Film Review: Mumbai Mafia: Police vs The Underworld (2023)
Six years ago, a seismic global movement swept through Western capitals, compelling the most powerful politicians and public figures to literally bend the knee in public apologies. While the movement was largely ignited by the tragic and highly publicised instances of police lethal force used on specific categories of civilians in the United States, the underlying debate transcends borders. Whether the statistics truly substantiate every claim made during those protests remains a matter for sociologists and criminologists, but the controversial utilisation of police monopoly on violence as a primary method of street-level crime suppression is by no means an exclusively American phenomenon. If anything, one could argue that this approach is far more widespread and virulent in other regions of the world. Nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than in India, a reality brought into sharp, uncomfortable focus by Raaghav Dar and Francis Longhurst’s 2023 documentary, Mumbai Mafia: Police vs The Underworld.
As the title implies, the film’s central preoccupation is the decades-long war waged against organised crime in India’s commercial capital. This struggle reached its fever pitch in the early 1990s, propelled by the meteoric rise of the notorious mob boss Dawood Ibrahim and his sprawling D-Company network. Faced with an underworld that operated with impunity, the Mumbai police force underwent a profound tactical shift. The traditional mechanisms of law enforcement—methodical arrests, meticulous evidence collection, and courtroom prosecutions—were largely abandoned in favour of what authorities euphemistically term “encounters”. Officers would routinely confront high-profile gangsters, open fire, and subsequently claim self-defence. This practice rapidly became institutionalised, sparking intense public debate. It carved the nation into two irreconcilable camps: those who condoned these extrajudicial executions as a necessary purge of the most vicious and violent elements, and those who condemned them as blatant miscarriages of justice that inevitably bred systemic abuse and corruption.
The documentary does not shy away from examining the most infamous of these incidents, weaving in candid interviews with the very officers who carried out the shootings. Figures such as Pradeep Sharma, Ravindra Angre, and AA Khan emerge as central protagonists, often speaking with unapologetic pride. They frequently boast of orchestrating ninety, or even over a hundred, encounters, framing their actions as the only viable means to restore peace and law and order to a megalopolis increasingly fractured by sectarian violence. It is undeniable that a significant portion of the Indian public rallied behind these men, viewing them as modern-day avengers. Their exploits were later romanticised and reconstructed in numerous Bollywood films, and several of the officers themselves successfully transitioned into political careers, capitalising on their street-level credibility with varying degrees of electoral success.
However, the Netflix production is careful to present a more nuanced, and ultimately more troubling, perspective. While the initial narrative leans heavily into the heroic mythos of the encounter squads, the film deliberately introduces counterarguments through extensive interviews with journalists and authors who meticulously documented the era. As the documentary progresses, particularly in its later stages, it peels back the veneer of infallibility. Viewers are confronted with the uncomfortable reality that the so-called heroes were frequently subjects of internal investigations and legal prosecutions for a host of illegal activities, including fabricated encounters, extortion, and collusion with the very criminals they claimed to hunt. The film effectively demonstrates that the line between law enforcement and organised crime was often perilously thin, revealing a system where justice was frequently compromised by political expediency and institutional rot.
Structurally, Mumbai Mafia attempts to narrate its sprawling history in a feature-film format, relying on a blend of archival interviews, stock footage, and occasional dramatic reconstructions. While this approach lends a cinematic polish to the proceedings, it is not without its limitations. For viewers unfamiliar with India’s intricate political landscape, historical context, and the deeply entrenched nature of its underworld networks, the documentary can feel overwhelmingly dense. The narrative frequently meanders through decades of shifting alliances and bureaucratic manoeuvring without providing the necessary scaffolding for an international audience to fully grasp the stakes. Consequently, the film suffers from a distinct lack of proper closure, leaving many threads dangling and offering few definitive conclusions about the long-term efficacy or morality of the encounter policy.
Nevertheless, despite its narrative ambiguities and occasional pacing issues, Mumbai Mafia: Police vs The Underworld remains a compelling and highly recommended watch. It succeeds in delivering a fascinating, unvarnished insight into the realities of law enforcement in a rapidly modernising yet historically complex society. By refusing to offer easy moral binaries, the documentary forces audiences to confront the uncomfortable compromises inherent in state-sanctioned violence. It shows how different jurisdictions navigate the treacherous intersection of public safety, judicial process, and extrajudicial force. For anyone interested in the global mechanics of policing, organised crime, and the blurred ethics of modern law enforcement, this film provides an indispensable, if deeply unsettling, perspective.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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