Being Salman under siege: Cops, guards, push-ups

Salman Khan faces heightened security after threats and violence, isolating him from fans as he continues filming amid police protection and ongoing risks.

“Angry Young Men”, an Amazon mini-series about Salim-Javed’s creative partnership which released in August features a black and white photograph of the two young writers, then in their prime, sitting and brainstorming on a parapet at the Bandstand at Bandra. Behind them stretches the Arabian Sea, and facing them stands an apartment building called Galaxy. Salim Khan and his family that includes his superstar son Salman Khan, inhabited this expanse for 50 years.

Police security has been increased outside the apartment of Bollywood actor Salman Khan following the killing of former minister and NCP leader Baba Siddique. (Raju Shinde)

But that expanse has shrunk drastically now.

After the killing of Baba Siddique — a politician who was Salman Khan’s friend and troubleshooter — and a spate of threats to the actor from alleged members of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang , the 88-year-old Salim Khan was told by Mumbai police to stop his daily constitutional on Bandstand. Instead, a group of five Bandra residents who have walked with him every morning for years has been vetted and given security clearance to walk with him inside the perimeter of Galaxy Apartments.

In Hyderabad, the Falaknuma Palace has been barricaded like a fortress. Salman Khan is shooting there for Sajid Nadiadwala’s film “Sikander”, a VFX-heavy Bahubali-esque action film to be released on Eid next year. On set, a 70-member strong security team ringfences the actor on the shooting floor. After motorcycle-borne men opened fire at Galaxy Apartments this April, the Maharashtra government which had already given Salman Khan Y+ security comprising 10 armed policemen and specially-trained commandos, added four police escort cars. Salman too beefed up his personal security team to 12 headed by his bodyguard of long standing, Shera. When his name cropped up as the alleged reason for Siddique’s killing, the son of a top industrialist lent Salman a team of 25 elite guards trained in Israel. Adding to this posse is the security brought in by the producer Nadiadwala and the security provided by Falaknuma which has been put out of bounds for other guests while the film shoot is on.

“Only a skeleton direction and camera team is present on the actual shooting floor and no one is allowed to approach him; he stays in a tight security bubble,” one of the unit members said on condition of anonymity. The actor who shoots every weekend for his popular ongoing TV show Bigg Boss at Mumbai’s Film City, has cancelled his appearance this week to avoid travelling, getting Rohit Shetty and Ekta Kapoor to fill in for him. “It is hard to imagine how he is working in these trying circumstance,” said a film producer who has produced several films with the actor in the past and who asked not to be identified. “Salman Khan has been the Hindi film industry’s biggest mass star in the last three decades,” said film trade analyst Girish Johar. “Between the films, the brand endorsements and Bigg Boss, he has ₹1,000 crore riding on him at any given point. It’s commendable that he is keeping it to business as usual.”

In the 1990s, it was common to see Salman Khan cycling around shirtless in the by- lanes of Bandra even as he continued to deliver superhits on the trot. But gradually stories began to emerge in the film press of his abusive behaviour, hard drinking and womanising. (When a film journalist once asked him where he got his uneven accent from, Salman replied without batting an eyelid: “I’ve got many foreign girlfriends”). These stories took a darker hue when the actor was accused in 1998 of going on a hunt while filming in Jodhpur and shooting a blackbuck, considered sacred by the Bishnoi community. Salman has maintained that he was not the one who killed the animal and has pleaded not guilty in multiple courts. Four years later he was accused of accidentally running over a man sleeping on the pavement at Bandra and killing him. He was acquitted later for lack of proof that it was him behind the wheel at the time of the accident.

The actor served time in jail for both cases and sobered up considerably thereafter. Through the noughties he remained an intrinsic part of the hit-making Khan troika along with Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan who lives down the bandstand from Salman’s home. For years their legion of fans would compete to see which of them commanded the bigger crowds outside Mannat (SRK’s home) and Galaxy.

But with the arrival of Lawrence Bishnoi as the unlikely blackbuck avenger, the police began dispersing the crowds outside Galaxy. First, they insisted on a bullet proof glass on the terrace from where the star would greet his fans, then came the roller blinds as he disappeared entirely from view.

After the firing at Galaxy Apartments in April, the police learnt that another team of alleged Bishnoi gang members had conducted a reconnaissance of the actor’s farmhouse at Panvel the following month. On police advice, the actor and his family stopped going to the farmhouse. Salman’s father and his two brothers who also have been provided police security agreed to hunker down in Mumbai.

In the last one month the actor who travels in a bullet-proof car has received five death threats, which have left him “terribly anxious,” according to a policeman who asked not to be named. Every movement of his is now as per instructions of his security, added the officer. Though most threat calls have turned out to be hoaxes, police have arrested people from Jharkhand, Karnataka and Mumbai. And after a recent call received on the traffic control line at Worli, Mumbai police ran a mock emergency drill outside Galaxy.

Another senior Mumbai police officer told HT on condition of anonymity that after Siddique’s killing there are now a hundred police officers who are either on Salman’s security or tracking the various threats the actor has received. “No call is being taken casually,” he said. Police teams from central agencies, the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad, many of them in civvies, keep a constant watch outside Galaxy, monitoring any suspicious activity. There are two police jeeps posted 24/7 outside his house while the road leading to it has been barricaded.

Cut off from fans and his old life, Salman, who stays in a one-bedroom apartment below his parents’ bigger apartment, spends time with his secretary, his bodyguards and whoever is allowed to drop by. “And doing push ups. Lots of push ups,” said one member of his security staff who asked not to be named.