MISA

MISA, the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, stands as one of the most consequential legal instruments in the history of India's fight against crime and political dissent, and in the world of Mumbai's underworld it marks a decisive turning point. Passed by the Indian Parliament in 1971 during the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Act was introduced with the stated objective of providing law enforcement agencies with powers of indefinite 'preventive' detention of individuals, as well as search and seizure of property without warrants. In the narratives of the women and men who populated Bombay's criminal underworld, MISA appears not as an abstract statute but as a lived reality that broke careers, emptied bank accounts, and redrew the boundaries of power. Its shadow falls across the decline of the great smuggler Haji Mastan, the imprisonment of the bootlegger Jenabai Daaruwali, and the eventual emergence of even harsher legislation that would target a new generation of gangsters and their wives. The Act's legacy is inseparable from the story of how the Indian state, in the name of security, wielded extraordinary powers against its own citizens, and how those powers were experienced, resisted, and survived by the very people the law was designed to contain.

Origins and Legal Character

MISA was a product of its political moment, born in 1971 under the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who introduced the Act with the main objective of providing law enforcement agencies with powers of indefinite 'preventive' detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants. The law was controversial from its inception, precisely because it allowed the state to hold people without trial and to invade property without the usual judicial safeguards. Its reach extended far beyond ordinary criminality into the realm of political dissent, making it a weapon that could be aimed at anyone the government deemed a threat. The Act's severity was such that even the most powerful figures in the underworld, men who had built fortunes and commanded armies of followers, found themselves helpless before it. The law's capacity for indefinite detention meant that a person could languish in prison not for what they had done, but for what the state feared they might do. This preventive logic, the detention of individuals before any crime was committed, represented a fundamental departure from the principles of criminal justice, and it was this very feature that made MISA so potent and so feared.

The Act's implementation was not merely a matter of legal procedure but of political will. During the Emergency of 1977, MISA was deployed against a wide swath of the population, including gangsters who had previously operated with relative impunity. The law's reach was demonstrated by the fact that even Jenabai Daaruwali, a woman whose power derived from bootlegging and her role as a community matriarch, was jailed under MISA, though the charges against her could not be proved. This detail is significant: it shows that the law was used not only against those who could be convicted of crimes, but against those whom the state simply wished to neutralize. The inability to prove charges against Jenabai did not prevent her detention, revealing the Act's fundamental indifference to the normal standards of evidence and proof. For the women of the underworld, MISA represented a form of state power that operated outside the usual constraints of the legal system, a power that could be invoked arbitrarily and that left its targets with few avenues of recourse.

The Decline of Haji Mastan

The most dramatic illustration of MISA's impact on the Mumbai underworld is the decline of Haji Mastan, the legendary gold smuggler whose rags-to-riches story had inspired films and whose influence once seemed absolute. Mastan's fall began in 1974, when he was detained under MISA for ninety days. This was followed by his arrest under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Act, and then, during the Emergency in 1977, he was once again tried under MISA, this time along with other gangsters like Karim Lala. Despite hiring the best criminal lawyers, including Ram Jethmalani, Mastan languished behind bars during the entire Emergency. The man who had made millions from smuggling gold, silver ingots, and electronic goods, who had formed one of the most formidable gangs in Mumbai alongside Karim Lala and Vardharajan Mudaliar, was reduced to a helpless prisoner. The endless legal battles pushed him into debt, and he realized that he no longer wielded the influence he had once enjoyed as a smuggler. His villa, his Mercedes, and his tremendous influence, all off-shoots of the enormous wealth he had hoarded illegally, could not protect him from the reach of MISA.

Mastan's experience reveals the law's capacity to dismantle not just individual criminals but entire structures of power. When the Emergency was lifted and the Janata Party came to power in 1979, Mastan pleaded with Jaiprakash Narayan, the Janata Party leader, to intervene with the then prime minister, Morarji Desai, to show compassion towards him. Mastan had filed affidavits and, under oath, sworn to the government that he would try to turn over a new leaf. His plea was accepted and he was finally released from detention, but the cost had been enormous. He confessed to Jenabai that he was sinking in a sea of debt, that he had to repay loans, and that his house had been mortgaged. The only possible business ventures where he could now invest money were real estate or the movies. This confession, made to the woman he called Aapa, or sister, reveals the extent to which MISA had broken him. The smuggler who had once commanded the docks and the markets of Bombay was now a man contemplating a humbler future, his empire dismantled by a law that required no proof of wrongdoing, only the suspicion of it.

