Mumbai, Oct. 31 -- Seventeen teenagers between the ages of 12 and 15 were rescued from an audition theatre at Powai in Mumbai on Thursday afternoon following a dramatic three-and-a-half hour-long siege in which a lone man carrying an airgun and an inflammable spray held the children hostage. The operation ended with a Mumbai police team shooting dead the man who has been identified as Pune resident Rohit Arya, aged 50. Arya, who was married but had no children of his own, used to make short video films and ran school cleanliness campaigns for Maharashtra government when Eknath Shinde was chief minister. He had recently moved into his sister's apartment in Chembur, and had rented RA Studio at Mahavir Classic, a commercial-cum-residential building in Powai four days ago, purportedly to audition children for roles in a web series. On Thursday morning at 8 am, 17 teenagers reached there for the auditions accompanied by their parents. While the adults were asked to wait outside the building, Arya took the children to the first floor of the theatre. However, when, by 1 pm, none of the kids came down for lunch, and nor could the parents access the theatre, they began to get panicky. People in the neighbouring building, in the meanwhile, saw some children crying and pleading for help from behind the closed glass windows of the theatre, and alerted the local police at 1.45 pm. Arya, who had locked the children in along with two female and one young male production assistant, allegedly put theft sensors on the doors of the theatre which would alert him to anyone trying to get in. He also threatened to spray an inflammable chemical and set the place on fire if the police stormed in. He divided the children into two groups and threatened to shoot them one by one. The children were not aware that the weapon he brandished was an air gun. Arya then proceeded to record a video in an eerily calm tone in which he claimed he had no desire to hurt the children and that he merely wanted to speak to certain people who would help him recover the Rs.2 crore that the state education department owed him. Arya released the video online threatening retribution if police tried to enter the building. "Instead of dying by suicide, I have made some plans and have accordingly held the children hostage here. My demands are not many.my demands are simple and moral and ethical. I want answers from some people and answers to counter-questions that might crop up from their answers, but I want answers to my questions. I am not a terrorist and do not have any monetary demands and my demands are not immoral at all," he said in the video statement. "I want simple conversations for which I have taken these children hostage. I have done this in accordance with a plan," he added and warned the police that "a slightest wrong move on their part will trigger me to kill the children." On the ground below, the local police, accompanied by a bomb disposal squad and Quick Response Team, asked the fire brigade to enter the building from the rear while they tried to negotiate with Arya, promising to get former education minister Deepak Kesarkar on the line. It was Kesarkar, a Shiv Sena lawmaker, who had asked Arya to carry out the cleanliness awareness programme on a pilot basis. Last year, Kesarkar had also personally given some money to Arya after he complained that the education department was withholding the money owed to him. Education department staff however told HT that Arya never ever submitted any bills and would keep inflating his ask. A police officer later told the media that on two previous occasions, Arya had sat on protests outside Kesarkar's official bungalow - in July and August 2024 and later in Azad Maidan in October 2024, claiming that the education department had used his short films and documentaries highlighting importance of cleanliness, but neither gave him credit nor paid him for the work. Arya served as Project Director for Project Let's Change - PLA Swachhta Monitor, which was adopted in 2022 by the state government's Primary Education Department under the Majhi Shala, Sundar Shala initiative. Posts on a Facebook account named Swachhta Monitor indicate that Arya frequently spoke about the non-payment issue, claiming he had been wronged and was compelled to protest indefinitely. During one of his protests while he was still in Pune, Arya reportedly suffered an epileptic seizure and was taken to a hospital by passersby. His wife, Anjali Arya, who had reached the spot after learning of seizure, had then told the media that her husband had been struggling to get the sanctioned payment for his project, which had received approval from Kesarkar. "He was heading the PLC Swachhta Monitor project. Kesarkar saheb had appreciated it and said the government would sanction Rs.2 crore for implementation. The work was completed, but Rohit never received the payment - not even formal recognition," she said. On Thursday afternoon while the police on the ground kept Arya engrossed in negotiations, two police teams clambered up the duct line of the building with the help of the fire brigade. One team barged into the first-floor hall where the children were through the bathroom, while the other team cut the glass wall and entered the hall from the other side. Amol Waghmare, an officer attached to the anti-terrorist cell of Powai police station, who entered the studio from the bathroom, fired a round at the deceased, hitting him in the chest. Arya was subsequently taken to Hindu Hrudaysamrat Balasaheb Thackeray Hospital in Jogeshwari where he was declared dead. The rescued children were taken to Seven Hills Hospital where they were discharged after a preliminary check-up....