3 min readMumbaiUpdated: Feb 16, 2026 10:52 PM IST
THE MUMBAI police have arrested seven persons including the alleged shooter who fired outside the Juhu residence of director Rohit Shetty from UP and Haryana with the help of respective state police forces. With five arrested accused nabbed earlier by the police in the case from Pune, the total number of arrests in the case have gone up to 12.
The alleged shooter, Deepak Chandra (26), who had been eluding the police for the past two weeks, was finally nabbed from Jhajjar in Haryana along with three others while three more were nabbed from Agra and Noida in UP.
An official said while Chandra, Ritik Yadav (24), Sunny Kumar (23) and Sonu Thakur (23) were arrested from Haryana, three others, Vishnu Kushwahah (23), Jitin Bharadwaj (22) and Vishal Thakur (19) were arrested from UP. A senior official said that majority of the accused are Agra residents and were enamoured by the Bishnoi gang.
The seven arrested were produced before special judge SR Navander who remanded them to police custody till February 25.
Explaining how the crime was carried out, an official said a recce was carried out by Chandra and Sunny Kumar outside the director’s residence a couple of times before the actual firing on February 1. Sources said that Chandra along with Sonu Thakur and Kushwahah came to the city late on January 31. They are believed to have consumed alcohol following which, while others waited back, Chandra rode to Shetty’s residence and fired five rounds. Sonu was waiting at the Juhu beach.
Chandra then parked the bike near Vile Parle and along with the other accused, took an auto to Kalyan. “Sonu had resided in Kalyan for two years in the past when he was working here. He, however, returned to Agra later. He was the one guiding the others,” the official said. The trio then took a long-distance train from Kalyan railway station and fled to Bhopal and kept shifting their location so that they didn’t get caught.
“They were watching TV news to find out how far the police had progressed,” an officer said. “Over 12 teams from the Mumbai police crime branch, on the basis of scanning CCTV cameras and inputs, had identified the accused but the latter managed to be one step ahead of them. The other accused we have arrested were the ones who were harbouring them at the instructions of others linked to the Bishnoi gang which has a strong presence in Haryana and UP,” the official added.
An official said that on basic interrogation of the accused, it came to light that Vishnu Kushwahah was the one who had approached them and he was linked to one Golu Pandit of the Bishnoi gang. “The accused said they were enamoured by the Bishnoi gang after seeing their activities on social media platforms and hence decided to work for them,” the official added.
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Currently, apart from the 12 arrested, the police have named Shubham Lonkar as the mastermind of the firing. His brother Pravin Lonkar, currently lodged at Arthur Road jail, has also been named as a wanted accused in the case. The police are likely to take his custody soon. The police have invoked the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act against the accused.
