Bollywood actor Ajit Pandey has been arrested by Mumbai police after committing an intriguing – though possibly not entirely well thought-through – scam on Bollywood producers. He has been ringing up producers pretending to be a gangster, Irfan Husri, a colleague of real-life gangster Chhota Shakeel, and threatening violence unless Ajit Pandey was given a role in the producer’s new production or £30,000. After the first phone call, he would then ring back as Ajit, claiming he had also been threatened by the gangster unless he appeared in the new movie. It’s unclear why the gangster would want to do this.

The Slumdog actor - he played one of Javed’s henchmen – was rapidly traced by the Mumbai police. "When we saw that the supposed goon was calling every other producer for giving roles to Pandey only, we figured Pandey must have something to do with the goon, and sure enough, he did," said a police spokesman.

Ajit was not behaving in an entirely selfish way. He also called producers demanding producers pay his friends for work they had done but for which they had yet to be compensated. “He used the same modus operandi to extort money from producers on behalf of his actor friends, whose payments were due,” explained Crime Branch chief Rakesh Maria. “He also called up producers of some small films he had acted in and threatened them in the name of Shakeel asking them to pay Ajit Pandey’s dues at the earliest. We arrested him on Sunday and he has been remanded in police custody till June 28.”