‘Phone off, no contact since yesterday’: Mother of Tiger Shroff shooting suspect

The mother of one of the three accused in the Tiger Shroff firing case has said that she has not spoken to her son since Sunday — the day of the attack — and that his phone has been switched off.

“We have not been able to speak to him since yesterday. His mobile phone is switched off,” said Sanjukta Devi, a resident of Bihar’s Begusarai.

“My son lives in Mumbai,” she told reporters on Monday, adding that he worked as a cook there.

Asked whether she believed Hrithik could have been involved in the shooting, she said, “No, my son cannot do such a thing. I cannot say how fate can take someone from one place to another, but my son cannot do it. Rest is God’s will.”

Police, though, have confirmed that the arrested man is the son of Sanjukta and her husband Ramakant alias Ramu Mahto.

Ratanpur police station SHO Ganesh Shankar told The Indian Express that Hrithik’s parents lived in the Pipra area of Begusarai and ran a small grocery shop. The family said he had been living outside the district for the last couple of years.

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“The family claimed that Hrithik had been living outside Begusarai for the past two to three years, but he had been in Mumbai for only the last couple of months. Before that, he lived in Delhi,” Shankar said.

According to the SHO, Hrithik had told his family that he worked as a cook at a major construction giant. He had apparently also travelled to Surat and Vadodara for work, he added.

“No previous criminal history of his has been found at our police station so far. We are also collecting details from other police stations to find out if there was any case against him,” Shankar said.

The family’s account and the police inquiry in Begusarai come amid the investigation into the shooting near Pushpa Narsee Park in Mumbai on Sunday evening. Police have said five rounds were fired at Shroff’s vehicle around 7 pm. The actor escaped unhurt, while his driver, Firdosh, and a bystander, Umesh Chavan, sustained bullet injuries.

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Mumbai Police registered a case against three unidentified men and launched an investigation involving the Crime Branch. Fifteen teams were formed to trace the suspects, and CCTV footage helped investigators establish their movements.

The three men — Phool Singh (18), Hrithik (22) and Rehab Rahisuddin (18) — were arrested in Kota on Monday by a joint team of the Rajasthan Anti-Gangster Task Force and Kota City Police, acting on inputs from Mumbai Police.

At a press conference on Monday evening, Raj Tilak Roushan, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Detection), Mumbai Crime Branch, said the accused fled on a motorcycle after the shooting, travelled by train from Andheri to Borivali, and then took a cab to Surat. From there, they boarded a train for Kota, where they were arrested aboard the Pune-Jaipur Superfast Express.

Kota City Superintendent of Police Tejasvini Gautam said police received information from Mumbai Police at around 9.45 am and arrested the three after the train arrived at Kota Junction at approximately 10.30 am.

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She said the men had planned to get off at Jaipur and take a bus to Delhi. An earlier police account had said they intended to flee to Nepal.

According to police, two of the accused allegedly opened fire, while the third was a bike-taxi driver facilitating their escape. During the shooting, Rahisuddin’s firearm reportedly jammed, following which the men fled on a motorcycle. Police have clarified that none of the three arrested men is a minor.

SP Gautam said the accused had been lured with promises of good money and a chance to settle abroad, and that they had named a man identified as Anil Pandit. A source said Pandit, a Haryana native who travelled to the United States in 2024, was working with the Bishnoi gang.