Mumbai Mafia: Police vs the Underworld

Mumbai underworld has always been a fascinating topic in Indian films, novels and discussions. Now with the current trend in web series, the Bombay Mafia as it was known is showing its presence on OTT as well. Along with Hanslal Mehta's Scoop, Netflix has created an international crew documentary titled "Mumbai Mafia: Police vs The Underworld". This well-shot documentary has been made by British film-maker- Morgan Matthews. It covers the journey and important incidents of the underworld from 1991 to 2022! It covers interviews of major police officers, journalists and ex-D-company person and also shows the impact of shootouts, gang wars, and encounters and also opens old wounds of the Mumbai 1993 riots and the blasts. Although Bollywood has covered almost all of these issues in popular films like Shootout at Lokhandwala, Black Friday,Bombay,Ab tak Chappan etc ,still the documentary with a running time of app 1.5 hours is an interesting watch. A slickly made docu for people interested in real-life underworld and encounter specialists!!

This documentary is incredibly well done. The real footage from the 90s events mentioned is powerful, the reconstitutions have a real cinematic quality, and the interviews of the "encounter cops" are just fascinating. The whole story is wild and seems straight out of a movie.

The only criticism I have is that 3 our of the 4 journalists interviewed were very judgmental, in a way that came across as preachy and tone deaf. The female journalist literally says that the death of 1200 gangsters in encounters over the years was worse than the 1993 Bombay blasts... Obviously that's her opinion and it doesn't change how extremely well put together the documentary is, but it overall felt like the makers were trying to push the view that the encounter cops were as bad as the gangsters they killed, which I found to be a very manichean view.

But despite the caricatural opinions delivered by the interviewed journalists, the documentary is really worth a watch. The visuals, both old and new, are great and it's amazing to learn about the events through the very honest explanations of the famous encounter cops of the time.

Like theres no end to crime anywhere, and where it eventually worked for a while fighting bad with bad and worst for worst, they eventually got punished and dolloped with by their own. Cause mumbai police force encounters, or may i say enforcers, cause it was that their real mission was, upon criminal organisations and terrorists had an asphyxiating effect , and made mumbai for a period become a silent town crimewise...

quite unheard of really for western ears and eyes , giving a task force carte blanche authority over life, death and justice. And that really ruined their tactics, when an article in time magazine told the story about them dirty harry's of mumbai.

So crime came back, and are still ruling the streets of mumbai...

as a documentary production its a historical testament of mumbai, a city of dirt and chaos, where i least of all wouldve acted as a policeman. They use loads of media reels, and interviews, but the historians and humanists are oblivious. I do also miss mentioning of the mumbai hotel terror attack of 201?, that mustve had links to the d-company of gangsters. And in the end must be mentioned the lack of a pure time line, especially the latter third of the film...

but its a well made film on its premisses, the grumpy old man who hasnt and wouldnt visit mumbai, will recommend a view, its raw nature of crime shown en masse'.

Mumbai is the financial capital of India and one of major cities globally. It is fascinating that someone controlled mumbai and taxed others in addition to Govt just a few decades ago.

Don't expect it to be a movie but it is a good documentary on Mumbai history and some key events which happened in 1990s. I was too young then and this is a perfect history chapter for me I needed.

It shows the rise of mafia and how police has curbed down on mafia but then slowly how police started to show power and then slowly eventually there was an equilibrium.

Fun fact: the word "encounter" was in fact Indian English.

A nice documentary making me appreciate the cops who have encountered those who do not deserve a chance at life... thanks to Pradeep Sharma and the rest of the encounter specialists for making Mumbai what it is today. Hats off to them. However, the annoying liberal lady (and they are always at least 80kg) and the white soy journalist are a taint to the documentary. They sided with criminals and chose to humanise terrorists and but never the victims. My sympathy goes to the victims of the Mumbai bomb blasts and those terrorised by gangsters, and also Pradeep Sharma who was attacked by these malicious pro-criminal journalists.