Mumbai: Eleven arrests, three illegal weapons recovered from Surat, and a plot that investigators say kept changing its target.
Pranjal Thakral, 22, is the eleventh person held in the firing on actor Tiger Shroff's car in Juhu on October 18. He was picked up in Indore on Friday and produced before the holiday bench of the Killa Court on Sunday, which sent him to police custody till October 31. Police say he was out on bail as recently as March in a separate case — an attack on a businessman in Haryana's Panipat, allegedly at the instructions of the same man.
That man is Anil Pandit, named as a wanted accused. Investigators believe he runs the operation from the United States and is associated with the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. He claimed responsibility for the October 18 attack in a social media post.
According to police sources, Thakral coordinated the operation at Pandit's direction, arranged logistics and money for the shooters, and supplied a second pistol. The two allegedly spoke on a secret messaging app, and the chats recovered from his phone are now being read alongside his financial records. On his identification, the Crime Branch recovered three illegal firearms and 10 live cartridges in Surat, about 390 km from where he was arrested.
On Monday, a court extended the police custody of four accused — Kunal, 21, and Sumit, 19, both from Sonipat in Haryana, and Radha, 23, and Babita, 23, from Uttar Pradesh — till October 28. Police told the court the four travelled to Amritsar to buy the weapons and that the two women carried the firearms to Mumbai by train and handed them over to the attackers. They said the group communicated on Signal and destroyed the app, but photos and videos, including of the weapons, were found on their phones. Voice samples of two accused are yet to be taken.
The defence, represented by advocate Ajinkya Migral, argued that custody cannot be extended on mechanical grounds and that the accused should be sent to judicial custody.
What the accused have told investigators is the more unsettling part. Police sources say the original target was Salman Khan, and that there was reconnaissance around his Bandra residence before the plan was dropped because of the security there. Attention then shifted to Aamir Khan, whose Bandra home was reportedly watched on three occasions over about a month before the group found him hard to reach.
Shroff, 36, was leaving a football ground in Juhu when two men fired five to six rounds at his car. He escaped without serious injury. His driver and a bystander were hit.
On the entertainment side, the All Stars Football Club has suspended its Sunday sessions, which draw Abhishek Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor and Kartik Aaryan, until security arrangements are settled.