Mumbai, June 6: A Karachi number has set alarm bells ringing among Mumbai’s crime fighters.

“There are indications that the underworld gangs are regrouping once again and the Karachi-based dons are back to their old games of shootouts and encounters,” a senior crime branch officer in Bandra said. “We have to watch out or soon they will try to get an upper hand as in the early eighties, when the city was riddled by gang wars and daylight murders.’’

Police officers say that after a long time, a “target’’ was given a Karachi phone number to talk to a bhai, probably Chhota Shakeel.

Sikandar, a Shakeel henchman, had shot the owner of Selection Furniture in Bandra recently. Initial investigations revealed that Sikandar had left the phone number of his underworld boss in Karachi with the owners of the furniture shop.

Sources said that earlier, the sharpshooters of the underworld dons who had fled India left Dubai phone numbers. The calls were re-routed to Karachi from there. But in the Selection Furniture incident, a Karachi phone number was given to the shop owners — an indication that the dons are directly monitoring operations in the city. “There could be something much bigger in the days ahead,’’ the sources added.

After underworld dons like Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Rajan, Shakeel, Abu Salem and Tiger Memon were forced to leave the country to escape the tightening grip of the police, extortions here were handled by some local gangs, most of which were not attached to any don. But the gangs used the names of these underworld lords to milk money from people. “But now we fear that the orders are coming directly from the dons. They seem to have woken up after a long lull,” the sources said.

The crime rate in the city has gone up by about 15 per cent this year, but it is the number of extortions that has almost doubled and which is the cause of concern in police circles. The extortions, police records say, have gone up by a disconcerting 40 per cent.

Mumbai police commissioner A.. Roy, however, dismissed the fears by saying that more people are coming out to record crimes against them. “It is not correct to say that the crime rate has risen,’’ he argued.

The sources, however, say the reasons behind the increased shootouts and extortions are obvious.

“The morale of the police force is at an all-time low after the Telgi stamp paper scam. So many of our top police officers were involved. The feared Mumbai police crime branch is a thing of the past. Moreover, we have been asked to go slow. The government doesn’t want any unnecessary controversies,’’ a senior police inspector, who is also one of the department’s top “encounter specialists’’, said.

In the early eighties, when underworld power in Mumbai was at its peak, former police commissioners like Ronnie Mendonca formed hit squads comprising officers who later became known as encounter specialists. Some even earned the tag of being “killing machines’’. The police teams virtually wiped out most of the underworld sharpshooters attached to various gangs.

Arun Gawli, the only known underworld don to stay back in India, was virtually crippled after his henchman Sadamama Pawle was shot dead. The police managed to wipe out almost 80 per cent of Gawli’s gang.

“We are not saying that it is back to the 1983 days,” a senior police officer said, “but I think there is a need to shake ourselves up and strike before the gangs strike. The regrouping of the gangs just shows that they are gaining confidence after all these years and we can’t afford to let that happen.”