Mumbai police rescue 17 children taken hostage at acting school

Police in India’s Mumbai have rescued 17 children from a hostage situation at a local studio, where a man was killed in an exchange of gunfire during a rescue operation.

According to a report by NDTV, the incident occurred on Thursday in Powai, a neighbourhood in Mumbai, when the suspect, identified as Rohit Arya, fired at police officers with an air gun.

Police returned fire, hitting him on the right side of his chest. Arya later died while undergoing treatment at hospital.

The report read that Arya, 38, had called a group of children to the studio under the pretext of auditions for a web series. He then locked them inside and held them hostage for nearly two hours.

The children were aged between 8 and 14 years.

Police received a distress call around 1:45pm, it added. A large police team rushed to the studio and began negotiations with Arya, but he refused to release the children.

When he threatened to harm them, officers entered the studio through a narrow bathroom passage and carried out a swift rescue operation, safely freeing all 17 children.

Before the incident, Arya had released a video in which he said he chose hostage-taking "instead of dying by suicide", the report said.

"I am Rohit Arya. Instead of dying by suicide, I have made a plan and am holding some children hostage here," he said, listing what he described as “simple demands, moral demands, ethical demands, and a few questions”.

He warned that "the slightest wrong move from you will trigger me" and threatened to set the place on fire, adding that he did not seek money and was "not a terrorist".

"I want simple conversations, and that's why I've taken these children hostage. I've held them hostage as part of a plan. If I live, I'll do it; if I die, someone else will, but it will definitely happen because the slightest wrong move from you will trigger me to set this whole place on fire and die in it," Arya reportedly said in the video.

NDTV reported that Arya worked at the studio and was also a YouTuber. In recent days, he had been conducting auditions for children.

Investigators suspect that his actions may have stemmed from frustration over unpaid wages.

He had previously worked on a school sanitation monitoring project, but claimed he had not been paid his dues, which may have led him to commit the act, police said.