From Rohit Shetty to Ranveer Singh: Extortion wave hits Bollywood; 1990s underworld fears resurface

MUMBAI: A fortnight after gunshots were fired outside filmmaker Rohit Shetty's residence in Juhu, actor Ranveer Singh was learnt to have received a threat accompanied by a demand for several crores.

Sources said the threat was sent as a WhatsApp voice note from an unidentified number to Singh's secretary. The sender claimed to be speaking on behalf of the Bishnoi gang.




Security around Singh's residence was increased after the voice note, said police sources.

In a related development, the managing committee of the Beau Monde residential tower in Prabhadevi approached the Dadar police station about the deployment of six armed private security guards without the permission of the society at the flat occupied by Singh and his actor wife Deepika Padukone. In a written communication, the society said suddenly now a uniformed police official was also seen stationed with the actors.

Though senior police officials remained tight-lipped on the extortion matter, sources said Singh was not an isolated target. Over the past 15 days, about a dozen Bollywood personalities are said to have received threatening calls from people who identified themselves as members of the Bishnoi gang. No complaint or FIR has been registered so far by any of the threatened celebrities.

The latest threat comes even as the crime branch is struggling to nab the unidentified shooter who fired five rounds outside Shetty's home last month.

On Feb 5, TOI was the first to report the surge in threat calls undert the headline ‘5 More Bollywood celebrities targeted by Lonkar: Cops'.

Investigators said that soon after the firing at Shetty's house, several Bollywood figures began receiving extortion calls. Most of them reportedly blocked unknown numbers or stopped answering unfamiliar calls altogether.

Even Singh's secretary is believed to have blocked unknown callers, which may have prompted the extortionist to send a voice note directly to the assistant's phone.

The growing menace of the Bishnoi gang — particularly after the firing outside Salman Khan's residence, the murder of NCP leader Baba Siddiqui last year, and the attack on Shetty's house — has gripped Mumbai's film fraternity with fear, evoking memories of the 1990s and early 2000s when underworld influence, shootouts and threat calls were rampant.

At least nine teams of the crime branch are camping in Lucknow and adjoining towns in Uttar Pradesh to track down the shooter involved in the Shetty firing case. A police official told TOI that the shooter had been identified and digitally tracked to Lucknow, and efforts are underway to arrest him at the earliest.