‘Let’s Change' programme, Rs 2 crore dues, moral demands: Why Rohit Aarrya pulled off Mumbai hostage showdown

MUMBAI: For three tense hours on Thursday afternoon, Rohit Aarrya held 17 children, a 75-year-old grandmother, and a studio staffer hostage inside a Powai recording studio.By evening, the standoff ended in gunfire — the children were rescued, and Aarrya lay dead.

But the story that led to that moment began long before the sirens, the shouting, and the flashing lights.Aarrya was not a criminal. Nor was he a terrorist, as he made clear in a final video recorded from inside RA Studio. “I just want answers,” he said quietly into the camera. “I don’t have any demand for money. I have moral questions — and I want to talk.”The 45-year-old was a social entrepreneur and project-management consultant who had once worked with the same government that he would later accuse of betrayal.

An alumnus of Symbiosis and ISB-Mumbai, he ran an outfit that produced awareness films on social causes. Three years ago, he launched what he called the Swachhata Monitor programme — a citizen-driven cleanliness movement that was taken up enthusiastically by the state’s school education department.Under the scheme, school students were to act as soldiers of the Swachh Bharat mission, “catching” people littering, documenting violations on social media, and earning points for their schools.

The idea was to gamify civic responsibility — reward awareness, not obedience.Workshops, training sessions, short films, and evaluation modules — all of it was Aarrya’s brainchild, and his team executed the programme across hundreds of schools.But when the results of the top-performing schools were declared, Aarrya said he discovered that the list of awardees bore no resemblance to the one his team had compiled. “Schools with zero or one mark were suddenly given awards,” he told a small education channel, Eduvarta, in an interview last year. “It was because they had connections with higher-ups. I couldn’t believe it.”When he raised objections, he claimed the department turned on him. “They started harassing me,” he said in that same interview. His payments, he alleged, were blocked. Still, he was told that the programme would continue the following year on a larger scale — and that his firm would be part of it again.In April, he submitted a fresh proposal. By June, nothing had moved. Desperate to keep his initiative alive, Aarrya turned Swachhata Monitor into a private effort, asking schools to contribute Rs 500 each to cover operational costs. “To run any initiative, you need money,” he said. “If the government wasn’t supporting me, I had to find another way.”The department reacted by accusing him of profiteering and breaching protocol.

“They questioned how I could start it as a personal initiative,” Aarrya said. On his website, he clarified that if the state government chose to come back on board, he would refund the schools’ fees. But before that could happen, the state launched its own parallel cleanliness drive — allocating Rs 5 crore to a scheme Aarrya claimed was based on his idea.

“It was like they had just taken it away from me,” he said. “My idea, my effort, my work — gone overnight.”Feeling robbed and unheard, he began a hunger strike.“I waited for the minister to keep his word,” he said in one of his last interviews. “He had come to my house and promised to set things right. But months passed, and nothing happened.”The strike stretched into weeks. He claimed to have gone without food for 45 days, and later, even stopped drinking water. “There was no other option. I saw nothing ahead of me,” he said.

He insisted the state owed him ₹60 lakh — a modest fraction of what he originally claimed, but still unpaid.Eventually, former education minister Deepak Kesarkar intervened, handing him two cheques — Rs 7 lakh and Rs 8.26 lakh. But Kesarkar, who said he had personally supported the initiative, maintained that Aarrya’s larger claim of Rs 2 crore was baseless. “All formalities have to be completed for government payments,” he told reporters on Thursday.

“One cannot just demand money without submitting documents. He should have spoken to the department and resolved the issue. I don’t think his claim was correct.”By then, it seemed Aarrya’s faith — in bureaucracy, in dialogue, perhaps even in himself — had worn thin.On Thursday, he summoned children aged 12 to 15 to RA Studio in Powai for what he said was a final audition for a web series. They had come from Navi Mumbai, Kolhapur, Satara, and Sangli — bright-eyed and nervous.

The day should have ended with a camera test. Instead, it spiraled into a siege.The VideoIn the video Aarrya released during the standoff, his tone was composed but ominous. “Instead of committing suicide, I have made a plan and kept some kids hostage,” he said. “I have very simple demands — moral and ethical ones. I have to ask some people questions. If they answer, I will ask counter-questions. I am not a terrorist. I don’t have demands for money.

I am not immoral.”He insisted his new programme — Let’s Change — would go on, whether or not he survived. “If I am alive, I will do it,” he said. “If I die, someone else will do it. But it will happen.”Then, his words darkened. “If anyone interferes,” he warned, “it will happen with these kids only if they are not harmed. The slightest wrong move from your end will trigger me to set this place on fire and die in it.”Outside, police negotiators tried to talk him down. Inside, Aarrya barricaded himself, clutching a pistol and cans of petrol.

