Police rescued 17 children and two adults after a three-hour hostage crisis at a Mumbai film studio on Thursday, shooting dead alleged kidnapper Rohit Arya after climbing in through a first-floor bathroom window.

Mumbai police sources said the “mentally unstable” hostage taker was shot after he cocked a gun — which turned out to be an air gun — at the police.

“The bullet hit him in the chest,” an officer said. Arya, 50, was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital.

A preliminary probe has revealed that the children — boys and girls aged 12 to 15 — had arrived from across Maharashtra to audition for a web series at the RA Studios, housed in the Mahavir Classic building in the busy Powai neighbourhood. Arya allegedly locked them and himself inside a room.

The police did not say who the two adult hostages were. Arya’s background remained unclear till late evening.

In a video that Arya put up on social media during the hostage crisis, he appears to say he has “very simple demands; very moral, ethical demands” and “some questions” and wants to talk to “some people”. He doesn’t specify the demands or the people he wants to talk to.

Senior inspector Jeevan Sonawane of Powai police station said Arya wanted to speak to former Maharashtra education minister Deepak Vasant Kesarkar. Arya had earlier claimed that his dues for a project for the Maharashtra education department were pending and had even staged a protest in Pune. Kesarkar, a member of the Shiv Sena’s Eknath Shinde faction, held the portfolio between 2022 and 2024.

“All the children are safe and have been handed over to their guardians,” Sonawane said.

Police sources said they had received a distress call around 1.45pm from RA Studios. The one-hour rescue operation, conducted with the fire brigade, ended around 4.45pm.

Fire officials used hydraulic tools to cut open the grilles of a bathroom window and provided the police with a ladder to climb into the studio.

The police said they had tried to negotiate with the hostage taker but he remained “adamant”.

Asked whether Arya was armed, deputy commissioner of police Datta Nalawade said he would be able to say more once the investigation was over. “We have found an air gun and some chemical there,” he said.

“It was a challenging operation, because we were negotiating with him without any positive outcome…. To save the children’s lives was our priority.”