Mumbai Mafia: Police vs the Underworld

Mumbai mafia:police vs the underworld is a crime documentary film directed by raaghav dar and francis longhurst.

This docu does many things right and some things wrong. The police and their functioning is basically the centerstage here. Ravindra angre, pradeep sharma and all the other members of the encounter squad are interviewed and their views are thoroughly shown. They are unapologetic but also remorseful at the same time. 'Nobody likes to kill people' is what one police officer says. AA khan resigns even. This docu does humanize the police officials in a controversial encounter story. The gangsters are hardly focused upon. Dawood's background is touched and not detailed. Minty tejpal and hussain zaidi make appearances here and it was an honour to listen to them.

The screenplay during the bombay blast aftermath becomes slow in the first half. It shifts attention and loses its grip.

I would rate this docu 8.5.

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'.

Documentary gives us the brief insight into the world of 90s Mumbai Mafia and police encounters to neutralize the organized crime syndicate . Unbiased view towards the issue was the major positive of the documentary , at first it explores the rise of D Company and how cruel they were , which caused chaos in streets of Mumbai , to neutralize them cops chose the violence in which they ended up exploiting their authority , same time it shows how annoying and opportunistic the media are . Docu mostly shows the cops side of the story and how they became heroes of the country by encountering the criminals and at end how they became villians for there fake encounters .

Overall , documentary discusses the known incidents and facts that took place in two decades in 1hr 30mins . If you have less idea about the D Company crime syndicate and police encountering that took place in 90s and early 2ks of Mumbai then kindly give it a try . Worth watching .

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.

Engaging narrative of how the underworld activities in the 90s were successfully curbed using "encounter specialists", but at the same time the documentary grapples with the question whether these encounter specialists went too far and took the law in their own hands by staging so called "fake encounters".

These specialists argue that irrespective of whether the encounters were staged or genuine, the end result was a dead criminal who in a normal scenarios would get bail if jailed and will be out on the streets terrorising people.

On the flip side, human rights activists argue that the dead criminals missed an opportunity to reform and lead a positive life.

At the end of the day, politicians were happy for encounters to take place while the crime rate was being brought under control but once it was controlled they had to sacrifice some of these so called encounter specialists to pacify the western governments and human rights organisations.

Would Mumbai have ended up as a terror state had it not been for the encounter specialists? No doubt there was collateral damage, but was it worth it ? Only a person living in fear in Mumbai in the 90s would know, and probably agree.