Manoj Bajpayee has urged caution against reading the Tiger Shroff firing case as a return of the underworld’s old grip on Hindi cinema, while making clear that the current pattern is serious in its own way. In an interview with Hindustan Times, the actor argued that the structure of the threat has changed so much that the person attacked may not be the real target at all.
“It will never go back to the same old time,” Bajpayee said. “That time, the industry was the target, right now, it’s not.” The “pace and definition of the crime,” he added, “has changed completely.”
A sudden target
As per records in the case, the accused have claimed that Salman Khan was the real target in the Tiger Shroff firing incident, and have said they did a recce of the homes of Akshay Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan. Bajpayee’s reading of that detail: “From Tiger’s incident, what has come to the fore is that he was not the target but suddenly became one.”
The stars named as possible real targets, he noted, now have to “surround themselves with utmost safety.”
A comparison from lived experience
Bajpayee is unusually well placed to make this distinction. He broke through with Satya, a landmark portrait of the Mumbai underworld, and his credits include Shool, Pinjar, Bhonsle and Joram. Having worked through the period when the underworld’s influence loomed over the industry, he sees the current moment as structurally different rather than a revival of the old one.
Remote handlers, displaced targets
The shift Bajpayee describes changes what security means for a star:
- Earlier, the film industry itself was the target of underworld pressure.
- Today, somebody sitting elsewhere can send shooters toward a target that may not be the real one.
- Tiger Shroff, on the accused’s account, became a public target without being the intended mark.
For readers who follow Hindi cinema closely, that is the distinction that matters. The industry has lived through a version of this danger before; the question now is not whether the underworld has returned, but whether safety planning can keep pace with a model of crime that can draw in a public figure who was never the real subject.
State monitoring and a hope for normalcy
Bajpayee stopped short of alarm about the official response. He said he is confident the state government is “looking into it with a lot of concern,” monitoring the situation and taking precautions, and added that he hopes “things get better, comfortable and safer for all of us.”
Bajpayee was recently seen in Last Man of Tower, directed by Ben Rekhi, about a retired teacher who refuses to sell his Mumbai apartment, and remains widely known for The Family Man’s Srikant Tiwari.
Source: Cinema Express
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