Studio siege: 17 kids rescued, hostage taker shot dead

Seventeen teenagers between the ages of 12 and 15 were rescued from an audition theatre at Powai in Mumbai on Thursday afternoon following a dramatic three-and-a-half-hour-long siege in which a lone man carrying an airgun and an inflammable spray held the children hostage.

- Vinay Dalvi and Yogesh Naik

The operation ended with a Mumbai police team shooting dead the man who has been identified as Pune resident Rohit Arya, aged 50.

Arya, who was married but had no children of his own, used to make short video films and ran school cleanliness campaigns for Maharashtra government when Eknath Shinde was chief minister. He had recently moved into his sister's apartment in Chembur, and had rented RA Studio at Mahavir Classic, a commercial-cum-residential building in Powai four days ago, purportedly to audition children for roles in a web series.

On Thursday morning at 8 am, 17 teenagers reached there for the auditions accompanied by their parents. While the adults were asked to wait outside the building, Arya took the children to the first floor of the theatre. However, when, by 1 pm, none of the kids came down for lunch, and nor could the parents access the theatre, they began to get panicky.

People in the neighbouring building, in the meanwhile, some children crying and pleading for help from behind the closed glass windows of the theatre, and alerted the local police at 1.45 pm.

Arya, who had locked the children in along with three female and one young male assistant, allegedly put theft sensors on the doors of the theatre which would alert him to anyone trying to get in. He also threatened to spray an inflammable chemical and set the place on fire if the police stormed in.