Investigators later recovered an air gun, a lighter, and a flammable rubber solution from the studio.When the talks failed, a police commando unit stormed the building. Officers said Aarrya fired first — from his air gun — and they retaliated in self-defence. One bullet struck him in the chest. He was rushed to hospital but declared dead on arrival.His 75-year-old hostage, Mangal Patankar, suffered a head injury and a deep cut on her arm.

She is being treated at Nirali Hospital in Powai and is said to be stable.Kesarkar, who spoke after the incident, described the episode as “tragic.” “He was part of our ‘My School, Beautiful School’ campaign,” the MLA said. “He had a good idea, but he did not follow due process. These matters should have been resolved administratively.”For the police, it was a clean rescue. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis congratulated the force for what he called “a neat operation.”But for those who watched the story unfold, there was nothing neat about it.Here was a man who had built his life around public service, trying to make government cleaner, children more civic-minded, and society more responsible. Yet, when he needed the system to listen, it buried him in silence.By the time the guns went off, Rohit Aarrya was no longer a reformer or an entrepreneur — he was a man cornered by his own conviction.In his final moments, he wanted a dialogue. What he got was a shootout.And that, perhaps, is the question Mumbai must ask itself: when a citizen breaks down and demands to be heard, do we have anyone trained to listen? Or are we, as always, quicker on the trigger than at the table?

Police officials said they spent nearly two hours trying to negotiate with Rohit Aarrya and gauge his demands, but he refused to cooperate, even after parents of one hostage said she suffered from seizures. An official said Aarrya appeared calm when police spoke to him.“Regardless of his demands, we couldn’t let him play with people’s lives. He fired first at police. Our team fired back in self-defence. There was no other option,” city police commissioner Deven Bharti said. Other officials iterated that the safety of those held captive was the top priority, adding the police team’s response was measured and according to protocol.The death prompted calls by legal experts for a magisterial inquiry, as laid down by law, to verify the claim of retaliatory police firing.While Aarrya did not elaborate on his motive in a video released earlier in the day or during police’s attempts at negotiations, it emerged that Aarrya had sat on a hunger strike against former school education minister Deepak Kesarkar of Shiv Sena in 2024 over alleged dues of Rs 2 crore for a state-sanctioned school cleanliness project.Kesarkar said he personally gave him some money as a “gesture of sympathy” even though the school education department maintained Aarrya had collected payment directly from some children. He said Aarrya should have taken up the issue with the department instead of holding kids hostage.Police said Aarrya had been holding auditions at RA Studio in Powai for the past five days for a web series he was planning. Thursday was the final casting call.

Auditions began at 10 am, and the children — from Navi Mumbai, Kolhapur, Satara, Sangli, and other parts of the state — arrived earlier, said a security guard at Mahavir Classik, which housed the studio.Around 1:45 pm, an anonymous caller alerted Powai police after parents outside the building began yelling when their children failed to emerge for lunch. Within minutes, the road outside Mahavir Classik was packed with police vehicles, ambulances, and fire tenders.“It was a challenging operation,” said DCP Datta Nalawde.Officers broke through a bathroom grille and stormed the studio. Police said Aarrya fired first with an air gun; officers returned fire, hitting him in the chest. He was rushed to hospital, where doctors declared him dead.Storm kept brewing since a long timeRelations between Rohit Aarrya and the School Education Department soured soon after the launch of his project. Letters he wrote in 2024 show that he accused officials of sidelining him, withholding funds, and exploiting his concept without acknowledgment or payment.In one letter to a journalists’ body in Pune in August 2024, Aarrya claimed that despite his active involvement and official recognition of his work, the government failed to release the promised funds. He said he had to bear the initial expenses himself.“The School Education Department is doing injustice to me and my PLC Cleanliness Monitor.

For this, I had been on a hunger strike since July 24. On the night of August 3, Minister Deepak Kesarkar came home and assured me that my demands were justified and he would resolve the matter by August 5. I respected him and ended my hunger strike,” he wrote.According to Aarrya, former School Education Minister Deepak Kesarkar (Shiv Sena, Shinde faction) had promised to resolve the issue. But he alleged that senior department officials — Commissioner Suraj Mandhare, Sameer Sawant and Tushar Mahajan — continued to obstruct his work and delayed the release of funds.Personal anguish and betrayalAarrya’s letters reveal growing frustration and a sense of betrayal. He said he had been developing social campaigns and educational initiatives since 2013, often at his own expense, yet repeatedly faced obstruction and exploitation.“The money has not been paid as per the first proposal, but the Swachhata Monitor has also been included in the second My School, Beautiful School campaign.

