Mumbai Police say someone watched live TV news and fed the probe’s progress to the fleeing shooters. All 10 accused are held; the shooters stay till Oct 31.
Updated: October 24, 2026, 11:30 IST
Quick Read
- Mumbai Police say the three alleged shooters got live updates on the investigation — pulled from TV news and relayed through messages and internet calls while they fled.
- After TV flashed their faces, suspect Rehan Ansari got a message: “Tumhare chehre aa gaye hain, nikal jao waha se” — your faces are out, get out of there.
- All three shooters are in police custody till October 31, and 10 people have been arrested in total. Police still don’t know who was feeding the updates.
The three men who allegedly fired at Tiger Shroff’s car in Juhu on October 18 had a helper while they ran from the police: someone watching the news. Mumbai Police say a person higher up the chain tracked live TV coverage of the investigation and passed the details to the shooters through messages and calls.
This worked because the shooters made almost only internet calls. Calls through apps like Signal or Zangi — the messaging apps the Bishnoi gang is known to use — don’t show up in normal call records, so they leave almost nothing for police to trace. The police source in the Indian Express put it plainly: “We knew it was an app that used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), but we could not trace it.”
The message that told them to run
The clearest example came when TV channels flashed the shooters’ faces, taken from videos shot by paparazzi and vloggers outside the park. At that point, 18-year-old Rehan Rahisuddin Ansari got a message: “Tumhare chehre aa gaye hain, nikal jao waha se” — your faces are out, get out of there. The message, reported by the Indian Express on October 24, came with a clear instruction to leave the area.
Police say CCTV footage showed Rehan on the phone almost the whole time. Whoever was guiding him, the source said, “was scanning news channels and as some information would be flashed, he would alert Rehan.” The shooters were told when police had traced their bike in Andheri and knew they had taken a train. The tips kept changing how they moved: from a bike to a train, to a cab, then they wanted a bus from Surat — and when the bus took too long, they boarded another train. Rajasthan police caught them on that train in Kota, acting on a request from Mumbai Police.
And then there was the one ordinary phone call. Police say the shooters made just one regular mobile-network call through all of this — to the cab driver who drove them from Borivali in Mumbai’s northern suburbs to Surat. That single call gave investigators the lead that finally put them on the train to Kota. How that chase played out is covered in our explainer on the Juhu-to-Kota trail.
Who was sending the updates?
Police haven’t established that yet. Investigators suspect two possibilities: Anil Pandit, who claims links to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang and is believed to be holed up in the US — his claim of responsibility came in an unverified social-media post — or Ankit Khatak and Sameer Khatri, recently arrested in Sonipat, who police say formed the link between the shooters and Pandit. The identity of the person relaying the TV updates, police sources said, is still unknown.
What is known: the three alleged shooters — Phool Singh, 18, Rehan Rahisuddin Ansari, 18, and Rithik Mahto, 22 — were arrested in Rajasthan the day after the attack and have been remanded in police custody till October 31. Ten people have been arrested in total, including two Delhi women, Radha and Babita, who allegedly received a weapon collected through an Amritsar dead-drop and passed it to the shooters. Police suspect around Rs 2 lakh was sent to the shooters.
Also read
- Tiger Shroff shooters: how the Juhu-to-Kota chase was cracked
- Tiger Shroff case: 10 arrested after Sonipat recce
- Tiger Shroff case: Delhi women held in gun-supply chain
Were other stars targets?
The case widened this week. Police found that the three alleged shooters had visited residential buildings of Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Ranveer Singh during their month-long stay in Mumbai. Investigators are probing whether the visits were reconnaissance for alternate targets, the Indian Express reported, and security has been increased outside the stars’ homes. Read more on the star-homes angle and the 10 arrests so far.
Police are even checking whether Tiger was the original target at all. An Indian Express report on October 21 said officers are verifying if the shooters turned to the actor after failing to reach their ‘main’ target — described as an ‘influential’ figure whose heavy security cover made him unreachable. After the attack, Tiger met Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
FAQ
- How did the handlers relay TV news to the Tiger Shroff shooters?
Mumbai Police say someone watched live TV coverage of the investigation and passed the details to the shooters through messages and internet calls — including one message warning suspect Rehan Ansari, “Tumhare chehre aa gaye hain, nikal jao waha se” (your faces are out, get out of there). - How many people have been arrested in the Tiger Shroff firing case?
Ten so far. The three alleged shooters — Phool Singh (18), Rehan Rahisuddin Ansari (18) and Rithik Mahto (22) — were caught in Kota, Rajasthan, and are in police custody till October 31. The others include the Delhi weapon-supply module and the Sonipat link men. - Was Tiger Shroff the real target?
Police are still verifying. They are probing whether the shooters visited the buildings of Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Ranveer Singh as reconnaissance for alternate targets, and whether Tiger became the target after the gang failed to reach an ‘influential’ figure with heavy security.
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