Ram Gopal Varma is returning to Mumbai’s underworld with Police Company, a T-Series-backed crime thriller starring Harshvardhan Rane as real-life encounter specialist Daya Nayak. The filmmaker announced the project on X with a tagline that sets the tone immediately — “More dangerous than D Company.”The film traces Nayak’s journey from a small village in Mangalore to becoming one of Mumbai Police’s most recognisable officers, chronicling his three-decade career and his involvement in dozens of underworld elimination operations. Varma explained the film’s backdrop on X, writing, “After DAWOOD IBRAHIM brutally finished most of his rival gangs, he grew his GANG into a COMPANY and then left for DUBAI, leaving his protegee CHOTA RAJAN to head the operations of D COMPANY.”The split between Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Rajan created a vacuum in Mumbai’s underworld in the late 1990s, drawing gangs from across the country. In response, a special squad was formed, which eliminated over 300 gangsters between 1997 and 2004. Nayak was among its most prominent members.This is a project Varma has been attempting to make for years. His earlier film Ab Tak Chhappan, starring Nana Patekar, was also inspired by Nayak’s life. Police Company, however, is being positioned as a definitive full-fledged biopic rather than a film merely inspired by select chapters. It is also being described as a revival of Varma’s Company franchise, following Company in 2002 and D Company in 2021, though it shares no narrative connection with either film.Pre-production is underway and shooting is scheduled to begin in the third week of August. For Rane, who is coming off the success of Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat, the film adds to a busy slate that includes Milap Zaveri’s Uniform, Omung Kumar’s Silaa and Force 3 opposite John Abraham.