Arun Gawli

Arun Gulab Gawli (born 17 July 1955), also known as Arun Gulab Ahir, is an Indian politician, underworld don and retired gangster. Gawli and his brother Kishor (Pappa) entered the Mumbai underworld in the 1970s, when they joined the "Byculla Company", a criminal gang led by Rama Naik and Babu Reshim, operating in the central Mumbai areas of Byculla, Parel and Saat Rasta. In 1988, after Rama Naik was killed in a police encounter, Gawli took over the gang and began operating it from his residence, Dagdi Chawl. Under his control, the gang controlled most criminal activities in the central Mumbai areas. Throughout the late eighties and nineties, Gawli's gang was involved in a power struggle with Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company gang. Gawli is also the founder of the Akhil Bharatiya Sena political party based in Maharashtra.

Early and personal life Arun Gawli was born in Pohegaon, Kopargaon, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India. Gawli first worked at Simplex Mills in Chinchpokli, then at Godrej & Boyce company in Vikhroli and later at Crompton Greaves in Kanjurmarg before working at gangster Parasnath Pandey's gambling den. He married Zubeida Mujawar, who became Asha Gawli after marriage and converted to Hinduism. She was a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Maharashtra and they have five children: two sons and three daughters including Mahesh and Geeta, Yogita, Yatika Geeta is a first term ABS corporator from the Chinchpokli. Gawli's nephew Sachin Ahir is an MLA and is the former Maharashtra Minister of State for Housing. Gawli's uncle Hukumchand Yadav was a legislator from Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh.

In September 2025, after spending 17 years in jail on a murder charge, the Supreme Court of India granted Gawli bail in the case registered in 2007 in view of his pending appeal against a life sentence.

Politics Gawli got political patronage in the 1980s, when the then Shiv Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, criticised the Mumbai police for taking stringent action against Hindu gangsters like Arun Gawli and Sai Bansod, referring to them as amchi mulgey (our boys). Thackeray was challenged by a rival gangster in an open letter carried on the front page of a city tabloid. However, Gawli fell out with Shiv Sena in the mid-1990s, murdered Shiv Sena men and formed his own political party, the Akhil Bharatiya Sena.

In 2004, Gawli was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Chinchpokli Assembly constituency as an Akhil Bharatiya Sena candidate. Gawli's rise in prominence is believed to be due to his "native roots" as a local lad, which makes him distinct from most other non-Marathi-speaking politicians.

Gawli's political designs suffered a major blow when his nephew and party legislator, Sachin Ahir, came out openly against him and joined Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party. Ahir even contested against Gawli in the subsequent Lok Sabha elections on a Nationalist Congress Party ticket, resulting in defeat for them both, but a victory for the Shiv Sena's sitting MP Mohan Rawale. Gawli's daughter Geeta is an ex-corporator of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

In popular culture In the 2015 Marathi cinema Dagadi Chawl, Makarand Deshpande's character called Daddy is mainly based on Arun Gawli's life. Ankush Chaudhari played the lead and as Arun Gawli's lieutenant. The Hindi cinema Daddy, released on 8 September 2017, is based on Gawli's life, starring Arjun Rampal as Daddy. In the Netflix series Sacred Games, based on a novel by Vikram Chandra, the lead character Ganesh Gaitonde is loosely based on Arun Gawli.