Anupam Dasgupta / DNA

Mumbai, Aug 18: Cops here believe the city's underworld seems to no longer lord it over Bollywood. Top cops on Friday maintained that Abu Salem's disclosures during narco tests don't threaten to change the overall picture and that the sway of the criminal underworld over Bollywood - a phenomenon much in vogue throughout the nineties - "has sort of ended."

After the murder of actor Manisha Koirala's secretary Ajit Dewani in 2002 bollywood has not witnessed any major attack on it from the underworld.

Cops argue that apart from the Ejaz Lakhdawala gang - found to recently target Bollywood figures like Rajkumar Santoshi and Himesh Reshamiyya - there is hardly any significant gang activity in the city.

"Operatives like Ravi Pujari and Hemant Pujari rank too low in the overall scheme of underworld activities and criminal syndication. And some stray arrests, which often occur, of members belonging to erstwhile gangs don't conform to any pattern" said a senior Crime Branch officer speaking on condition of anonymity.

So in the light of the facts most of what Salem had spewed out during his narco tests was already known to the police and in no way bring back the dark underworld shadow over Bollywood.