IF it weren't for the horror of the situation, the admission would have been appreciated for its honesty. Newly appointed Bangalore Police Commissioner L. Revannasiddaiah stated last week that the country's Silicon Valley was seeing an increase in crime.
The candidness followed the discovery of the decomposed body of Raksha Prabhu, the three-year-old daughter of a hotel cashier. The little girl's corpse was found dumped in a manhole on the outskirts of the city, three weeks after she had been kidnapped. The gruesome murder was yet another addition to the city's growing list. And with it, notions of Bangalore's peace and tranquility are beginning to appear suspect.
"Bangalore is not the same as it used to be. Things are changing everyday," says Revannasiddaiah who had taken up the post of commissioner after a famous stint in the CBI investigating Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Bofors scandal. Events have proved him only too right.
Earlier this year, Mark Gallagher, an Irish jockey racing in Bangalore, was shot at by scooter-borne youths outside the Ban-galore Turf Club because he had not 'pulled' his mount in a race when he was supposed to. Chidambara Shetty, a young Kannada film producer, was not so lucky. Upset over Shetty's inability to return money he had borrowed for his productions, Shetty's financiers allegedly got him beaten to death and thrown on the pavement near the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in March. Next on the list was 'Bombay' Hameed, a restaurant owner in the Muslim-dominated Shivaji-nagar area. In a typical gangland killing, Hameed was butchered last month while returning from a restaurant in the heart of the city. His associate, Mansoor, was seriously injured. The motive: revenge for the killing of Koli Fayaz, a member of the underworld, two years ago. Hameed was seen as having sheltered the killers of Fayaz and his gang member Tanveer.
Consequently, when the Bangalore Police put up barricades at night all over the city last week and stopped motorists to trace Raksha's kidnappers, it was as if Revannasiddaiah had brought a little bit of Delhi with him. Raids were also conducted on nearly a dozen live bands and restaurant owners were arrested for serving alcohol where women worked (performed) which is against the license rules. The licenses of two live band restaurants were cancelled and the application of five others for renewal of license were rejected. Fifteen other applicants for licenses have been asked to 'show cause' for renewal. Finally, in what most clearly signaled the growing anxiety over the city's vulnerability to crime, the Anti-Rowdy Squad of the police—a crack team of some of the best officers in the city which had been disbanded over a year ago—was reconstituted.
THE alarm bells were ringing just on time. Bangalore over the years has been home to at least half-a-dozen underworld groups which were involved in the seedy cabarets and night clubs (now shut down), illegal massage parlours and thriving oil adulteration rackets in the '80s. With some of the Bombay-connected gangs injured and on-the-run, Bangalore was used as a safe getaway. This situation existed till 1993 when Muthappa Rai, Dawood Ibrahim's hitman in Bangalore, was forced to leave the city under pressure from the police.
While older gangs lessened their activities after 1993 and made efforts to regroup under newer, less-experienced leaders, the real estate boom of 1995 was a real boon for fringe gangs. Settling disputes, evicting tenants, and forcing sale of property were suddenly money-spinners. Coupled with the return of live bands earlier this year and illegal card-game gambling dens, Bangalore's mafia is back in business. And crime is not far behind.
"Live bands and gambling clubs are the greatest source of quick money for Bangalore's new underworld," says a former don. "Real estate is for the long-term players but that is where the real money is." Speaking to Outlook on condition of anonymity, the don, who was once an associate of Rai, claims that the underworld is involved with almost every live band and gambling club, either as a partner or as 'protector' who seeks regular payments. Though Rai moved to Dubai in February and is cooling his heels along with Sharad Shetty and Ashok Shetty—all Dawood's henchmen—Rai's boys are said to be continuing to fudge horse-racing in the city. Besides, 'Bombay' Hameed's gang is still targeted by Tanveer's group while Mulam Lokesh, a young and upcoming mafioso, is engaged in a running feud with his former brother-in-arms Jedarahalli Krishnappa.
A more serious rivalry has also developed between Rai and the two Shettys on one side and the followers of Francis, Poojari, and Subhash Thakur—all owing their allegiance to Mumbai's Chhota Rajan—on the other. This is a spillover of the Dawood-Rajan feud. Though Francis, Poojari and Thakur are in jails in Mumbai and Delhi, the coastal city of Mangalore and its neigh-bouring Udupi are developing into safe havens for their gangs. And Bangalore is barely a night's journey by road.
Together, they constitute a formidable underworld and in the absence of an effective controlling hierarchy, their potential for crime is far more than that of an organised gang. "Add to this the rise in offences like the killing of Raksha and the spate of chain-snatching incidents that hit the city last year, and it becomes clear that Bangalore is on the verge of criminal decadence," says a former Karnataka director general of police who did not want to be named. "Statistics don't reveal the seriousness of the situation as a majority of the crimes go unreported. Unlawful activities concerning the common man are on the rise. It is this insecurity that needs to be tackled, failing which Bangalore may go out of control," says Revannasiddaiah.
Obviously, the task is not simple. Especially with just 11,000 policemen, 15 mobile patrols ("of which 10 per cent are always out of order") and one walkie-talkie for every police station in a city of 50 lakh people. Revannasiddaiah says he is working to get around the hiccups: diversion of manpower from low-priority sections like VIP security, updating of rowdy sheets, tracing absconders, and sensitising and classifying suspects to be kept under vigil by his crack team of officers.
"Better training, sensitisation, supervision, and equipment can go a long way in creating an efficient force. It is easy to take on crime in the city now as it is not yet as organised as in other bigger cities. It is better we dismantle and deal with the gangs now before allowing them to grow into giants and then trying to control them," says the police commissioner. And this is one assignment in which he can expect the wholehearted backing of the Bangalo-rean on the streets.
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