India’s Bollywood boosts security as fears of criminal gangs rise

It sounds like a Bollywood thriller, but a spate of shootings and extortion threats targeting Mumbai’s stars has sent the industry scrambling for bodyguards, reviving memories of the underworld’s grip on cinema in the 1990s.

From gunshots to cash demands, the incidents have unsettled the Indian industry, decades after police crackdowns weakened the criminal gangs once deeply embedded in the multibillion-dollar business.

Police have linked the latest violence to the gang of Lawrence Bishnoi, a...