By Ranjona Banerji
The doings of the Mumbai Police once again fascinate the media. There is possibly nothing different in the way the police in Mumbai operate compared to everywhere else in India. Except of course in the distant past when the Bombay Police was known as the Scotland Yard of the East. And there were stories, apocryphal and true, about how the police in Bombay were sticklers for rules being followed and so on. These stories usually referred to toughness of the traffic police. As a result, Bombay motorists were marginally more law-abiding than in the rest of India.
The glamour associated with the Bombay and then Mumbai Police is based largely on geography. Bombay is the capital of the Hindi film industry, now known as Bollywood. And as a port, Bombay was a landing point for smuggled goods in the days before liberalisation and is now an entry point for drugs. This underworld was glamourised by cinema.
In the outrageous 1970s films, ganglords had their underground dens full of dancing girls which were also secret water jetties. Very James Bond villain. Actually, rumour has it that Gujarat gangster Sukhar Bakhia really had one of these. But I don’t know whether he copied the movies or vice versa.
Later in the 1990s and 2000s, grittier films were made about the underworld and the police, based on the massive change in the city after the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots and the 1993 bomb blasts.
Dawood Ibrahim left India in the 1980s but his shadow continues to dog the “crime reporter” who lives for rumours that this mysterious figure, vanished long before most of them were born, is about to return to India and face our monumental justice system.
And that explains part of the breathless excitement in the media over the fight within the Mumbai police. The rest is to do with the political implications of the recently reinstated controversial “encounter specialist” Sachin Waze versus Param Bir Singh versus Anil Deshmukh battle. This is a double whammy, almost outdoing the “Battle for Bengal” in the breathless media stakes.
How this will play out is anyone’s guess. Apart from the BJP trying any means possible to topple the Maharashtra government, it is also true that every political party has meddled with the Bombay/Mumbai Police. And several police personnel have played along. Let us not forget that a Mumbai Police Commissioner joined the BJP immediately after retirement and became a Union minister. The tentacles of politics with the police and administrative services are long and have a clear stranglehold. And the Delhi media circle is as every agog and quivering over a subject they personally have no experience of, except perhaps having watched a couple of Ram Gopal Verma, Anurag Kashyap and if we’re lucky Vishal Bharadwaj films. But Delhi sets the media pace and the rest dance along. No matter how absurd the tune.
Into this melee, we hear two sensible voices from within the police: the redoubtable Julio Ribeiro and the brave Meeran Borwankar, who in her career withstood the massive pressures she faced from within.
Of course, also lurking about this case is the mysterious car, parked on Carmichael Road, 500 metres from business magnate Mukesh Ambani’s famous Antilla residence. The car had 20 gelatin sticks, wrapped in a Mumbai Indians bag (the IPL cricket team owned by Ambani) and a letter threatening Ambani. The owner of the car was found dead in a Thane creek. The widow connected her husband to Sachin Waze. Former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis jumped in and we have a Hindi movie script in real life.
Media-wise, my advice would be to stick to journalists working in Maharashtra for more reliable inputs. And look up the Prince Babaria case for some extra masala from the past.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia every Tuesday and Friday. Her views here are personal.