Ronnie Screwala has become the latest target of underworld extortion after a number of Bollywood celebs have confessed to being threatened. The dark criminal world of Mumbai has been haunting Bollywood for ages, but the more recent cases involve the bigger names of the industry. UTV’s head honcho Ronnie Screwala faced a bad scare recently. On July 11, six people, alleged associates of Pujari gang barged into UTV’s office seeking the whereabouts of Screwala. Bangalore police has been in search of Pujari gang for various extortion cases in the city. The incident came as an alarm to them after the attack on Ronnie. Pujari has reportedly been chasing Ronnie for his alleged support to Dawood.
Not long before Rakesh Roshan was shot at while leaving from his office at Santa Cruz on January 21, 2000. He was hit in the left arm and thus underwent a surgery. The then Chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal suspected the involvement of Abu Salem faction of Dawood Ibrahim. During the release of ‘Krrish’, Roshan’s anti-piracy campaign gave another reason to underworld for extortion, this time even engulfing Hrithik, as was deduced by the telephonic conversation between Sanjay Dutt and Chotta Shakeel on November 2000.
Shahrukh Khan turned hostile to Bharat Shah case but he broke his silence in 2002. In 1997-98 Chotta Shakeel had compelled him to work to which SRK sort of gave a nod. Things somehow did not work and he later got threatening calls from Abu Salem himself. The story has not changed though characters on the other end might have.
Though not a direct target, Aishwarya’s coversation with Salman made it clear that Salman would threaten her in the name of underworld don. Central forensic report with the help of the samples of their respective voices through audiocassettes proved Salman had connections with underworld.
It was during ‘Chori Chori Chupke Chupke’ in 2000 during the shoot that Preity Zinta got an extortion call referring to Bhai ka Aadmi for an amount of 50 lakhs. In a statement to police she had agreed to pay 25 lakhs as remuneration for acting in ‘Chori Chori Chupke Chupke’. Later, she also admitted her willingness to act in the film despite all that drama.
Mahesh Bhatt was targeted by an unknown gunman entered his office at Juhu. The gunman fired two rounds in the office after he got aware of Bhatt’s absence. Ashok Pandit suspected Ravi Pujari in this case again; who happened to visit Bhatt’s office, and take Pujari’s call threatening Bhatt. Bhatt attended a similar call later. Strangely, Bhatt had not been warned of this attack before.
Apart from these top-notch stars, there were others such as Govinda, Raj Kumar Santoshi, Himesh Reshamiya, Abbas-Mustan and Mahesh Manjrekar who have become the soft-targets of extortion by underworld dons.