Mumbai Mafia: Police vs the Underworld

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 .

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.

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.

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!!

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.