RAVI PUJARY AGE: 34 LOCATION: Bangkok, Thailand Small-time criminal turned Chhota Rajan shooter, Ravi left his mentor's gang along with Guru Satam.

Around a month ago, leading Bollywood playback singer Udit Narayan was at home in Andheri, suburban Mumbai, when the phone rang. "This is Bunty Pandey, pay up or else..." the voice at the other end growled. Before the flustered singer could gather his wits, he had received a second extortion call, this time from a voice that introduced itself as Ejaz Lakdawala, another gangster.

These days, it's not just the Chhota Shakeels or the Abu Salems who are doing the long-distance calling-obscure names ranging from Guru Satam to Pandey and Lakdawala to Ravi Pujary and Hemant Pujary have suddenly started threatening Bollywood personalities from Salman Khan and Sohail Khan to Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

While the Mumbai Police contemptuously dismiss the callers as square-foot bhais-or dons of limited means and influence-they do agree about them being new threats. Nearly all the extortion cases and underworld shoot-outs in Mumbai this year have been the work of these wannabe ganglords.

HEMANT PUJARY AGE: Early 30s LOCATION: India Former Rajan shooter, started as a waiter in an Udupi hotel in Mumbai. Has killed three Mumbai bomb blasts accused. Now targets city's prosperous Shetty community.

Despite being scattered in countries as diverse as Thailand and South Africa, and even India, all of them have roots in a single source. Until last year, they were all second-rung lieutenants in the Chhota Rajan gang, which itself broke away from Dawood Ibrahim's crime syndicate after the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. These splinter groups of the Rajan gang are now furiously clawing for their share of mob space in the city's shrinking turf with extortion calls to builders and Bollywood.

Their desperate grabs at fame have been clearly unspectacular as has been their choice of targets. The only shoot-out this year was a drive-by attempt aimed at scaring Bollywood minnow Lawrence D'Souza into giving in to Lakdawala's demands. Lawrence, who had his last hit in Saajan in 1991, was hardly the Karan Johar whom the bigger gangs have terrorised in the past. Neither Bappi Lahiri nor even small-time screen comedian Paintal. But, as with the two gangsters calling Narayan, it indicated just how desperate the splinter gangs are to assert their authority. "The extortion threats are almost always telephonic," says a police officer. "Targets pay up only when they hear a scary name like a Chhota Shakeel or Abu Salem at the other end. Names become scary only when they're associated with a shoot-out or a drive-by."

Hours after the D'Souza shooting, Lakdawala was on the phone bragging about his handiwork to a string of cowering businessmen and Bollywood folk.

GURU SATAM AGE: 52 LOCATION: Bangkok, Thailand Broke away from Rajan two years ago. Retains a strong network of shooters and informers in Mumbai's Lalbagh and Parel.

"Their threats are not backed by bodies on the ground." Sridhar Vagal, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Mumbai

Mumbai's underworld, particularly the Dawood gang, has lived with factionalism, caused by circumstance or opportunity, for over a decade now. At its peak over a decade ago, the gang straddled over 80 per cent of the Mumbai underworld and lorded over an empire that was annually worth over Rs 1,000 crore. After it engineered the ISI-sponsored Mumbai blasts of 1993, the gang was literally split down the middle along communal lines. Rajan broke away, taking key aides like Satam and set up base in Bangkok. Two years ago, Salem, who specialised in extorting money from film industry personalities, parted company with his Karachi-based supremo Dawood and based himself in Dubai.

But the splintering of the Rajan syndicate, a literal exodus, can be traced to the intra-gang democracy it practised. The so-called Muslim syndicates, the Salem and Shakeel gangs, are largely one-man shows with the dons' writ running unchallenged and faceless hirelings doing their bidding. Things were different in the Rajan gang.

EJAZ LAKDAWALA AGE: early 30s LOCATION: South-East Asia Escaped from Nashik prison after being captured in an encounter. Broke away from the Rajan gang a year back, taking half a dozen shooters with him.

Lieutenants like Satam and the Pujarys could individually extort money in Rajan's name, the only condition being they had to give the boss a percentage of the collections. Then an injured Rajan, who survived an assassination attempt in Bangkok in 2000, lay low while his pointsmen began asserting themselves. "When these acolytes found they could play this scare-and-collect game as easily as their boss, they were tempted to break away," says Sridhar Vagal, joint police commissioner (crime).

Bollywood was another big reason. Rajan had reined in his gang when it came to collecting protection money from the film industry, reportedly at the behest of his brother Deepak Nikhalje, producer of Vaastav. But the money being made by other gangs-particularly Salem's, which specialises in terrorising the film industry for overseas rights and video piracy-had Rajan's lieutenants straining at the leash. It was only a matter of time before they broke away. Which they did, in ones and twos over the past two years, until the Rajan gang today is virtually bereft of a second-rung leadership.

There are worries that left unchecked, these square-foot dons could rapidly swallow up large chunks of the underworld territory-Dawood, after all, was a lowly bouncer for the Pathan gangs before he broke away and established his own criminal empire.

But for the moment, the stakes are heavily loaded against the new dons. With the exception of former Rajan lieutenant Satam, most lack the extensive networks of shooters in the city and international connections, not to mention a share from the lucrative narcotics trade-trademarks of the established mobsters which allowed them to remote-control their syndicates from abroad.

Apart from ensuring the success of their gangs, these are also factors that could make a difference between life and death. And with the Mumbai Police, for the first time, having grabbed the upper hand in the war against organised crime, the life spans of these new dons seem as limited as the cheap shooters they employ. "Make no mistake, these guys are going down," says a police officer, his thumb-and-forefinger gesture making it clear just how. "There is no way we are going to let another Dawood or Rajan to emerge in Mumbai." Even if he dominates only a square foot.