Rohit Arya: Police shoot dead man who took 17 children hostage at Indian acting studio – UK Times

Police shot dead a self-styled acting coach who took 17 children and two adults hostage at an acting studio in India’s financial capital on Thursday.

The dramatic three-hour hostage ordealended after police personnel stormed the studio through a bathroom window and shot hostage-taker Rohit Arya who was pronounced dead at a local hospital at around 5pm, police said.

The children, aged between 10 and 15, had arrived at RA Studio in the coastal city’s busy Powai neighbourhood for what they believed were auditions for a web series but it turned out to be a trap laid by Arya.

Arya claimed he had taken them captive to ask “moral and ethical questions”.

An official said police tried to negotiate with the hostage-taker but he remained “adamant”, forcing them to storm the under-construction building.

Police said they found an airgun and an unidentified chemical substance in the studio.

During the standoff, Arya released a video message saying he had “simple demands” and wanted to speak to certain people, warning that he would set the place on fire if police made a wrong move, according to the police.

“I am not a terrorist, nor do I have any demand for money,” he purportedly said in the video. “I just want to have simple conversations, and for that reason I have taken these children hostage.”

Police deputy commissioner Datta Nalawade described the operation as “challenging”, adding that saving the children was the top priority.

“All the children are safe and have been handed over to their parents,” said joint police commissioner Satya Narayan Chaudhary.

According to local news reports, Arya, who hailed from Pune, had been seeking unpaid dues from Maharashtra’s state government, claiming that he worked on its “My School, Beautiful School” campaign but was never paid.

Arya was described in local media as a “self-styled acting coach and motivational speaker”.

He had held several protests in Pune, Mumbai and Nagpur over the past year, but had only received assurances of payment.

The Maharashtra School Education Department denied Arya had unpaid dues, saying the budget submitted by him was “vague and without proper documentation”.

Arya’s company, it said, was paid Rs 990,000 (£8,500) in 2022 for working on the first phase of a cleanliness project in schools.

A second phase was planned in 2023-24, with Rs 20m (£171,000) approved for the project, but it wasn’t carried out because Arya’s proposal didn’t meet requirements, the department said.

In 2024-25, Arya again sought Rs 24.18m (£207,000) for the project, but while the proposal was being reviewed, he started collecting “registration fees” from schools without government permission, the department claimed.

Deepak Kesarkar said on Thursday that during his tenure as the state education minister from 2022 to 2024, he’d tasked Arya with conducting a pilot cleanliness awareness programme called Swachhata Monitor.

The former minister added that he had personally given Arya some money last year after he complained that the education department had not released the funds due him.