Powai hostage crisis echoes 2008 Mumbai hijack: When 25-year-old gunman seized a bus

When filmmaker-activist Rohit Arya held 17 children hostage at a Powai studio this week, Mumbai was gripped by memories of another chilling day, October 27, 2008, when a 25-year-old man from Bihar hijacked a double-decker bus in the heart of the city.

It was around 10:30 am when news flashed that a BEST bus, numbered 332, had been seized at Kurla. Passengers trapped on board sent frantic calls as police scrambled to respond. By the time officers reached Bail Bazaar, nearly 100 policemen had surrounded the vehicle, sealing off the street and drawing crowds of terrified onlookers.

The hijacker, Rahul Raj, had boarded the Andheri-bound bus at Saki Naka around 10 am, armed with a country-made revolver. He ordered the driver to stop and moved to the upper deck, taking control of the vehicle. Witnesses reportedly said he fired multiple shots, one outside the bus and another that struck a passenger, Bhagat, who had ducked for cover.

'I WANT TO KILL RAJ THACKERAY'

Much like Rohit Arya, Raj claimed he was not there to harm passengers and made no monetary demands. According to police, Raj demanded to speak with the Mumbai Police Commissioner and the media. When police asked Raj to surrender, he reportedly threw a currency note at them on which he had written that he had come to "kill" Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) president Raj Thackeray, whose party had launched an anti-migrant agitation in Mumbai targeting North Indians.

"I want to kill Raj Thackeray. I have nothing against the passengers. Don’t shoot me’,” he shouted.

But his agitation and erratic firing left little room for negotiation. When he refused to surrender, a police team led by ACP Mohammed Javed stormed the upper deck.

“When I entered the bus, I saw him holding a passenger and pointing the gun towards him. I told him to surrender, but he didn’t. What should I have done to save that passenger’s life? I had to fire,” ACP Javed said, as quoted in journalist Jitendra Dixit’s 2022 book Bombay After Ayodhya: A City in Flux.

In the exchange that followed, Javed and his team fired more than a dozen bullets. Four hit the hijacker, three in the head and one through the heart, killing him instantly.

The hijacker was identified as 25-year-old Kundan Singh, also known as Rahul Raj, a native of Patna, Bihar. His rage, police later said, was fuelled by the violent anti-North Indian campaign led by MNS chief Raj Thackeray. Earlier that year, Thackeray’s arrest for delivering inflammatory speeches had triggered a wave of retaliatory attacks — mobs targeted North Indians across Mumbai, thrashing young men who had come to the city to appear for railway recruitment exams. Some were even lynched as the unrest spiralled into a full-blown hate storm.

Seventeen years apart, the two hostage crises now stand as eerie reflections of each other, both erupting in October, both unfolding in broad daylight, and both driven by deep political frustration that spiralled into chaos. In 2008, a young man from Patna hijacked a city bus to make a violent statement against regional hatred. In 2025, a filmmaker in Mumbai’s Powai turned a children’s audition into a siege to protest what he believed was injustice and neglect by the state.

In both cases, the hostage-takers were driven by political rage, young men convinced they had been wronged, seeking attention from a system they believed had silenced them. Rahul Raj stormed a bus in 2008 to protest against anti-North Indian violence; Rohit Arya held children hostage in a studio in 2025 to demand credit and unpaid dues for his project.

Both men believed they were fighting a cause larger than themselves and both paid for it with their lives.

- Ends