The recent murder of veteran politician Baba Siddique, a former Maharashtra minister and a leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), has sparked a sharp debate over the state’s deteriorating law and order. Shot dead by three assailants outside his son’s office in Mumbai’s Bandra, Siddique’s murder casts a long shadow over Maharashtra’s once-vaunted reputation as a progressive state that was India’s commercial powerhouse and a secure haven for its citizens.
Two suspects have been apprehended, while authorities continue the search for a third. The crime branch is probing various motives, from business rivalry to contract killing linked to a Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) project.
The Opposition, from the Congress to NCP (SP) supremo Sharad Pawar have lambasted the state’s leadership for allowing such a brazen crime to occur in Mumbai, India’s financial capital. Earlier this year, Ganpat Gaikwad, a BJP MLA, was arrested for allegedly shooting a Shiv Sena leader, Mahesh Gaikwad, inside a police station in Ulhasnagar, over a land dispute. The normalization of such violence—where even elected officials resort to firearms in the presence of law enforcement—signals a dangerous erosion of state authority.
For many, the Siddique murder signals something far more ominous than just a contractual dispute gone awry. It begs the question whether Maharashtra has begun to slide into a state of lawlessness akin to the bad old days of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, states infamous for political violence, contract killings, and corruption?
Back then, Bihar’s law and order situation was synonymous with the infamous sobriquet of the ‘Jungle Raj’ where figures like Mohammad Shahabuddin wielded control through violence, using contract killings as a tool for political and business rivalries, as in the 1998 killing of Brij Bihari Prasad, a former Bihar minister, who was gunned down inside a Patna hospital. Similarly, Uttar Pradesh, once India’s equivalent of the ‘Wild West’, saw high-profile murders like the 2005 assassination of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai, who was killed in broad daylight.
But Maharashtra’s law and order problem has not just been confined to political violence. A growing sense of impunity now pervades society as well, leading to a perception of a broader collapse of the social fabric. The murky attempts at cover-up in the Pune Porsche case, where the inebriated teenage son of a prominent realtor fatally rammed his luxury car into two IT professionals on a bike, underscores how deeply ingrained corruption and privilege have become in the state’s justice system. Despite widespread outrage, the authorities’ handling of the case raised questions about the state’s willingness to hold the wealthy accountable. The breakdown of law and order across Maharashtra, from politically motivated killings to the mishandling of heinous crimes, has led to an alarming perception: something is rotten in the state of Maharashtra, to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
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