How India Handles Organised Crime
India's organised crime landscape is characterised by multi-domain criminal syndicates operating at the intersection of land, real estate, construction, and political patronage in major metropolitan areas; trafficking networks (human, drug, and wildlife) operating transnationally; and the increasingly important digital-criminal complex centred on fraud operations.
The Mumbai underworld — historically associated with figures including Dawood Ibrahim (D Company, currently believed in Pakistan), Chhota Shakeel, and successor networks — remains a reference point in organised crime discourse; its contemporary influence on Mumbai's film industry (extortion), real estate (land acquisition), and contract killings is documented but significantly diminished from its 1990s peak following sustained police and ED pressure.
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| Representational Image: How India Handles Organised Crime |
The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita's new Section 111 — creating explicit organised crime offences — represents India's first comprehensive statutory codification of organised crime as a distinct category. Before July 2024, organised crime was prosecuted under a patchwork of existing provisions: Maharashtra's MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999) was the most developed state-level organised crime statute; Karnataka, Delhi, and other states followed; Rajasthan and other states relied on UAPA, NDPS, or regular IPC provisions applied to organised crime patterns.
Section 111 BNS defines an
"organised crime syndicate" and creates penalties of imprisonment (10
years to life) plus fine for participating in or operating a syndicate;
"organised crime" includes continuing unlawful activity committed by
syndicate members with the help of violence/threats for financial or other
gain.
What You Need to Know
- BNS
Section 111 (organised crime): defines "organised crime
syndicate" as a group of two or more persons who, acting either
singly or collectively as a syndicate or gang, indulge in activities of
organised crime; activities include: violence, intimidation, economic
offences, trafficking; penalties: 5 years to life imprisonment; if offence
causes death — life or death penalty.
- MCOCA
(Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999): India's most developed
organised crime statute; covers gangster activities, violent crime,
extortion, land grabbing; bail similar to UAPA (difficult to obtain); used
against real estate extortion networks, gambling networks, and
Dawood-adjacent crime; 17 states now have similar statutes.
- Enforcement
Directorate role: ED investigates organised crime through the PMLA
(Prevention of Money Laundering Act) route — attaching proceeds of crime
rather than prosecuting the underlying crime; ED can attach property
(houses, vehicles, bank accounts) of organised crime accused and their
associates; the money trail approach is more effective than direct arrest
for senior syndicate members who maintain distance from direct crime.
- Trafficking
networks: India's human trafficking for labour exploitation (brick kilns,
construction, domestic work, textile factories) and sex trafficking is
documented by NHRC, Shakti Vahini, and IJM; NCRB 2024: approximately 6,500
trafficking cases registered (significant undercount); West Bengal,
Odisha, Assam, and Jharkhand are primary source states; major destination:
Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Surat.
- Land
mafia: India's rapid urbanisation has made land — particularly peripheral
agricultural land being acquired for development — extremely valuable;
"land mafias" combine: fraudulent land title acquisition;
forcible eviction of small landholders; bribery of revenue officials for
record manipulation; violence against whistleblowers; political
protection; this is India's most economically significant organised crime
category by value.
How It Works in Practice
1. The money laundering approach: The ED's PMLA
investigations complement police criminal investigations by following money —
identifying how organised crime proceeds are laundered through real estate,
shell companies, cash businesses, and hawala networks; attaching these assets
disrupts the financial incentive structure for organised crime even where
direct prosecution of senior syndicate members is difficult; the ED's expanded
powers and aggressive asset attachment (documented also in politically
motivated cases) have made financial investigation India's primary organised
crime disruption tool.
2. MCOCA and BNS Section 111 prosecution challenges:
Organised crime prosecution requires: proving the existence of a
"syndicate" (two or more persons acting collectively); establishing
the accused's role in the syndicate; documenting the "continuing unlawful
activity" pattern; and surviving challenges based on association
(membership in a syndicate should not itself be criminal without active
participation). These are harder evidentiary challenges than proving a specific
discrete offence; organised crime prosecutors typically build cases through
informant testimony, surveillance evidence, and financial documentation.
