Mumbai: Bollywood actor Tusshar Kapoor has received an extortion threat demanding Rs 5 crore from a caller claiming to be a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, Mumbai Police sources said on Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
The preliminary findings of the police investigation, however, point in a different direction: the voice in the threatening message does not match the official voice samples of the gang member the caller claimed to be, leading investigators to suspect that an impersonator invoked a feared name to frighten the actor into paying.
Kapoor, the son of veteran actor Jeetendra, received a voice note in which a man claiming to be Hari Boxer, also spelt Harry Boxer, threatened him and demanded Rs 5 crore if he wanted to be safe. The actor alerted the Mumbai Police, after which the matter was handed over to the Crime Branch and its Anti-Extortion Cell. His security has been increased as a precaution while the investigation continues.
No first information report has been registered so far, police said, as investigators are still working to establish the origin of the audio recording and identify the person who sent it.
The voice comparison is at the heart of the police assessment. The Crime Branch's technical team examined the audio recording received by Kapoor and compared the caller's voice with official audio samples of Hari Boxer available in the police database. According to senior Mumbai Police officials, the two recordings did not match.
That mismatch has led investigators to believe, during their preliminary probe, that the threat may have been a fake one, sent by an unidentified person who deliberately used the Bishnoi gang's name to create panic and pressure the actor. Police also noted that no one has claimed responsibility for the threat in the usual manner associated with the gang, which they regard as a further reason for caution about the caller's identity.
Hari Boxer, whose real name is reported to be Hari Chand Jaat, is a Rajasthan-based boxer-turned-gangster who was earlier a boxing coach in Jaipur and is described as a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. He has been booked in multiple cases of extorting businessmen, robbery and attempted murder in Rajasthan, Punjab and Delhi.
In the past, threats issued in his name have targeted film director Rohit Shetty and actor Ranveer Singh, among others, and first information reports were registered in those cases. The history is part of why a threat in his name carries weight in Mumbai's film industry, and also why the police treated the voice mismatch as significant: the gang's threats usually arrive with a recognisable pattern, and this one, on the evidence so far, does not fit it.
The incident comes at a sensitive moment for Bollywood's security. In mid-October, three assailants on a motorcycle fired bullets at actor Tiger Shroff and his driver in Juhu, Mumbai. The Lawrence Bishnoi gang claimed responsibility for that shooting and later issued a fresh threat against actor Salman Khan.
The shooting put the industry on edge, and police suspect that the person behind the Kapoor threat may have tried to exploit the fear and panic that followed it. A similar pattern has been reported from Nagpur, where eight bullion traders in the Sarafa Bazar area have received letters demanding Rs 10 lakh from each of them in the name of the Bishnoi gang.
There too, police suspect local criminals of using the gang's name to frighten traders and extort money, with the identity of those behind the letters yet to be established.
For Kapoor, the episode is a reminder of how extortion threats against public figures have evolved. The threat did not arrive as a phone call from a known number or a letter delivered to a home, but as a voice note, a format that is easy to forward, hard to trace at first glance, and capable of sounding convincing even when the speaker is not who he claims to be.
The police response reflects that reality: rather than acting on the claimed identity, the Crime Branch's technical team tested it against stored samples, and the investigation is now focused on tracing the recording to its source, examining its digital trail, and determining whether the sender acted alone or as part of a wider network.
Investigators are also keeping open the question of motive. An impersonator seeking money would have every reason to borrow the most feared name available, and the Bishnoi gang's name, linked in recent weeks to a shooting and to threats against some of the industry's biggest figures, is currently the most frightening one in circulation. At the same time, police have not ruled out other possibilities, and they have been careful to describe their conclusions as preliminary.
The caller has not been identified, the origin of the audio has not been established, and no charge has yet been framed against any individual.
The case will now turn on technical investigation: the metadata and routing of the voice note, any device or account linked to it, and whether the same sender has targeted others. If the sender is found, the question for the courts will be whether the act amounts to extortion, criminal intimidation, impersonation, or a combination of offences, and whether any organised link exists.
Until then, the police advice to public figures remains practical: report threats promptly, preserve the original message rather than forwarding it repeatedly, and allow the technical teams to test the claim before acting on it.
For the film industry, the wider concern is the copycat effect. Each high-profile threat reported in the media increases the value of the gang's name to anyone seeking to extort money, because the name alone can produce compliance without any real backing. The Kapoor case, if the police assessment holds, would be an example of that effect in action: a threat that borrowed a notorious identity, was tested against evidence, and failed the test.
The investigation continues, and the Anti-Extortion Cell is tracking the person behind the voice note.
(Reporting based on The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Statesman and NDTV Profit.)