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'.

People who would be watching a Netflix docu are mostly young people who either were too young during the encounter days or weren't even born yet. So for most of its viewers its a history lesson. A unbiased history lesson.

Mumbai was growing rapidly, law and order wasn't growing at the same pace, opportunity for crime was increasing day by day.

In 90s A few key incidents happened which shook people of Mumbai and made police desperate to maintain law and order

This desperation resulted into police becoming the law enforcement, the judge and the punisher, and if they found you guilty, then the punishment was DEATH.

Was it morally right? No, did it bring peace for Mumbai? Yes.

This docu shows how it started, how it happened and what was the aftermath.

For me the best part was real interviews of key people involved.

Definitely worth a watch for everyone regardless their opinion on the topic.

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.

It's a quick and cerebral look at the rise of D-company, police encounters, and how the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) evolved over the years. There was a time when encounter specialists deemed themselves judge, jury, and executioner - they'd ruthlessly remove gangsters from the dangerous streets of Mumbai by shooting them dead. The media also hailed them as saviours of the city, because it was easy to do so. Encounters would always make for front page news or shocking headlines, so it was natural for the officers to get a high out of it. When the world became more inquisitive about at least some of these questionable encounters, the saviours turned villains. The morality behind this is what the documentary leaves you to think about. At 87 minutes, it's an engaging affair.