The shooters who allegedly attacked actor Tiger Shroff in Mumbai’s Juhu on October 18 were being told how far the police investigation into the case had progressed reportedly based on what news channels were showing.
According to an Indian Express report, that information gave the attackers an edge in their bid to dodge the police after they fled on a motorcycle after firing at the actor’s car, an attack that injured two, including Shroff’s driver.
At one point, when their photographs from videos of the shooting were flashed on TV, one of the shooters received a message, “your faces are out, get out of there,” Mumbai Police sources quoted in the report said.
Tiger Shroff escaped unhurt in the attack outside a park in Juhu. The three alleged shooters, Phool Singh, Rehan Rahisuddin Ansari (both 18) and 22-year-old Rithik Mahto, were arrested from Rajasthan’s Kota the next day.
The accused trio have been remanded to police custody till October 31. 10 people have been arrested so far in connection with the case. Anil Pandit, who claims to be linked to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, has claimed responsibility in an unverified social media post.
Police have not officially commented on whether news reports helped the shooters to evade the cops on the day of the attack.
Police investigating who updated the shooters
According to the Indian Express report, police are yet to establish who was relaying TV news updates to the shooters, which was done through a messaging app. Investigators suspect it was done either by Anil Pandit from the US or Ankit Khatak and Sameer Khatri.
Both Khatak and Khatri, who allegedly formed the link between the shooters and Pandit, were recently arrested in Haryana’s Sonipat.
It is still not clear which messaging app was used to send updates to the shooters. The Lawrence Bishnoi gang is known to use the US-based Signal app or the Armenian-developed app Zangi. The latter doesn't require a phone number to create an account.
One of the accused, Rehan, was constantly on the phone, according to the CCTV camera footage.
“We knew it was an app that used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), but we could not trace it,” the source quoted in the report said.
The investigators have accessed some of the communication between the shooters and the handlers.
“Apart from some videos and photographs, we have found that they were being guided by the person about how far along the police are in identifying them. We suspect the person at the other end was scanning news channels and as some information would be flashed, he would alert Rehan,” the source added.
When the news channels flashed screengrabs of the accused's faces from videos shot by paparazzi and vloggers outside the park, Rehan was reportedly sent a message alerting them to it.
They were reportedly also told that their bike had been traced to Andheri and that the police knew they had taken a train.
“This could be one of the reasons why they kept changing modes of transport as they went from a bike to train to cab and later wanted to take a bus from Surat bus stand, but when it took too long, they decided to take another train,” the source quoted by IE said. Acting on a request from the Mumbai Police, the Kota police arrested them on the train they boarded from Surat.