A day before he took 17 children hostage at Ra Studio in the Mahavir Classik building in Powai, Rohit Arya had conducted a two-hour “dry run” of a hostage situation involving the children and their parents, saying it was part of an audition for a web series.

According to the parents, Arya told them the ‘exercise’ was part of a “rehearsal shoot.” During the ‘drill’, he lit a fire about 14 feet from the studio inside the building compound and instructed the parents to run toward it. “After looking at the fire, the parents were directed to look at the first floor, ‘where their children are being kidnapped’ and act in such a way that it looked real with parents crying and banging on the glass on the ground floor of the studio. We were told to run here and there, and look worried,” said on

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