J Dey explores how the cash flow in the underworld is fast changing

Underworld business today is no longer just about crime. It boasts of some of the sharpest business minds of our times. This, say observers, is reflected in the drastic changes in gangland business over the last four years.
Gangs no longer believe in small game. This includes any business that gives returns in just a handful of crores like counterfeiting, extortion, etc.

Since 2005, they have been focusing on businesses that rake in hundreds and thousands of crores, said a source.

Mob bosses, especially Dawood Ibrahim, have started thinking like business heads of international conglomerates.

Illustration/Satish Acharya

One of the first records of the growing scale of the underworld's business came in the form of a transcript of a phone conversation in 2005 between Dawood's brother Iqbal Kaskar and a middleman named Lallu.
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Lallu is heard telling Kaskar that the land on which the historic Crawford Market stands, valued at Rs 300-crore then, would shortly be theirs, as BMC officials had accepted Rs 25 lakh to look elsewhere.

Though this attempt was botched, it was followed by new undertakings that changed the way in which the underworld conducted business.

DVD piracy

On top of the list is the pirated DVD business, which is ruled by D Company.

The copy of a new film is stolen straight from a Mumbai laboratory andu00a0 smuggled to labs in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia for duplication. They make a profit of around Rs 500 crore per film.

To evade the law, they have now started using the Internet to transfer the pirated movies.

Intn'l flesh trade

Another new business is exporting minors to Gulf countries. Every year after Ramzan around 3,000 girls are sent there for three months.

The gang spends around Rs 4 lakh per girl and makes Rs 15 lakh on each one. It is an estimated Rs 275 crore business per season.

Subtle

And it's not just the businesses. Even the working style of the gangs has changed drastically (see box). They now work like professionals.
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In a conversation recorded by the Crime Branch in 2007, gangster Ashwin Naik is politeness personified as he extorts money from a builder.

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