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Police on Thursday shot dead a self-styled acting coach who held 17 children and two adults hostage at an acting studio in India’s financial capital.
The three-hour hostage situation ended in dramatic fashion when policemen broke into the studio through a bathroom window and shot hostage taker Rohit Arya, who was pronounced dead at a local hospital around 5 p.m., police said.
The children, aged between 10 and 15, had arrived at RA Studios in the busy Powai area of the coastal city to audition for a web series, but it turned out to be a trap laid by Arya.
Arya claimed that he had taken them captive to ask “moral and ethical questions”.
Police tried to negotiate with the hostage-taker but he remained adamant, forcing them to storm the building under construction, an official said.
Police said they found an airgun and an unknown chemical substance in the studio.
According to the police, during the standoff, Arya released a video message saying he had “simple demands” and wanted to talk to some people, warning that if the police made any wrong move he would set the place on fire.
“I am not a terrorist nor do I have any demand for money,” he reportedly said in the video. “I just want to have a simple conversation and that’s why I took these kids hostage.”
Deputy Commissioner of Police Datta Nalawade described the operation as “challenging” and said saving the children was the top priority.
“All the children are safe and have been handed over to their parents,” Joint Commissioner of Police Satya Narayan Chaudhary said.
According to local news reports, Arya, a resident of Pune, was demanding dues from the state government of Maharashtra, claiming he had worked on the “My School, Beautiful School” campaign but was never paid.
Arya was described in local media as a “self-styled acting coach and motivational speaker”.
They had held several protests in Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur last year, but had only received assurances of payment.
The Maharashtra School Education Department denied that dues were not paid to Arya and said the budget presented by him was “vague and without proper documentation”.
It said Arya’s company was paid 990,000 rupees (£8,500) in 2022 to work on the first phase of the sanitation project in schools.
The department said a second phase was planned in 2023–24, with 20 million rupees (£171,000) approved for the project, but it was not completed because Arya’s proposal did not meet the requirements.
The department claimed that in 2024-25, Arya again demanded Rs 24.18 million (£207,000) for the project, but while the proposal was being reviewed, he started collecting “registration fees” from schools without government permission.
Deepak Kesarkar on Thursday said that during his tenure as the state education minister from 2022 to 2024, he had entrusted Arya with the task of conducting a pilot sanitation awareness programme. Sanitation Monitor,
The former minister said he personally gave some money to Arya last year after he complained that the education department had not released the funds due to him.