The 47-year-old was targeted in a drive-by shooting on July 1, which is suspected to have been an inside job.
Bowden, who had been released from a five-year jail stint just 15 days earlier, was reasserting his power within the club. This is believed to have caused internal ructions.
Bowden had been speaking with an associate before shots were fired into his driveway in Epping from a car, hitting him in the lower body.
Bowden discharged himself from hospital soon after the attack.
Two unknown assailants have since been on the run.
A motive for the attack remains under investigation, but it is not uncommon for fallouts to occur when senior bikie members, such as Bowden, return to clubs following long prison stints.
During his imprisonment, high-ranking members close to Bowden were exiled from the club in New South Wales and Queensland.
NSW-based national Mongols president Mark ‘’Ferret’’ Moroney was among those ousted from the club.
Bowden, who is believed to be close to Moroney — an outspoken Mongol who would make statements to the media — is believed to have been upset at Victorian members who played a role in his departure.
Any signs of internal feuding within the club were well masked when Bowden emerged from Loddon Prison, near Castlemaine, last month.
Bowden was picked up in a stretch limousine and given a Mongol escort to Melbourne.
The prominent member served time behind bars after he was convicted over a violent aggravated burglary in South Yarra in 2015.
Bowden was already well known to law enforcement. He made national headlines in 2006 when he shot Christopher Wayne Hudson over his defection to the rival Hells Angels.
Bowden, then a Fink, fired at Hudson at a kickboxing tournament in Queensland after it erupted into a wild brawl between club members which became known as the “Ballroom Blitz’’.
The following year Hudson, fuelled on ice, would shoot three people in Melbourne’s CBD.
Bowden’s time as a Mongol began in 2013 when a majority of Finks members nationwide “patched over’’ to the international club — founded in California in the 1960s.
The Mongols established a foothold in Melbourne after opening a clubhouse in a Port Melbourne factory.
The club has had internal fracas since.
Its most notorious member is Toby Mitchell, a longtime friend of Bowden’s, who joined the club in 2019.
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Source: Sunday Herald Sun by ANTHONY DOWSLEY and MARK BUTTLER