Sunday evening in Juhu, Mumbai. Tiger Shroff was leaving a football ground in his car, the sort of routine exit an actor makes a hundred times a year, and the usual crowd had gathered outside for a glimpse. This time the crowd was hiding gunmen.
Three to four rounds were fired at Shroff’s vehicle from within that crowd, Mumbai Police said. The actor escaped without bullet wounds. He was taken to Nanavati Hospital in Vile Parle, where doctors found only a few abrasions, the Times of India reported. Two others were not so fortunate. Shroff’s driver, identified by police as Firdaus, was shot in the left hand. An autorickshaw driver, identified only as Chauhan, took a bullet to the chest and was rushed to Cooper Hospital, according to the Times of India. A bystander video circulating online captures what sounds like at least four shots, then screams. The Tiger Shroff shooting is Mumbai’s most brazen celebrity attack in two years, and it happened in front of witnesses.
The gang that claims the Tiger Shroff shooting
Before the police had even finished securing the scene, the attack had a name attached to it. A Facebook post attributed to Anil Pandit and Harman Sandhu, described as associates of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, claimed responsibility for the firing. The post said the group had phoned Shroff earlier, tried to “explain things” to him, and decided on Sunday to make him understand properly. It also issued a warning to the Mumbai film industry: anyone who does not listen to the group, or who works with Salman Khan, would be next. Rival gangs accused of borrowing the Bishnoi name for attention got their own threat in the same breath.
Every one of those claims needs a caution label the size of a hoarding. Mumbai Police sources have called it premature to confirm the motive in the post, the post’s authenticity has not been independently established, and investigators have not confirmed any link between the gang and the shooting, NDTV and the Economic Times reported. What the police have confirmed is the manhunt: 15 teams are on the case, forensic teams are examining the scene, and CCTV footage from the area is being studied for how the attackers arrived and fled. The FIR was still being registered on Sunday evening.
That paparazzi detail from eyewitnesses is worth pausing on. The bikers, witnesses said, were young and had posed as photographers, the Economic Times reported. At a Juhu sighting on a Sunday evening, nobody looks twice at a young man with a camera. The crowd that gathers to see an actor turned out to be the perfect cover for men who came to shoot him. Mumbai’s film industry runs on public appearances, and the security thinking around them has always assumed the threat comes from outside the crowd. Sunday evening blew that assumption apart.
The playbook Mumbai has already seen
The pattern is familiar enough that the police will be working from it. In April 2024, two bike-borne men fired at the first-floor balcony of Salman Khan’s Galaxy apartment in Bandra; six accused were arrested and nine charged, including Lawrence Bishnoi and his brother Anmol, the Print reported. Six months later, NCP leader Baba Siddique was shot dead in Bandra in an attack also linked to the gang. Sunday’s incident follows the same beats: bikes, a public figure, and a social-media responsibility claim within hours. The one variable this time is the victim. The post linked Shroff to Salman Khan, but offered no specific account of why the actor was picked, and police have not confirmed any of it.
It has been a bruising stretch for the industry. Days ago Bollywood mourned Nana Patekar, and another of its own, Imran Khan, is fighting a very different kind of battle with the state. The difference with Sunday’s attack is scale and intent. A firing on a crowded road is not a threat delivered to a gate; it is a message that the gang’s reach now extends into the most public part of an actor’s day.
The uncomfortable question from here is not just who pulled the trigger. It is whether Mumbai’s police can move faster than the script. The last two times this playbook ran, the bikes vanished and the gang took credit from prison cells and Facebook posts while the investigation chased footage. This time the cameras were everywhere, a video is already viral, and the police have a number plate trail to find before the night cools. If they don’t, the loudest account of what happened in Juhu will remain an unverified post, and that is exactly how this gang has always wanted it.