MUMBAI: The “script” for the stunning Powai hostage disaster was apparently deliberate for over a month. Seventeen kids had their fingers tied and mouths taped at a recording studio Thursday, as everybody believed a “hostage scene” for an online collection was being filmed. Panic set in solely when the captor, Rohit Aarrya, pulled out a gun and an iron rod and threatened to kill them, in response to chilling sufferer accounts.Police mentioned Aarrya got here ready – rags sprayed with chemical compounds had been positioned across the duplex studio and on the ground to start out a hearth if issues went mistaken, movement detectors had been fastened on the foremost door, and transferring cameras had been arrange on all flooring.A policeman mentioned Aarrya had learn out his internet collection script to 23 shortlisted kids and their mother and father throughout the audition of 36 hopefuls, convincing them {that a} hostage scene could be filmed on the ultimate day of a five-day shoot. “Solely 17 of the 23 kids attended preparations on the studio for 4 days,” he mentioned. These “preparations” lulled the eight boys and 9 ladies, aged 10 to fifteen, who arrived on the studio at 8am on Thursday, right into a false sense of security.
‘Script Readied Over A Mth, Learn Out To Dad and mom’
A couple of hours later, some kids sensed one thing was mistaken and started screaming. That, mentioned a cop, enraged Aarrya. “He started waving an airgun and an iron rod at us, shouting he would kill us all,” recalled one of many ladies. “It was solely then that we realised this was now not fiction.”When police entered, they discovered the kids with their mouths taped, and a few with their fingers tied. That they had been denied meals for hours as Aarrya stored shifting them from one room to a different. “Whereas negotiating over telephone, we might hear kids screaming. He watched us from behind closed sliding glass doorways with darkish curtains. At intervals, he would run again into the room and drag 5 kids out,” mentioned an officer. “This continued for nearly two hours,” he added.Not less than 15 kids had been confined to a room on the higher ground. “The studio had two flooring. There have been two rooms, a slender passage, and a small corridor on the decrease ground, whereas higher ground had two rooms, a corridor, a passage, and a bathroom,” the officer mentioned. It’s alleged Aarrya carried a petroleum can to threaten the kids. One lady’s 75-year-old grandmother was additionally trapped inside.Aarrya’s manufacturing assistant, Rohan Aher, was locked in a separate room and threatened at gunpoint. Aher instructed cops he had no thought of Aarrya’s plan. Aarrya was listed because the producer, scriptwriter, and planner of the collection. “We did not know he had weapons or inflammable materials,” Aher mentioned, including he managed to talk to cops via a window whereas Aarrya was in one other room speaking to police and oldsters.Aarrya had additionally recorded a video stating he had deserted ideas of suicide and deliberate the “hostage” state of affairs to get his “calls for” met. Police mentioned the video was despatched through WhatsApp to 2 acquaintances from the auditions at 1.45pm Thursday, who alerted police. A staff reached the positioning by 2.15pm, and after almost two hours of negotiations, the operation ended with Aarrya’s dying by 4pm.