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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 8:56:24 pm

Accused trio get 10-day remand

Mumbai: A Mumbai Court has given 10 days police custody to three arrested accused in the firing on Bollywood action star Tiger Shroff in a crowded public place as the investigators attempt to unravel the conspiracy, motives, involvement of other players and related aspects of the sensational case, on Wednesday. The accused trio Rehan alias Sukka, and Phool Singh both from Sonipat in Haryana and Rhitik Kurmi alias Roshan, originally from Begusarai in Bihar but currently residing in Mumbai,...

Accused trio get 10-day remand

Mumbai: A Mumbai Court has given 10 days police custody to three arrested accused in the firing on Bollywood action star Tiger Shroff in a crowded public place as the investigators attempt to unravel the conspiracy, motives, involvement of other players and related aspects of the sensational case, on Wednesday. The accused trio Rehan alias Sukka, and Phool Singh both from Sonipat in Haryana and Rhitik Kurmi alias Roshan, originally from Begusarai in Bihar but currently residing in Mumbai, were brought here from Kota in separate vehicles early today. They were produced before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate at Esplanade Court where the police sought 14 days’ custody for the accused who are allegedly acting at the behest of the jailed mafia chief Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang. Pleading for the remand, the police lawyers argued that sustained custodial interrogation was necessary to recover the weapons used in the shooting – which the accused had thrown away while fleeing, retrieve two mobile phones which were reportedly destroyed by the accused, besides digging out the entire conspiracy, pinpoint the exact motives and identify other persons involved in the brazen attack. Opposing the plea, the accused’s lawyers Ajinkya Mirgal and Satyabrat Joshi argued that police custody was unnecessary, particularly for recovering the weapons. Mirgal and Joshi later told mediapersons that the accused had already been interrogated at a railway colony during their transit-remand period and were produced before the CMM Court just minutes before the transit remand expired this afternoon. After hearing both sides, the CMM remanded them to police custody for 10 days till October 31. It may be recalled that Shroff, 36, was targeted on the evening of October 18 near Pushpa Narsee Park in Juhu. Despite being a heavily crowded area, the assailants were seen firing at least 5-6 rounds at the actor’s car before fleeing on a motorcycle. A shaken Shroff escaped relatively unhurt, sustaining minor bruises, but his driver and a bystander suffered injuries. Following the incident, the Mumbai Police registered a case of attempted murder and offences under the Arms Act, and launched an interstate investigation involving Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan, and later Gujarat and Delhi. The Mumbai Police formed 20 teams to hunt down the attackers, recovered the second-hand motorcycle outside Andheri station where it was abandoned and tracked their journey through different modes of transport from Mumbai to Surat and Kota. Acting on a tech-intel alert from Mumbai Police, the Kota Police lay in wait for them and apprehended them from the general coach of the Pune-Jaipur Superfast Express on Monday morning. Initial probe revealed that the assailants were planning to flee the country after travelling to the borders via Jaipur and Delhi. They were lured by the promise of sneaking them out of India to a foreign country, possibly Canada and rehabilitating them. Three key accused brought to Mumbai from Kota Three key accused apprehended in connection with the firing at actor Tiger Shroff’s car were brought to Mumbai from Kota in Rajasthan early on Wednesday, police said. Police brought them by road from Kota to Mumbai and, upon arrival, immediately took them to GT Hospital for a mandatory medical examination, an official said. Following the medical check-up, the accused were escorted to the Mumbai Crime Branch’s Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) office for interrogation. The accused have been identified as Rehan alias Sukka, from Sonipat in Haryana; Ritik Kurmi alias Roshan, originally from Begusarai in Bihar and living in Mumbai; and Phool Singh from Haryana, the official said. The Kota city police had handed them over to Mumbai Police, which formally arrested them and produced them before a magistrate there. The court granted transit remand to take them to Mumbai. Meanwhile, advocate Ajinkya Mirgal arrived at the AEC office in Mumbai on Wednesday morning, informing officials that he would represent the accused as their defence counsel in the case. At least two men fired gunshots at Shroff’s car in Mumbai’s Juhu area on Sunday evening before speeding away on a motorcycle. The actor escaped relatively unhurt, while his driver and a bystander were injured. According to Mumbai Police, five to six rounds were fired at the car. A motorcycle, allegedly used by the shooters, was found abandoned in Andheri. The accused fled to Surat and once there, boarded a Jaipur-bound train. The three were supposed to go to Delhi on a bus and then flee to Nepal. The Mumbai Police have registered a case under the provisions of attempt to murder and the Arms Act. According to the police, Rehan was in touch with Anil Pandit, an alleged associate of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which claimed responsibility for the attack in an unverified social media post. On Tuesday, the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested four more persons, including two women, in connection with the firing case. Police suspect they were acting on the directions of Anil Pandit, a gangster operating from abroad, an official earlier said. The four accused, identified as Kunal (21), Sumit (19), Radha (23), and Babita (23), were apprehended from Delhi and Haryana. According to police, Kunal allegedly collected a pistol and 20 rounds from Amritsar on the instructions of Anil Pandit, with Sumit accompanying him. Radha and Babita allegedly travelled to Mumbai with the weapon. Following the arrest, the police said the motive of the shooting was being ascertained, while the way Shroff was attacked, the assailants planned to kill him.

