Photo: Balajijagadesh / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Less than a day after gunmen fired at actor Tiger Shroff’s car in Mumbai’s Juhu, police in Rajasthan’s Kota on Monday (October 19) took three suspects, one of them a minor, off a long-distance train as it pulled into the city. According to Kota police, the three had boarded the train soon after the attack and were trying to make their way to Nepal.
A 15-minute operation at the station
Kota Superintendent of Police Tejaswani Gautam told reporters that Mumbai Police had alerted her team at around 9.45 am that the main suspects were travelling on the Pune-Jaipur Express. The train reached Kota at 10.17 am. Police teams covered the platforms and exit points, searched the whole train and found the three in a general compartment. The SP said the operation took about 15 minutes, with help from the Anti-Gangster Task Force and the Railway Protection Force.
Police identified two of the suspects as Rehan alias Sukka, from Sonipat in Haryana, and Hritik Kurmi alias Roshan, who is originally from Begusarai in Bihar and lives in Mumbai. The third is a minor. Police said one of them works as a bike-taxi rider and the other two as labourers.
Weapons have not been found yet. However, they will be interrogated to determine what they did with the weapons.
Tejaswani Gautam, Kota SP
Escape plan and the gang link
During initial questioning, the suspects told police they planned to get off at Jaipur, take a bus to Delhi and then cross into Nepal, the SP said. She also said Rehan had been in contact with Anil Pandit, a US-based gangster said to be linked to Lawrence Bishnoi. Pandit and another alleged gang member had claimed the attack in social media posts. Mumbai Police have said they are still examining that claim and have not yet confirmed any link to the gang.
A police source has said the three were paid ₹50,000 between them in advance. In Mumbai, investigators found the motorcycle used in the attack abandoned near Andheri railway station after tracing the attackers’ route on CCTV cameras.
On Monday, a purported audio message attributed to Pandit also surfaced online. In it, the speaker issues a fresh threat to actor Salman Khan. Police said they were checking whether the audio is genuine.
Why it matters
The attack took place at around 7 pm on Sunday as Shroff was leaving Pushpa Park in Juhu. The actor was not hurt, but his driver and one other person were injured. It is the latest in a string of Mumbai attacks blamed on the Bishnoi network, including the killing of NCP leader Baba Siddique and the firing outside Salman Khan’s home.
Investigators face a familiar problem. Lawrence Bishnoi is held in Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad and his brother Anmol in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. Home ministry orders bar either of them from being moved out of prison, so Mumbai Police can question them only inside those jails.
What happens next
A Mumbai Police team has reached Kota, and the suspects are being handed over to it. The SP said they will be formally arrested once Mumbai Police take custody. The city’s Crime Branch, which is handling the attempt-to-murder case, will now try to establish each suspect’s role, trace the weapons and check whether anyone else helped plan the attack.
