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Three men held on a train in Kota over the firing at Tiger Shroff's car are brought to Mumbai under transit remand
Mumbai Police left Kota on Tuesday with the three accused after a court granted transit remand. The case is with the Crime Branch, and the chief minister says the men acted from outside Maharashtra, possibly with handlers abroad. A gang's claim of responsibility is unverified.
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4 min
Three men arrested in Kota, Rajasthan, over the firing at Tiger Shroff's car in Mumbai were taken to the city on Tuesday after a Kota court granted a transit remand. Their arrival moves the investigation to the question it has not yet answered: who sent them.
The shooting happened at about 7 pm on Sunday, 18 October, near Pushpa Narsee Park, also known as Jamnabai Nursery, in Juhu, as the actor was returning from a football outing. Three men on a motorcycle allegedly pulled up beside his BMW. Two are said to have fired, and the third helped them escape. Shroff was not hit and was reportedly left with minor abrasions from shattered glass. His driver, Firdaus, was struck by a bullet, and a passer-by, Umesh Charan, was also hurt. Shroff took his injured driver to hospital himself.
Juhu police first registered an attempt to murder under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Arms Act, and the case has since moved to the Mumbai Police Crime Branch. Police formed 12 teams to trace the attackers.
How the three were traced
Police went through CCTV footage and found leads that placed the accused on a train heading towards Surat. Investigators alerted the Railway Protection Force, the Government Railway Police and police in neighbouring states, and on Monday Kota City Police took three men off the train. One report adds that a motorcycle suspected of use in the shooting was seized. Another account describes a joint operation by Rajasthan's Anti-Gangster Task Force and Kota City Police acting on inputs from Mumbai. The two versions agree on the place and on the train. The Kota superintendent of police, Tejaswani Gautam, confirmed the arrests. Two of the men are from Haryana and one is reportedly from Bihar.
Early reports differed on who had been picked up. One spoke of five people detained from Pune, and another described a 17-year-old and a 22-year-old bike-taxi rider from Mumbai among the suspects. Police have not released a full list, so details of the accused should be treated as provisional, and the three men in Kota are the only arrests the reports agree on.
Kota's additional superintendent said the accused were produced before the competent court, which granted transit remand, and were then handed to Mumbai Police. The Mumbai team stayed overnight in Kota for security reasons and left on Tuesday in two separate vehicles.
The claim nobody has verified
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, speaking in Nagpur on Monday, said Mumbai Police had "obtained important leads" and would pursue those responsible and their handlers. The accused, he said, were operating from outside Maharashtra and possibly from abroad, and he called the perpetrators "cowards". Police will coordinate with other states and ask central agencies for help where needed. He said he had spoken to Shroff and promised security if the actor wants it. When the Opposition criticised the police, Fadnavis answered by pointing to the 2021 Mansukh Hiran murder case, which was linked to the bomb scare near Mukesh Ambani's Antilia residence.
Messages in the names of two men, Anil Pandit and Harman Sandhu, claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and warned of further attacks on people in the film industry who work with Salman Khan. Police have not verified the messages or established any role for the gang, and a claim online does not by itself show who carried out an attack. A purported audio recording attributed to one of the two, also unverified, demanded that Salman Khan apologise to the Bishnoi community. The feud the messages invoke dates to a 1998 blackbuck poaching case during the filming of a Salman Khan film in Rajasthan; in April 2024 shots were fired outside Khan's home in Bandra.
Reaction in Maharashtra was swift. Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde condemned the firing, said gang violence would not be tolerated and visited Shroff at home. Actress Disha Patani also visited him. The All Indian Cine Workers Association asked for stronger protection for film personalities and their families.
The questions left for the Crime Branch are who supplied the weapon, who paid for the journey and who gave the order. Until those are answered, the arrests tell investigators who may have fired, and not who is behind it.
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