I worked hard for two years, succeeded in convincing many schools that Swachhata Monitor is not a usual cleanliness campaign. I made it popular and suddenly I was thrown out,” he wrote.He also alleged that while the government adopted his campaign, it accused him of collecting registration fees from schools for what was now a state-run initiative.Government responseA senior official from the School Education Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, countered his claims and told Mumbai Mirror, “There was never any work order or payment agreement between the government and Rohit Aarrya.

The circulars and GRs available only mention seeking his assistance in implementing the project, as he had voluntarily submitted a proposal to help the government with the Project Let’s Change initiative related to cleanliness in schools — which is just one component of the Mukhyamantri Majhi Shala Sundar Shala 2023 campaign.

The project is still ongoing. Aarrya wanted to take charge of the entire initiative, but no tendering process or formal work order was ever issued in this regard.”Former education minister Kesarkar said, “Rohit Aarrya’s Swachhata Monitor was a concept under the government’s Majhi Shala Sundar Shala scheme. Under this initiative, he had contacted some schools and collected money from them, according to the School Education Department. If there was any issue regarding bills or payments, he should have taken it up with the concerned department and resolved it through proper channels.

The government has a defined procedure for all its work, and it functions strictly as per those procedures. What has happened now (the hostage incident) is wrong.”

Rescue teams involved

Eyewitness account“I reached the spot after hearing women scream for help. The way the police and quick response commandos acted swiftly and took Aarraya away was impressive,” said Dinesh Gosavi, a nearby resident.Parent account“Aarraya called and asked me to bring my 10-year-old daughter.

We had come from Kolhapur. My daughter went for the audition with her grandmother, who went inside as she couldn’t wait outside the gate,” said a parent.Notable past hostage situations in Mumbai

When Mumbai was held 'hostage': A history

In March 2010, retired customs officer Harish Marolia held his 14-year-old neighbour Himani hostage in his Andheri (West) apartment following a dispute with his housing society. Earlier, the 60-year-old had objected to construction work in the building and fired a warning shot into the air to threaten the society’s secretary.

The standoff ended tragically when Marolia shot the teenager before being gunned down by police.In November 2008, Rahul Raj, a 25-year-old man from Bihar, hijacked a double-decker BEST bus in Andheri, holding passengers hostage. When the bus reached Bail Bazar in Kurla, nearly 100 police personnel surrounded it. Raj reportedly threw a currency note at officers, declaring his intent to kill Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray, whose anti-migrant campaign had enraged him.

The crisis ended violently when police shot him dead.These incidents highlight how Mumbai — despite its size, resources, and preparedness — has occasionally been pushed to the brink by lone actors, forcing authorities to carefully balance negotiation and decisive action.'Negotiations are done keeping these two objectives in mind'“In hostage situations, the most important thing is to save the life and ensure minimum damage.

Negotiations are done keeping these two objectives in mind,” said Assistant Commissioner of Police (Nagpur) Shailni Sharma, speaking to PTI.Sharma, Mumbai Police’s first woman officer trained in London for handling hostage crises after the 26/11 attacks, was also invited in 2022 to train National Security Guard (NSG) commandos.“When there is no headway in negotiations (with the hostage-taker), the operation team takes decisions as per the need of the time,” she added.Sharma had been called to negotiate during the 2010 Andheri incident, but the police had already stormed the flat and opened fire before she arrived. In the following years, she successfully intervened in two suicide attempts — in 2013 and 2017 — convincing the women involved not to take the extreme step.During the anti-CAA and NRC protests, she served as senior inspector in Nagpada, managing large-scale demonstrations through dialogue rather than force.The Legal ViewLegal experts say a magisterial inquiry, as provided by law, will be required to examine claims of “retaliatory police firing.” In a landmark 2014 ruling, the Supreme Court held that such an inquiry must be conducted in all cases of deaths occurring during police firing to verify the circumstances. Section 196 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita empowers a magistrate to investigate the cause of death in certain cases.Although the captor, Rohit Aarrya, died in police firing, a magisterial inquiry can prima facie determine whether the shooting was in retaliation to provocation, said former Bombay High Court judge B H Marlapalle. He added that police encounters causing grievous injuries require proper, independent, and structured investigation, as upheld by the Supreme Court.Senior crime counsel Rajendra Shirodkar said a magisterial inquiry is likely, since Aarrya’s death occurred during the rescue operation while he was being apprehended.

“If the probe establishes that Aarrya had used an airgun, as claimed by the police, it can be treated as a ‘dangerous weapon’ when used at close range,” Shirodkar noted, adding that this would support the police’s claim of self-defence.“Police also had to act under circumstances that required split-second decisions and could not have weighed the situation on golden scales, because the aim was to rescue those held captive and ensure no loss of life of the victims and the force,” he said.