BB Desk
Powai witnessed an edgy hostage crisis on October 30, when 50-year-old Rohit Arya held around 17 children and two adults captive at the RA Studio in the Mahavir Classik building. Arya, a Pune-based activist and filmmaker, had reportedly booked the first-floor studio under the guise of auditioning children for a web series. The purported auditions had been ongoing for the past two days.
However, on Thursday, as children arrived for the auditions accompanied by their parents, circumstances took a drastic turn. When the children failed to come down for lunch, panic spread among the concerned parents. Neighbours alerted the local police around 1:45 pm after noticing the children sobbing and pleading for help behind shuttered glass windows of the studio.
Armed with an airgun and an inflammable chemical spray, Arya had allegedly taken the children hostage along with his support staff, securing the studio doors with theft sensors to prevent anyone from entering. He threatened to set the premises ablaze, if police strived to enter the building.
Following the alert, local police along with Quick Response Team (QRT), Bomb Disposal Squad, and Fire Brigade, rushed to the spot. While officers began negotiating with Arya, they concurrently planned a clandestine entry into the building. Meanwhile, Arya reportedly split the children into two groups and threatened to shoot them one by one.
During the standoff, Arya recorded a video which became viral on social media, stating that he had no intention of harming the children. Describing himself as ‘an ordinary man who just wants to have simple conversations with concerned people’ he further said that he had travelled all the way from Latur only to seek justice for ₹2crore in unpaid dues allegedly owed to him by the Maharashtra Education Department.
As negotiations continued and Arya’s attention was diverted, the Fire Brigade was instructed to enter the building through the back side, while two police squads scaled the structure using the duct line with assistance from fire officials. One squad reached the first-floor hall where the hostages were being held, whereas the other team broke through a glass wall from the opposite side.
The crisis ended when Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) Amol Waghmare of the Powai Police Station’s Anti-Terrorist Squad entered the studio through the restroom and shot Arya in the chest, fatally wounding him. Waghmare, a trained firearms specialist, is now being revered as a hero for showing exceptional courage. Arya was rushed to Hindu Hridaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Hospital for treatment but succumbed to his injuries.
Incidentally, Arya had contacted a few well-known Marathi actors to discuss his film concept that revolved around a similar hostage crisis. Reacting on Arya’s claims that the Education Department owed him money, Deepak Kesarkar, former state Education Minister said that Arya was asked to run a cleanliness awareness campaign named Swachhata Monitor as a pilot in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Kesarkar also revealed that he tried to help Arya in his own way by giving him ‘little money’ last year after he complained about not being paid for the campaign.
