Famous Bollywood director and producer Mahesh Bhatt had a hairbreadth escape as he was absent when an unidentified gunman barged into his office and threatened his staff with a gun and fired a shot in the air before leaving Mahesh Bhatt's office.

The men reportedly arrived on a bike at about 12.15 pm at Mahesh Bhatt's office in suburban Juhu on Wednesday. While one of them stayed with the bike, the other went up to the director's fourth floor office.

They were actually looking for Mahesh Bhatt but went away as he was not in the office. The very vocal activist Mahesh Bhatt was unsure if the incident had any link to Mumbai's underworld.

"I have not received any threat so far from the underworld and I have not asked for police protection," he told in an interview. He later stressed he had no links to any political parties and ruled out the possibility of his stance on sensitive socio-political issues being responsible for the incident.

Surprisingly, after the incident Mahesh Bhatt's office got a call from a member of the underworld gangster Ravi Pujari, owning up responsibility for the attack. Pujari admitted that he had sent two men to kill Mahesh as Mahesh Bhatt has connections with Dawood Ibrahim and Chhota Shakeel who are traitors, according to him.

The media quoted Pujari's statement as "I am helping the country by trying to eliminate those linked with Dawood and Shakeel who were responsible for the Mumbai blasts. I am doing the work the police should be doing. If we had found Mahesh Bhatt we would have killed him, not for money but for the nation."

While the police is not ruling out any possibilities they hold that it might be a publicity stunt by Ravi Pujari as Pujari attacked criminal lawyer Majeed Memon last year on similar grounds. Well, it looks like the task of restoring peace and justice to the country will soon be taken over by the underworld gangsters who are the self-styled police at least in this case.