MUMBAI, Feb 8: It was the proverbial lull before the storm. Five daring shootouts have proved that the Mumbai underworld, which was pushed onto the backfoot by the police with a flurry of encounters last year, is making a comeback. While a majority of the murders were a fallout of underworld rivalries, they indicate that the mafioso still retains enough punch to strike at will.The clock-work precision with which the Manish Shah murder was executed is a measure of the underworld's arrogance: the shooters were waiting for Shah since early morning right in front of his house; after gunning him down, eye-witnesses said, they walked calmly to their car and were gone; a short distance away they abandoned the car, got into another one and sped away. No indication of nervousness, no sign of any fear of police.And it was the same script in four other cases, only the locations were different. On January 16, Shiv Sena regional chief Dagdu Sakpal's right-hand man Manya Jingare was killed. Police suspect Jingare waskilled to avenge the murder of Akhil Bharatiya Sena's Ramdas Ambaokar. A small-time businessman and a close associate of Arun Gawli, Lalit Shah, was shot dead on January 7. Police suspect he was killed by the Ashwin Naik gang to avenge the murder of Jayant Jadhav in 1996. A few days later Dinesh Abu Jathar, a close aide of Ashwin Naik was gunned down outside his residence at Tardeo. Police suspect Gawli's hand in the murder. Even as the police were reeling under the sudden onslaught, the mafia claimed another casualty on January 12 when matka-operator, Vasantlal Shah was gunned down by three unidentified men. Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Ranjit Singh Sharma conceded that Gawli gang's activities are on the rise. ``Of the five murders, Gawli gang is definitely involved in two,'' he said, adding that gangsters were now vying with each other to grab the extortion pie. Of the 17 extortion complaints registered this year, four are against the Gawli gang.But, senior officers said they have their handstied. After a series of cases were filed against the Mumbai police in connection with encounter killings, they have been going soft on gangsters. ``We were in the process of dealing a final blow to the gangsters, but were stopped by the courts. now we don't adopt unconventional methods,'' admitted a deputy commissioner of police. The Mumbai police had gunned down 70 gangsters in encounters last year. The encounters were abruptly halted after the initiation of court proceedings in October last year. The assistant commissioner of police, north-west, Anil Chaubal said, ``We have to consider legal restrictions and constraints while taking action against the criminals. We cannot exceed our limits.''
