatening with extortion.