Mumbai filmmaker Rohit Arya demands ₹2.4 crore, then takes 17 children hostage in shocking standoff

The Maharashtra government has firmly denied filmmaker Rohit Arya’s claims that he was owed ₹2 crore under a state-run cleanliness initiative, calling his assertions “misleading” and “factually incorrect.”

Arya — who held 19 people, including 17 children, hostage in Mumbai’s Powai on Thursday — had alleged in a video that the government failed to pay him for an urban sanitation campaign run by his firm, Apsara Media Entertainment Network.

In a detailed clarification issued hours after the hostage crisis ended with Arya’s death in a police operation, the state’s Education Department said that while Arya’s company was indeed selected to execute Project Let’s Change in 2022 and 2023, it had already received ₹9.9 lakh through an official government order dated June 30, 2023.

The initiative, aimed at promoting cleanliness in schools, involved over 59 lakh students acting as “swachhata monitors.” A second phase of the project was later sanctioned under the Mukhyamantri Majhi Shala Sundar Shala program, with ₹20.63 crore allocated — including ₹2 crore earmarked for these student monitors.

However, the department said Arya’s team had submitted incomplete and inconsistent documentation, with inflated claims for advertising, manpower, and screening of his documentary “Let’s Change.” “Due to these technical gaps, the scheme could not be implemented,” the department stated.

When Arya later sought to extend the program to all schools and demanded ₹2.42 crore, officials discovered further irregularities — notably that he had been collecting registration fees from schools despite not being authorized to do so.

Education Minister Dadaji Bhuse said, “No official procedures — tenders or terms and conditions — were followed. The private firm collected money from schools, which is not permitted under government rules.”

In August 2024, Arya was instructed to return the collected funds and file an affidavit promising not to solicit money independently. He failed to comply, the government said, after which the project was dropped altogether following the state elections and the return of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Arya’s wife, Anjali Arya, later told reporters that her husband had been “fighting for both recognition and the payment that was promised,” but officials maintain that his demands were unsupported by documentation and that no pending dues existed under the project.