Who says that crimes can be buried with the passage of time? Nemesis has a habit of catching up at the most unexpected moment. The Italian Police arrested Bernardo Provenzano, the boss of all bosses, of the Sicilian Mafia, in April last year, after 43 years of hunting. This was the biggest news for Italy. It overshadowed the photo-finish Italian elections, which were being held at the same time. Bernardo Provenzano, who had been on the run for 43 years, was arrested in a farmhouse not very far from Corleone, the hilltop Sicilian town which has been made famous by Mario Puzo’s "Godfather" novels.

Even in reality, Corleone has raised a vicious Mafia family, which dominated organized crime on the island for decades. Mafia left a trail of blood in murdered prosecutors, reporters and investigators. Till his arrest, Provenzano was the uncrowned king of Italian Mafia and head of the Corleone family. He had already been sentenced, in absentia, to life imprisonment for half a dozen times, as a member of the so-called Mafia Cupola, responsible for coordinating mob strategy.

The police had been keeping tabs on Provenzano’s wife and two sons, who returned to Sicily in 1993. On 12 April 2005, the police investigators spotted a bundle of laundry being sent from her house to a remote farmhouse. The investigators claim they saw a hand come out from a door. They decided to act and pounced immediately.

Provenzano, who now looked like a diminutive, silver-haired senior citizen dwarfed by the black-hooded police officers jostling him through, did not put up any resistance. He did not utter a single word when the Special Police Force burst into the farmhouse. When the Mafia boss was led to a Palermo police station, bystanders called out insults to him. The T.V. newscasts showed an unruly crowd yelling words like "assassin" and "bastard" at Provenzano. The persistence of Italian Police must be appreciated in arresting the boss of the bosses, in view of the fact that there were very few known photographs available of Provenzano. The latest photo they had was a 1959 snapshot. So they created an artificial image of him on a computer, adding the years showing him in the anticipated form of an aged person, and picked up his trail, after he reportedly, underwent surgery in a clinic in Marseille, France, in 2003. Around a year ago, the circle began to "progressively close in around Provenzano and his accomplices," according to Giuseppe Pisanu, the Italian interior minister. According to Pietro Grasso, Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor, cameras had been planted in fields surrounding Corleone, where, the ailing mobster had come "to take refuge", close to those whom "he most trusted."

Grasso also disclosed that "an entire world" of professionals, business executives and politicians had aided Provenzano during his time on the run. Bernardo Provenzano’s capacity to outsmart the police for 43 years was considered as State’s inability to eradicate the Mafia. Obviously, the elusive mobster had friends in high places. Mafia renegades arrested earlier had confirmed to investigators that Provenzano also ran a sizable protection racket. A former prosecutor who once led Palermo’s anti-Mafia team, has cautioned, saying that numerous other Mafia "bosses" had been captured in the past, and that it does not mean the end of the Mafia.

"Many historians view the Mafia as a product of Sicily’s tumultuous history. For example, the Mafia’s code of behaviour can be traced back to centuries of corrupt and brutal governments of foreign conquerors of Sicily, which taught most Sicilians to regard government with suspicion and hostility. Because of loyalty agreements, the Italian Mafia remained both secretive and extremely powerful for many years and has been silent partners in many of governments. In the early years of the 20th century, only the very rich could vote in Italy. The Mafia used this selectivity to garner votes through various strong-armed means. In this way, the criminal organization was able to control numerous political offices.

It was determined by the leadership of the Mafia, that they would support the Christian Democratic Party and were accepted into the political organization without any further discussion. The British and American, after the World War II, were pleased with what as happening and tacitly gave their blessing.

India is another country which has the Mafia problem. But unlike in foreign countries, Mafia in India is state-based rather than country-based. For instance, the criminals in Bihar and UP have their own pockets of operations and influence, from where they even contest elections. In some cases, the Indian Mafia dons have even won elections while they were behind the bars. Such leaders have been running extortion and kidnapping rackets almost openly. In most cases the police do not take any action, because the Mafia leaders, including dacoits and criminals, have powerful supporters, in high positions in the Government. There is no doubt that many political leaders in India have cultivated and have thrived on the support of Mafia gangs. What is astonishing is that there are some huge gangs in India which have been functioning as a caste-based private army.