3. Witness protection failures: Organised crime
prosecution depends heavily on witness testimony; witnesses in organised crime
cases are particularly at risk — the syndicate has both motive and capability
to intimidate or eliminate witnesses; India's Witness Protection Scheme (2018,
Supreme Court approved) provides for identity protection, relocation, and
security measures for high-risk witnesses; implementation is resource-intensive
and inconsistent; multiple organised crime witnesses have been killed despite
supposed protection.
4. Wildlife trafficking as an organised crime category:
India's wildlife trafficking — targeting tigers (skin, bone), elephants
(ivory), pangolins (scales), bears (bile), and dozens of other protected
species — is a documented organised crime category with international networks;
the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB) under MoEFCC coordinates enforcement;
IPC Section 51 (Wildlife Protection Act) provides criminal penalties; organised
international networks link India's wildlife poachers to Southeast Asian and
Chinese buyers through documented supply chains.
5. Extortion and protection rackets: Construction
industry extortion — demanding "protection money" from contractors
and builders in exchange for not disrupting construction sites — is documented
in Mumbai, Delhi, and other major cities; building on land ownership disputes —
threatening legal or physical action unless payment is made — is a variant;
political patronage for protection rackets gives them durability; BNS Section
308 (extortion) provides 10-year maximum for organised extortion, but
prosecution requires identifying and successfully convicting the extortion
demand originator, not just the street-level collector.
What People Often Misunderstand
- Mumbai's
organised crime is significantly diminished from the 1990s: Dawood
Ibrahim's D Company is physically located in Pakistan and its direct
operational control of Mumbai-based criminal activities has been disrupted
by decades of police and financial enforcement; contemporary Mumbai
organised crime is more fragmented and real-estate-focused than the
Bollywood-stereotype era suggests.
- Real
estate-linked organised crime may be India's largest by economic scale:
The combination of fraudulent land title acquisition, political
protection, and violence against small landholders in India's urbanising
peripheral areas is economically larger than all drug trafficking
combined; it is also the most politically connected and therefore the
hardest to prosecute.
- ED
property attachment is a civil rather than criminal remedy: ED
attachments under PMLA are administrative remedies (properties attached
pending determination); they do not represent criminal conviction; the
accused can challenge attachments in the PMLA Adjudicating Authority and
appellate tribunals; ED's attachment statistics (thousands of crores
attached) are sometimes misleadingly presented as equivalent to successful
prosecutions.
- Section
111 BNS is new and its operational scope is untested: India's courts
have not yet developed jurisprudence on BNS Section 111's "organised
crime syndicate" definition; what level of coordination constitutes a
"syndicate" and what activities constitute "organised
crime" will be developed through early cases; the provision is
potentially very broad and its application needs careful judicial
development to avoid criminalising ordinary criminal partnerships.
- Trafficking
victims face prosecution risk in India's current legal framework:
Trafficking victims who have been exploited in sex work can be prosecuted
under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act; this creates a perverse
incentive for victims not to approach police; victim-protective
trafficking law requires treating exploited persons as victims rather than
offenders — a reform that the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and
Rehabilitation) Bill (pending since 2021) seeks to address.
What Changes Over Time
The Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) Bill — repeatedly delayed since its 2021 passage in Lok Sabha, awaiting Rajya Sabha passage as of May 2026 — will, when enacted, substantially improve India's victim-protection framework and strengthen prosecution of traffickers.
The PMLA's expanded scope and the ED's growing institutional
capacity mean that money-trail investigations will play an increasingly central
role in organised crime prosecution.
Sources and Further Reading
- Drishti
IAS — Crime in India 2024: https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/ncrbs-crime-in-india-2024-report
- Wikipedia
— Law enforcement India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_India
- PRS
— Police reforms: https://prsindia.org/policy/analytical-reports/police-reforms-india
- Lawgical Search — BNS BNSS: https://lawgicalsearch.com/indias-new-criminal-laws-2023-bns-bnss-bsa-explained-replacing-ipc-crpc-evidence-act-from-1-july-2024/
- Carnegie Endowment — India cybersecurity: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/09/mapping-indias-cybersecurity-administration-in-2025?lang=en