Jenabai Daaruwali and the Gendered Application of MISA

Jenabai Daaruwali's own experience with MISA offers a striking contrast to Mastan's, and it illuminates the gendered dimensions of the law's application. Jenabai, a bootlegger who rose to prominence in the era of Bombay prohibition, was jailed under MISA, but the charges against her could not be proved. This outcome, her release on unproven charges, stands in sharp contrast to Mastan's prolonged detention, and it suggests that the state's treatment of female criminals differed from its treatment of their male counterparts. For Jenabai, MISA was an interruption, a period of confinement that she survived and from which she emerged with her reputation intact. Her ability to withstand the law's pressure, and to have the charges against her dropped, speaks to her own resourcefulness and to the different calculus the state applied to a woman whose power was rooted in community networks rather than in the command of armed gangs. Jenabai's role as a matriarch, a woman to whom even Haji Mastan turned for counsel, gave her a form of protection that the male gangsters, with their more visible and threatening power, did not enjoy.

The contrast between Jenabai's experience and Mastan's also reveals the law's uneven application. MISA was a blunt instrument, but it was wielded with different force against different targets. For Mastan, the law was used to dismantle an empire; for Jenabai, it was used to remind her of the state's power, but ultimately it failed to hold her. This gendered difference is part of a larger pattern in the book's account of women in the underworld, where women like Jenabai and Gangubai Kathiawadi navigated systems of power with a combination of defiance and strategic accommodation. Jenabai's survival of MISA, and her continued influence over men like Mastan, suggests that the law, for all its severity, could not fully contain the forms of authority that women in the underworld had built. Her story is a testament to the resilience of those who, in the book's framing, pushed the boundaries of dominant moral codes and refused to be reduced to blank slates written upon by dangerous male mafia members.

The Legacy: From MISA to MCOCA

MISA's legacy extends far beyond the specific cases of Mastan and Jenabai, for it established a pattern of exceptional legislation that would be repeated and intensified in the decades that followed. The Act was eventually abrogated, but its spirit lived on in successor laws. MCOCA, the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, was promulgated by the Maharashtra government in 1998 after the abrogation of TADA, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. Since the state did not have any firm law with which to fight organized crime, it formulated MCOCA, and later the Gujarat and Delhi governments used the same law to control criminal gangs. MCOCA inherited and expanded MISA's logic of preventive and exceptional power, and it was under this law that a new generation of underworld figures, including women, would be targeted. The progression from MISA to TADA to MCOCA represents a ratcheting up of state power, each law building on the precedents established by its predecessor.

The application of MCOCA to women marks a significant evolution from the MISA era. Sujata Nikhalje, wife of the self-proclaimed patriotic don Chhota Rajan, became the only 'don wife' to be slapped with charges under MCOCA for using a business enterprise to legitimize her husband's criminal activities. Sujata had started a construction company with the ill-gotten money of her fugitive husband, and through her business she played financial manager and banker to Rajan. On 14 December 2005, she and three other accomplices were arrested under MCOCA on charges of aiding and abetting the activities of an organized crime syndicate run by Chhota Rajan. The law that had once been used to detain Jenabai on unproven charges was now being used to prosecute a woman for her role in her husband's criminal enterprise, a role that involved financial management rather than violence. This evolution reflects a broader shift in how the state understood and targeted the involvement of women in organized crime, moving from the preventive detention of the MISA era to the more specific charges of the MCOCA era. The trajectory from Jenabai's unproven detention to Sujata's MCOCA conviction shows how the legal framework for fighting organized crime in India grew more sophisticated, and more punitive, over time, and how women moved from the margins to the center of the state's attention.

The Law as a Force in the Underworld's History

MISA's significance in the book's account of the Mumbai underworld lies not only in its direct effects on individuals like Mastan and Jenabai, but in its role as a force that reshaped the entire landscape of crime and power in the city. The law's capacity for indefinite detention, its suspension of normal legal safeguards, and its deployment during the Emergency created an environment of uncertainty and fear that even the most powerful gangsters could not escape. The book's narrative, which traces the rise and fall of numerous criminal figures, shows how the state's use of exceptional laws punctuated the careers of the underworld's most prominent figures, breaking some and forcing others to adapt. For the women of the underworld, the law was a constant presence, a force that could be invoked against them at any moment, but also a force that they learned to navigate, resist, and sometimes even exploit. The story of MISA is thus not merely a story of legal history, but a story of how power, both state and criminal, was exercised, challenged, and transformed in the streets of Bombay. The Act's legacy, carried forward by MCOCA and other successor laws, continues to shape the lives of those who inhabit the margins of Indian society, a reminder that the law is never a neutral instrument, but a weapon that can be aimed at anyone the state deems a threat.