Gunmen Fire at Tiger Shroff's Car in Juhu as Mumbai Police Launch Manhunt

Entertainment · Bollywood · Mumbai

MUMBAI

Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff escaped without gunshot wounds on Sunday evening after gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on his BMW in Juhu, one of Mumbai's best-known neighborhoods, in an attack that injured his driver and a second man and set off a citywide police manhunt. The firing took place at about 7 p.m. near Pushpa (Narsee) Park in Juhu, as Shroff was leaving a football session, according to reports citing the Mumbai Police.

The sequence, as investigators have pieced it together so far, was fast. Shroff had finished the football session — reports also describe the outing as a private event — and was in his BMW when the motorcycle-borne gunmen fired at the car. The vehicle was hit. Shroff himself was not struck by any bullet, a fact the police stated plainly in the hours after the attack, even as images and video from the scene spread across social media and the story took over Indian entertainment news.

The actor's injuries: glass and gunpowder, not bullets

Shroff did not come through the attack completely untouched. According to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, the actor suffered minor injuries from glass and gunpowder in the firing — the kind of wounds a person inside a shot-at car can sustain from shattered windows and discharge residue even when no round finds them. Visuals shared by the news agency ANI from Shinde's visit to the actor's residence on Sunday night showed Shroff with dressings below the neck and on his arm and a bandage around his arm, consistent with minor injuries rather than gunshot wounds.

The more serious injury belonged to the man behind the wheel. Shroff's driver, named in reports as Firdaus, was shot in the left hand. He was treated at Nanavati Hospital, and police have recorded his statement — an important early piece of the investigation, since the driver was both a victim of the attack and one of the closest witnesses to how it unfolded. A second man was also injured in the firing. Reports differ on who that second man was, and because those accounts conflict, Previously is not naming an identity for him until police settle the record.

Fifteen teams, one FIR, and a CCTV hunt

The police response scaled up quickly. Deputy Commissioner of Police Mohit Garg is among the senior officers cited in the reporting on the case. Juhu Police registered a first information report against three unknown accused under Sections 109(1) and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Sections 3 and 25 of the Arms Act, according to reports — the formal opening of a criminal case against attackers whose names investigators do not yet have. Fifteen police teams have been formed to work the case, and officers are reviewing CCTV footage from the area around Pushpa Park to trace the motorcycle, the route the gunmen took in and the route they used to get away.

That footage is likely to decide how fast this case moves. An attack at about 7 p.m. in a busy, camera-covered neighborhood leaves a trail: the approach, the firing itself and the escape should all exist on somebody's camera. The manhunt, as of Sunday night's reporting, was still a hunt — police were probing angles and working to identify the three unknown accused named in the case, and no motive for the shooting has been established. Previously is not repeating the unverified claims that circulated online after the attack; until police verify a claim, it is a rumor attached to a crime scene, and the established facts are stark enough without it.

Shinde at the residence, Fadnavis on the phone

The political response arrived the same night. Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde visited Shroff's residence on Sunday night to check on the actor, a visit captured in the ANI visuals that also showed the actor's dressings. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis spoke both to the Mumbai police commissioner and to Shroff himself, according to the Daily Jagran's reporting — the state's top elected official personally briefed on an entertainment-industry shooting within hours of it happening, a measure of how seriously the government is treating an attack on one of Bollywood's most recognizable young stars in the middle of Mumbai.

Juhu is home to a large share of Mumbai's film industry, and an attack there, at an hour when the neighborhood is busy, lands differently than a crime in an anonymous place. Shroff was leaving a football session — an ordinary Sunday-evening routine, in public, at a predictable place. That ordinariness is precisely what makes the firing alarming for the industry around him: if the attackers knew where he would be, the investigation will have to ask how, and if they simply waited in a neighborhood where stars are easy to find, the security questions spread well beyond one actor.

What is known, and what is not

As of Sunday night, the established record is this: gunmen on a motorcycle fired at Tiger Shroff's BMW near Pushpa Park in Juhu at about 7 p.m.; the actor sustained no gunshot injuries and only minor glass and gunpowder injuries; his driver was shot in the left hand, treated at Nanavati Hospital and has given a statement; a second man was also injured, with reports differing on his identity; a case stands registered against three unknown accused; 15 police teams are working the investigation and reviewing CCTV; and the motive remains unknown. Everything beyond that — including any claim about who ordered the attack or why — remains unverified, and this story will be updated as police put verified facts on the record. Readers following the wider news night can also read Previously's report from France, Luxury Stores Looted Across France as Dior Reportedly Hires Private Guards, and our coverage of France waking to the wreckage of its worst unrest in years.