India, Oct. 31 -- For nearly three hours on a tense Thursday afternoon in Mumbai, a 50-year-old man identified as Rohit Arya managed to keep the police at bay while keeping 17 children hostage inside a Powai studio. Though he failed miserably when the bullet from officer Amol Waghmare's gun hit him in the chest, the stunt that he pulled off had been meticulously planned days in advance.

A police reconstruction of events revealed that Arya had precisely planned the hostage situation, installing motion sensors and other devices in the studio before he invited boys and girls aged between 10 and 15 years for an audition.

Arya, who had rented the studio four days earlier under the pretext of holding a routine acting test for a web series and...