India, Oct. 31 -- For nearly three hours on Thursday afternoon, Mumbai witnessed one of its most nerve-wracking hostage crises in recent memory - a standoff involving 17 children and two adults held captive inside a studio in Powai by a man armed with an airgun and a flammable spray. The ordeal ended dramatically with a police rescue operation that left the captor, identified as 50-year-old Rohit Arya from Pune, dead from a bullet injury.

According to police, the incident began around 1.30 pm when the Powai police station received a distress call about children being held hostage at RA Studio in Mahavir Classic, a commercial-cum-residential complex.

Arya, who had rented the studio just four days earlier under the pretext of conducting a...