Mastigudi murder: How Kannada actors leapt into watery grave
Their last photograph is testimony to the tinselwood dreams they had. Young Kannada actors - 30-year-old Anil Kumar and 32-year-old Raghav Uday - posed for a picture barebodied to show off their six-packs. An asset they hoped would help them do a Salman Khan in Sandalwood.
Even in their wildest dreams Anil and Uday would not have thought that the only person who would look at them up close, would be the surgeon conducting the postmortem on their bodies. Till the time of writing, their bodies were yet to be found.
Bengaluru on Monday afternoon witnessed a murder. A real one, not the ketchup kinds that the Kannada film industry dishes out on 70mm.
The two actors, who hardly knew swimming, were made to jump off a chopper into the Tippagondahalli reservoir to perform a stunt for the film Mastigudi. They were told the motor boat would rescue them immediately. The boat reportedly did not start because it did not have fuel.
Anil and Uday had leapt into a watery grave. They did not even wait for the director's "cut" before calling it a day.
For this climax scene shoot, the production unit hired a chopper for Rs 32 lakh but did not hire a functioning motor boat to rescue the actors after they jumped into the water. This despite Anil and Uday informing the director that apart from not knowing swimming, they even had a phobia of heights and this was the first time they had boarded a chopper.
A TV crew was telecasting the shoot sequence live. This is what Anil told the channel before the director said "action" - "They told us at 6 pm yesterday about this shoot. Today at 8 am, we are at location. How can we prepare? I know a little bit of swimming but that is in a tiny well. Here it is 20 feet. I am banking on god and the good wishes of all you media friends.''
His last words give an idea of the muddled and scared state of mind of the two actors. No permission had been given to jump into the water so what happened was in violation of rules.
Eyewitnesses said the shot was taken when the government official had left the spot for lunch. What is worse is that the actors stayed barechested without safety jackets, because that was the demand of the script.
In a day and age when all film stunt scenes are shot with harness, here it was not used. No one knows if the stunt director had gauged the depth of the lake before asking the actors to jump.
Only Duniya Vijay, the main lead, was given a life jacket. That saved him. Anil and Uday were under pressure to jump as well, since the senior actor was doing so. They knew the tag of being a difficult actor could mar their film career.
Filmmakers who visited the accident spot said this was just not the right place to film such a shot. The helicopter was at a height of about 100 feet. In all such cases, expert divers have to be kept on standby to jump in, should things go wrong. There were none. Nets should have been in place to catch the actors but the production controller seemed to have saved money on such items.
Those familiar with the reservoir say there is a huge deposit of silt below the water surface, making it more risky. And finally, it was a hand-rowed boat that was used to reach the place where the actors leapt to their death. It was too late by then.
In fact, before the shot was sought to be canned, director Nagashekhar bragged about shooting the mother of all stunts. "There are no ropes, no dupes. They dive directly into the water. It will be like a situation between life and death and will be a sight to behold. Duniya Vijay's movies are always action-packed. His fans must not be disappointed. To do that, we decided to take this risk,'' he said.
Vijay too admitted he had agreed to do the shot himself, calling himself "a puppet in the hands of the director''. This is strange as many senior actors are known to ensure that if the contract contains any life-threatening stunts, they get them cut out. Not everyone is willing to take the pressure to be khatron ka khiladi.
The director, producer and stunt director have been booked for culpable homicide but the more important question is whether lessons will be learnt. In the desperate kind of environment in which actors and technicians work in film industries across India, safety precautions are more of an exception than the rule. Unless of course, a big star is involved.
Filmmakers say most stuntmen are not knowledgeable about their craft. There is hardly any skill development they go through and bank on unions steamrolling their way in. Production controllers also cut corners by not ensuring safety and medical teams on location while executing a stunt.
It is ridiculous that in the age of VFX, such risks are undertaken. Mastigudi has to be made an example of.