The attack on actor Tiger Shroff on Sunday has had a chilling impact on the film industry in Mumbai. For many, the underworld’s stranglehold on Bollywood through the 1990s is still a raw memory.
The attack on Shroff, whose father, Jackie, is a loved figure in the film industry, comes on the back of threats to several other stars. Those who have been threatened in the last two years include Salman Khan, his brother-in-law, actor Ayush Sharma, director Rohit Shetty, and Ranveer Singh.
Politician Baba Siddiqui, killed in October 2024, was a close friend of Bollywood A-listers including Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. In the same month as Siddique’s killing, stand-up comic Munawar Faruqui was provided police cover after threats from the Bishnoi gang. In July this year, actor Aamir Khan was warned about indulging in ‘Love Jihad’ by the same gang following his wedding to Gauri Spratt.
But what has rattled the Mumbai film industry is the audacity of the attack on Shroff from such close range. Three motorbike-borne men fired seven rounds from a sophisticated semi-automatic Zigana handgun at his car in Juhu at 7pm amid Navratri season when the area was choc-a-bloc with traffic.
The attackers were unmasked and unconcerned about being caught. “They were also watching him. How else did they know that he routinely went to the Pushpa Narsee Park to play football every Sunday?” said a leading man who often plays football with Tiger Shroff at the same venue.
In Mumbai, top stars have resorted to private security. “The attack on Tiger has taken us back to the 90s. I am just going to add a few more people to my retinue of bodyguards,” said a famous action star of the 1990s. “This attack has left me really frightened. I have three guards. But are they enough?”
He added that if he, too, like his friends Salman Khan and Shetty, has to disappear behind a wall of security.
Salman Khan has a Y Plus security in addition to a private detail. In June 2022, a note was left on the promenade at Bandra Bandstand for the actor’s screenwriter father, Salim Khan, at his usual bench, warning that his son could meet the same fate as singer Sidhu Moosewala, who was assassinated in Punjab in 2022.
The last two years have been traumatic for Salman Khan, who has drastically cut down on his public appearances. Shetty’s life has been circumscribed since shots were fired at his house in Juhu in February this year. His set for ‘Golmaal-5’, helmed by Ajay Devgn, was as secure as Fort Knox (a major US Army installation in Kentucky), said an actor who worked on the film. “We created a bubble around Rohit. There were no outsiders allowed, and other than the actors and the senior technical team, no one was allowed close to him. His security was iron-clad,” said a wardrobe assistant who worked on the film, describing the atmosphere on set as “extremely stressful.”
A film producer said the industry had only a few years ago begun to emerge from the shadows of the 1990s when the writ of the Mumbai mafia ran unchecked. “Extortions, forcible casting, shootouts, killings…that had all stopped in the last few years, and we thought the worst was behind us. But it seems to be changing. My antenna went up when I heard that they [Bishnoi gang members] asked Ranveer Singh to pay extortion money after the success of ‘Dhurandhar’. That kind of thing makes us all vulnerable. Our high profile makes us soft targets, and we have little assurance from the administration or the police.”
People aware of the matter said that Mumbai Police have not received any complaints of extortion from anyone in the film industry so far.