THE BILLIONAIRE BOMB SCARE

When explosives were found outside Mukesh Ambani's home in Mumbai, the cops blamed terrorists. The truth-and the rot it exposed-was far more alarming

- CHRIS KAY AND P. R. SANJAI

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE PANDEMIC, WHEN many people in Mumbai were staying home, Ramvinder Singh Gill noticed a strange car parked near the residence of the city’s richest man. A 53-year-old ex-colonel in the Indian special forces, Gill held one of the most important bodyguard jobs on the subcontinent, overseeing a 300-person security force responsible for protecting the billionaire industrialist Mukesh Ambani and his family. The focus of their work was Antilia, the Ambanis’ 27-story vertical mansion, equipped with three helipads, yoga and dance studios, and a “snow room” chilled to frigid temperatures. To avoid exposing their clients to Covid-19, bodyguards would spend 15 days quarantined at a nearby hotel before beginning monthlong shifts inside.

The car that piqued Gill’s interest that day in February 2021 was a green Mahindra Scorpio, an Indian-made sport utility vehicle. Right away, Gill noticed that though the car was coated in grime, its license plate looked spotless, as though it had just been screwed in. When he ran the number, he found something even stranger: The plate matched the registration of a Range Rover used by Ambani’s wife, Nita. Alarmed, Gill called the Mumbai police, who sent a team to search the vehicle. Inside a blue backpack branded with the logo of an Ambani-owned cricket franchise, they found a bag of industrial explosives. The explosives weren’t connected to a detonator, but whoever placed them had left a chilling handwritten note. “Next time the wires will be connected,” it read. “We have made arrangements to blow up your entire family.”