In 1950’s, it was believed that the Mafia was responsible for more arrests in Italy than the police itself. And, for this, the Mafia members were praised by the newspapers, police and the people. In 1955, a member of Italy’s highest court, Giuseppe Guido Lo Schiavo outrightly defended of the Mafia, when he wrote: "People say the Mafia does not respect the police and the judiciary. It’s untrue. The Mafia has always respected the judiciary and justice, has bowed before its sentences, and has not interfered with the judge’s work. In the persecution of bandits and outlaws … it has actually joined together with the police."

However, the position changed when drugs appeared on the scene and smuggling of drugs started in a big way. When the police began action against trafficking by the Mafia during the 1980’s, the Mafia began killing prosecutors, police officials and major politicians. Over a period of time, the Italian Mafia has both expanded and also become more sophisticated. The Italian Mafia has also entered into the business of moving nuclear and other radioactive materials from places like Russia to the non-nuclear wannabes as Libya, Iran and Iraq. They are also into providing "protection" to eminent personalities, of course, with a fee.

In India, the activities of the Mafia have changed in mode. Of late they have got involved with rackets like leakage of examination papers and sales of degrees and educational certificates, somewhat like what once happened in Sicily. In Sicily, the Mafia literally took over the University of Messina. In the police raid that followed, seventy-six people were arrested, including politicians and prosecutors. In this University, for a price, one could get a degree, pass the subjects or have the grades increased, for a price. The Mafia bribed the professors, some of whom took an active part in managing the ring, controlled the university’s administration and managed the local drug trade.

In India, Mafia leaders are confined to a limited geographical area and believe more in use of muscle power than brains. To some extent, the Mafia groups do play a role in getting the Government tenders awarded to their own people, or grabbing themselves, one network spread all over the country. This may be due to the huge size of the country.

Mafias, by their nature, activities and modes of functioning, are more or less the same, whether in India or elsewhere. All of them are secret organizations, except in the Sicily, where they are super secret. Sicilian Mafias have a set of rules which they follow strictly. For example, their members have to be only Sicilians. They cannot even have a relative in the Law enforcement agencies.

While in India there can be more than one Mafia leader in any geographic area, the Italian Mafia bosses control a specifically earmarked territory. Italian Mafia members are obliged to take an oath when they are first admitted, which includes never to betray their organization and never to disclose any of their group’s activities.

Like the Italian Mafia, the Indian Mafia has also been into protection racket and rackets relating to Government tenders. There is no data or record of cases available pertaining to such rackets in any country, including India and Italy. But, roughly, it is believed, that Italian Mafia controls one out of every five cafes, 15 per cent of the hotels and 18 per cent of the bars and ice-cream parlours, there. It is said that 70 per cent of the cement industry in Italy is also under Mafia domination. The same might as well be true in India, where one Mumbai-based airline had to be closed, because it was controlled and funded by the Mafia. Mafia in Italy also is reported to have substantial control and interests in travel agencies, old people’s homes, shops, antiques markets, loan-sharking, protection, bootlegging, CDs and cassettes and public companies. As compared to the Italian Mafia, Indian Mafia is area-specific and industry/work-specific, and are keen to make as much quick money as they can. Indian Mafia, which is more visible in Mumbai, Bihar, and UP, was earlier involved in the smuggling of gold, and later on silver, electronic items, mobile phones, extortion and land and property-grabbing and settling disputes. Unlike Italian Mafia, some of the criminals in India, including dacoits, have succeeded in making it to the Indian Parliament. Another important feature of Indian Mafia is that some of them have reportedly become the agents of the Inter Services Agency of Pakistan and were instrumental in the biggest mayhem of India, the infamous Bombay blasts of 1993, which left 267 dead and over 1000 injured.

There are hardly any inter-Mafia wars in Italy, but in India, inter-gang rivalry and warfare is a daily affair. Way back in 1996, the inter-gang warfare had claimed 52 lives in a single year. It is all the same even now.

The times are changing and globalization is catching in all spheres including Mafia. It seems that the new generation of Mafioso will not remain content with extortions, shakedowns or murders. The world has joined together to a degree that the moving and laundering of money has become one of the easiest things, thanks to the mobile phones and internet. Mafia knows about these devices as well as anyone else.

Times and places may change, but Mafia’s interest remains concentrated on money. The higher the lure of money, the easier it is to lure and recruit new members, whether for drug trafficking or human trafficking. The governments, especially the democracies, move slowly when it comes to countering challenges. It is time to remind our Government to be proactive in dealing with the menace.

Albert Einstein had once said, "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing".