Three men arrested for firing at Tiger Shroff’s car in Mumbai had originally planned to target a different Bollywood celebrity, police sources have said. After reaching Mumbai, the accused could not pursue that first plan and shifted their attention to Shroff, investigators said.
The trail, sources said, ran through public social media. Fan posts and Instagram pages surfaced details that Shroff visited a football ground in Juhu every Sunday and usually moved with limited security. That, the sources allege, made him an easier target.
What the police say happened
The firing took place on Sunday evening in Juhu when men on a motorcycle opened fire at Shroff’s car. The actor escaped unhurt; his driver and a fan were injured.
Kota Police in Rajasthan arrested the three alleged shooters—two from Haryana and one from Bihar—and handed them over to Mumbai Police. Investigators are now working to establish roles, trace the weapons and determine whether the men were financed by a wider network.
The gangster angle under investigation
Attention has turned to Anil Pandit, a 32-year-old from Haryana’s Panipat district who allegedly runs an extortion network from the United States. Police are examining his suspected involvement in more than a dozen extortion and targeted attack cases in Delhi and Haryana, and possible links to similar incidents in Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
A purported audio clip attributed to Pandit has circulated online. In it, the speaker claims Shroff was targeted because he ignored warnings against working with Salman Khan. The audio also demands an apology from Khan to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and the Bishnoi community over the 1998 blackbuck poaching case, and threatens other film-industry figures close to Khan if no apology is made. Police are treating the clip as part of the investigation, not as established fact.
Why this matters for Hindi cinema
The case connects a street-level attack to a larger pattern of extortion pressure on the industry. It also shows how an actor’s predictable public routine, amplified by fan accounts, can become an operational detail for attackers. That is the uncomfortable takeaway: visibility that builds a star can also map their vulnerabilities.
- The accused initially had a different Bollywood target, sources say.
- Fan pages and Instagram posts pointed them to Shroff’s Sunday football routine.
- US-based gangster Anil Pandit is now a key suspect, with a threat to Salman Khan under investigation.
What happens next
Mumbai Police are probing Pandit’s suspected network, the source of the weapons and any financial support behind the shooters. Delhi Police’s Special Cell has had about ten teams working on different aspects, including a firing outside a gym linked to singer Guru Randhawa in Paschim Vihar. For now, the case is being investigated as a targeted attack with extortion overtones, and the threat against Khan is part of what investigators must test.
Source: India Today
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