MUMBAI: The captor,
Rohit Aarrya, a social entrepreneur & project management consultant, owned a company that directed awareness videos on social causes. His social media profile shows he was an alumnus of Symbiosis and ISB-Mumbai.
Three years ago, he launched a ‘Swachhata Monitor’ in various schools across the state. The next year, he sat on a hunger strike against the then education minister Deepak Kesarkar alleging non-payment of Rs 2 crore dues.
On Thursday, Kesarkar said, “All formalities have to be completed for govt payment. I don’t think his claim that he was owed Rs 2 crore by govt was correct.”
His social media profile showed he was an alumnus of Symbiosis International University, Pune, and had completed an executive MBA from ISB, Mumbai.
He had worked extensively with children on the central govt’s Swacchh Bharat initiative, saying he was inspired by PM Narendra Modi’s plan for cleanliness in public spaces. Since 2017, Aarrya had engaged actors, including Prem Chopra, to enact short videos to generate awareness. He claimed actor Ramesh Deo as his mentor. His social media profiles contain pictures of ministers and a few celebrities.
Amid reports that Aarrya hailed from Pune’s Kothrud, senior inspector Sandeep Deshmane of Kothrud police said his parents stayed in a flat in a housing society at Shivtirthnagar in Kothrud but left about a week ago. Neighbours said they didn’t know where the elderly couple had moved. Deshmane said Aarrya was earlier staying in a rented flat at Karvenagar in Pune. Locals said he moved to Chembur after his wife got a job in Panvel. Kothrud police said, “The nameplate on the locked flat is different and does not bear Aarrya’s name. He might have changed the name. We are confirming this.” “We do not know from where the family hails,” said Deshmane.
Mumbai police said he had been staying in a ninth floor flat in Chembur’s Annapurna Building, which is owned by a relative who lives abroad, for the past few days since the auditions for the purported web series began.
Three years ago, Aarrya launched a ‘Swachhata Monitor’ programme across various schools in Maharashtra.
The project was inaugurated by then education minister Deepak Kesarkar on Oct 2, 2022.
JCP (law and order) Satyanarayan Chaudhary indicated that prima facie, the motive behind the taking the 19 persons hostage was some pending workrelated dues. In his video that he released while holding the children captive, however, Aarrya gave no details of his grouse or make explicit demands for outstanding dues, merely saying he wanted to have a “conversation” with certain unnamed people.
“Instead of committing suicide, I have made a plan and kept some kids hostage here. I don’t have a lot of demands. I have very simple demands. Moral demands and very ethical demands. And I have some questions,” he said. “I have to talk to some people. I have to ask them questions. If I have a counter question to their answers, then I want to ask counter questions. I don’t want anything else. I am neither a terrorist nor do I have a great demand for money. I don’t have any demand for money. I am not immoral.”
He said he had taken the children hostage “according to a plan”. “I really want to conduct the ‘Let’s Change’ programme. I am going to do it. If I am alive, then I will do it. If I die, then someone else will do it. But it will definitely happen,” he said.
His tone then turned menacing. “It will happen with these kids only if they are not harmed. Because the slightest wrong move from your end will trigger me to set this place on fire and die in it. Whether I die or not, the kids will definitely be unnecessarily hurt and traumatised. I don’t know what will happen to them. If something does happen to them, I should not be held responsible.
Those persons should be held responsible who are triggering this unnecessarily, when a normal, common person just wants to talk. After my discussions are over, I will come out myself. I am not alone. I have more people with me. Many people have similar problems as mine. And I am going to give this solution only by talking. Please do not trigger me to do some harm to anybody.”