Mumbai underworld refers to the organised crime network in the city of Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra in India. Mumbai is the largest city of India and also its financial capital. Over the period of time, Mumbai underworld has been dominated by several different groups and mobsters. Haji Mastan was a Mumbai based mobster, who became the first celebrity gangster of the city of Mumbai, expanding his clout in the film industry by giving money to directors and studios for film production. As Mastan's influence in Bollywood grew, he began to produce films himself. Born in 1926 in a Tamil family in Pannaikulam, near Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu, Haji Mastan originally known as Mastan Haider Mirza at the age of 8 moved to Mumbai with his father. The father-son duo ran a small cycle repair shop in Crawford market. 10 years later in the year 1944, Mastan joined Bombay docks as a porter and from there entered in organised crime. He worked in association with Karim Lala and by 1960s he became a rich man. The riches he accumulated were because of smuggling gold, silver and electronic goods on which he made millions. He even started financing his money in Bollywood and became a film producer.
Varadarajan Mudaliar, popularly known as Vardha bhai, was a Mumbai based ethnic Hindu Mumbai mafia mobster, Varadarajan Muniswami Mudaliar came to be known as Vardhabhai who operated from early 1960s to 1980 and accorded equal clout along with Haji Mastan and Karim Lala. Starting off as a porter, his first brush with the crime world was when he began selling illicit liquor. He commanded a lot of respect within the Tamil community and he also ran a parallel judiciary where his verdict was the law of the land and final and binding in areas such as Matunga and Dharavi, believed to have a large presence of Tamilians. The Tamil don in tandem with Haji Mastan ventured into stealing dock cargo. He later diversified into contract killings and narcotics trade. He enjoyed a fine run as he entirely through the seventies, controlled the criminal operations in east and north central Mumbai. Karim Lala commanded south and central Mumbai and majority of smuggling and illegal construction financing was an area looked into by Haji Mastani
Karim Lala and his family members' groups operated in the Mumbai docks, they were often called Pathan mafia or Afghan mafia, terms coined by Mumbai law enforcement for his mafia group in Mumbai because of the majority of the members of these crime syndicate's members were ethnic Pashtuns from Afghanistan's Kunar province. They were especially involved in hashish trafficking, protection rackets, extortion, illegal gambling, gold smuggling and contract killing and held a firm stranglehold over parts of Mumbai's underworld. Lala controlled bootlegging and gambling to the city in 1940 and was the undisputed king of the trade till 1985. Several local Indian, Russian, Israeli and Nigerian mafia groups are heavily involved in the organised drug trade in Goa, India's smallest state. Sources reveal that there are also individual players who are British, French, Italian, Portuguese and from other European countries. Some have been visiting the state for over two decades and have their fixed international and local clientele. Goa has, in recent days become a principal hub of the international drug trade, apart from being a key point of consumption. According to estimates, drugs flowing out of different foreign locations lands on the comparatively unguarded Goan coastline as Mumbai and its hinterland are no longer considered an easy route for trafficking, since the checks by the Coastguard, Navy, customs patrols and other government bodies. Punjabi mafia refers to the organised criminal gangs in the state of Punjab in India. There has been a spurt in the formation and activities of such criminal gangs in Punjab over the last decade even though some gangs, associated with those based in Uttar Pradesh, have been operational in the state since the end of militancy in Punjab. Post militancy, they took to contract killings. The real estate and industrial sector boom of the early 2000 saw several criminals surfacing with the primary objective of controlling unions. The flourishing of the banking sector, especially finance companies, spurred the demand for bouncers who ensured recovery of bad loans and helped in grabbing disputed properties. Cricket bookies too used their services. Around five years back when the boom in real estate ended, these gangs then tuned to extortion and protection money as their source of income. Most of these are inter-state gangs as well as the ones specialising in arms smuggling, narcotics and abduction. Kidnappings for ransom in Punjab, something which rarely happened earlier, are on the rise.