From Mumbai to Meta

Writer: Kiran D. Tare
Kiran D. Tare
Jun 26
3 min read

Kunal Shah’s rise from city entrepreneur to global head of WhatsApp signals that India is producing genuine architects of the digital age.

For much of the internet era, the world’s defining digital products were imagined in California. The next chapter looks markedly different. Artificial intelligence, digital finance and ubiquitous connectivity have flattened the distance between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Increasingly, the most interesting ideas are emerging not merely from American technology giants but other countries.


Few people embody that transition better than Kunal Shah. His recent appointment as the global head of WhatsApp, following Meta’s $900 million investment in CRED, represents the arrival of an Indian entrepreneur at the helm of one of the world’s most consequential digital platforms.


Unlike many celebrated founders whose credentials begin with engineering degrees, Shah’s intellectual roots lie elsewhere. A graduate in philosophy from Mumbai’s Wilson College, he briefly enrolled for an MBA. However, rather than collecting qualifications, he accumulated ideas, ranging effortlessly across economics, psychology, incentives and consumer behaviour. His social-media essays and public lectures have acquired an almost cult following among entrepreneurs because they treat business less as accounting than as applied anthropology.


His entrepreneurial journey mirrors India’s own digital awakening. Long before smartphones transformed everyday commerce, Shah recognised that friction was the enemy of adoption. His first venture, FreeCharge, helped familiarise millions of Indians with digital payments during a period when cash remained king. Its success made him one of the pioneers of India’s fintech revolution.


Following its sale, Shah resisted the temptation to launch another fashionable startup immediately. Instead, he spent years investing in young companies, observing founders and dissecting consumer behaviour with the patience of an academic. That unusually reflective interlude shaped CRED, the company he founded in 2018 around a deceptively simple proposition that trust should carry economic value.


Many regarded the idea as eccentric. Why reward consumers merely for paying their credit-card bills on time? But Shah saw something deeper. Modern economies increasingly depend upon trust and reputation. CRED transformed disciplined financial behaviour into a platform that eventually expanded into lending, commerce, insurance, wealth management and payments. Today the company serves around 17 million monthly active members, and has attracted more than $900 million from global investors. It generates annual revenues of roughly $325 million. Importantly, these figures signify that patient product thinking can triumph over fashionable exuberance.


Shah’s influence extends well beyond the companies he has founded. He has become perhaps India’s most prolific angel investor, backing more than 250 startups while mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs. His counsel has shaped businesses across sectors, while advisory roles with Peak XV Partners, Pine Labs and industry bodies have given him an outsized influence over the direction of India’s startup ecosystem. Shah has consistently argued that enduring businesses are built not on funding rounds but on understanding incentives, habits and human psychology. Those qualities explain why Meta came calling.


Mark Zuckerberg praised Shah’s “builder mentality” while Meta’s Chief Product Officer, Chris Cox, highlighted his grasp of how WhatsApp fits into people’s everyday lives. That endorsement recognises that the future of messaging lies increasingly beyond messaging itself. Artificial intelligence, digital payments, commerce and business communication are converging into a single ecosystem. Few executives possess practical experience across all four domains.


India offers perhaps the clearest glimpse of that future. It is WhatsApp’s largest market, its most sophisticated laboratory for business messaging and an increasingly important arena for digital payments. Shah understands this ecosystem instinctively because he helped build it. His career has unfolded alongside India’s digital public infrastructure, the smartphone revolution and the emergence of one of the world's most dynamic entrepreneurial cultures.


There is something symbolically satisfying about the appointment. While technology has long celebrated engineers who solve computational problems, Shah belongs to a different tradition of the entrepreneur who begins by asking why people behave as they do. His greatest strength lies in understanding incentives, trust and networks.


History suggests that the most transformative technology leaders are rarely prisoners of technology alone. They are students of people. In elevating Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp, Meta is betting that the next era of the internet will be shaped less by algorithms than by a deeper understanding of the billions of human beings who use them. Judging by Shah’s career so far, that is a wager with every chance of paying handsome dividends.

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