A gangland murder in Mumbai, a son’s ‘revenge’ and the long road home

16 min readJul 29, 2026 07:08 AM IST First published on: Jul 29, 2026 at 07:00 AM IST LIFE JUST happened for Kumar Pillai. To grow up as a Tamil boy in the Bombay of the 1970s, to dream of a life in the US like his brother before him, to help his father Krishna Pillai with his smuggling business, to see his father lying dead. Now, nearly four decades later, he recalls his 20-year-old self standing in the city’s civic-run Rajawadi Hospital on October 17, 1989, surrounded by his father’s men, many who owed their underworld careers to Krishna Pillai. Inside, the man lay dead, his body pumped with bullets.