Vadodara:
After Mumbai, Delhi and Haryana, the scope of the probe into the attack on actor Tiger Shroff widened to Gujarat's Vadodara on Wednesday, after the police arrested a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.
Two men opened fire on the actor's car from the front, while the third waited on a motorcycle in Mumbai's Juhu on Sunday night. 6-7 shots were fired at the vehicle, injuring the driver and a bystander. In a close shave for the actor, an attacker's gun jammed when he pointed it at him. Shroff escaped unhurt.
The three attackers were arrested in Rajasthan's Kota as they tried to escape to Nepal via Delhi. From Delhi and Haryana, the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested four people, including two men, for acquiring and transporting the weapons used for the attack.
The Gujarat gangster, identified as Ankit, was the eighth person to be arrested as the authorities unravelled the conspiracy behind the assassination attempt. Two more were arrested later.
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The accused was produced before the Gohana court for transit remand.
Investigators said that Ankit was in contact with Anil Pandit, a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang who claimed responsibility for the attack on Shroff.
Police have accused Ankit of playing a crucial part in the plot to kill the actor. They have also uncovered alleged financial transactions involving Ankit, Nepal, and Anil Pandit.
The arrest was the result of a joint operation carried out by Gohana Police and Mumbai Police.
After the shooting incident, Anil Pandit had declared in an audio clip that anyone who works with actor Salman Khan or is deemed close to him would be targeted. The Bishnoi gang has been after Khan over the 1998 blackbuck case.
Sources told NDTV that Tiger Shroff wasn't the original target of the shooters. They had come to kill another high-profile target but improvised their plan.
"After checking out areas frequented by this individual, the shooters realised that they would not be able to get to the person. This was when they shifted their target to Tiger Shroff after learning - through reels posted by his fans - that the actor did not have police protection," the source said.
The shooters have told the police that they intended to spread fear within Bollywood by killing Shroff.
Audio Analysis To Be Conducted
The Mumbai Police will carry out the technical analysis of the audio released by the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.
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Voice samples from the clip will be matched against the "Voice Banks" maintained by the Punjab, Delhi, and Rajasthan police, which contain audio records of the Bishnoi gang members.
The Delhi Police holds a voice bank with over 200 voice samples specifically linked to the Bishnoi gang.
Previously, threat audio clips sent to Salman Khan, Rohit Shetty, Baba Siddique, and others were analysed using this same method.
According to senior Mumbai Police sources, identifying the speaker remains a major challenge as gangsters use different voices and aliases for each threat clip.