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Cinemondo Insider Movie Reviews Podcast
Sandalwood Murders -The Dark Side of Celebrity in the Indian Film Industry
Can fame turn deadly? Join Kathy, Melanie @PardesieReviews and Amit @d54 as we unravel the spine-chilling case of Kannada actor Darshan, accused of masterminding the abduction and murder of his admirer, Renukaswamy. This tangled web of crime and celebrity reads like a blockbuster thriller, but the consequences are all too real. We'll also revisit other notorious scandals involving Indian film stars, such as Sanjay Dutt's legal battles and Salman Khan's controversies, painting a harrowing picture of the precarious lives led by these public figures.
This episode also shines a light on the tragic murder of a man for simply voicing an opinion, leaving a pregnant wife and a shattered family behind. We dissect how the thin line between a star's public image and personal life can lead to fatal outcomes, and examine the psychological toll fame takes on individuals in the film industry. Through historical cases of fans turning violent and the amplifying effect of social media, we explore the unique perils faced by celebrities today. Tune in and share your thoughts as we navigate this disturbing intersection of adulation and violence.
Pardesi Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/@PardesiReviews
D54: https://www.youtube.com/@D54pod
hey, welcome to cinemando with kathy. I'm mip from d54, melanie from friday's reviews. We're doing something a little different today, because sometimes art meets crime.
Speaker 1:It's weird and interesting sometimes life is stranger than fiction. Right, it is?
Speaker 2:yeah, it is especially when it kind of invades movie business, which is all about fantasy and perception and reputation.
Speaker 2:So there's been a story. It occurred like a couple. I think it was like a month ago, so on june 8th, a man named rick aswami was kidnapped and murdered. That's where it starts. Apparently the story has been kind of going crazy all over India mostly. It's sort of starting to creep over to the States, and when I heard about the story I was like wait, a big Indian actor is in the middle of a murder case right now. So of course, I had to check this out. So we're talking about Darshan, who is apparently a huge Kannada actor and he's a big action star. Now I don't know Darshan, who is apparently a huge Kanata actor he's a big action star. Now I don't know, have we seen any of his movies?
Speaker 1:I don't know if we have.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure that I have seen them. I don't think they have. We can show the trailer really fast. This is a movie that's probably now probably in delay after delay, until the court case is settled. I want to just take a quick look at so not only do we get a feel for this actor, we also kind of get a vibe for his latest project. So let's just take a look. Since this is also about the movie business, all right, let's take a look. All right.
Speaker 3:Challenge Challenging. Indeed, I'm sorry. The sin of taking a photo is to let go of the idol Sarasu. Don't you know the meaning of sin? Sin is not to be forgotten. Sars is not to be heard as sin. Devil. Devil, okay, hahahahaha, power, okay, oh. Oh, you're right, okay.
Speaker 2:Oh, hmm, oh man.
Speaker 2:Shut up D-Bot that's not that is not good so cringe, cringe. So this is what happens. So we have a huge star and he's been married a couple times and apparently he's been keeping company with another woman and one of his biggest fans is not happy about it. So his fan which who is the victim here, renick swami. He sends some texts I mean some messages to social media to this woman he thinks that Darshan is having an affair with and sends some kind of lewd messages to her, and Darshan doesn't like that so.
Speaker 2:I guess the story is that he hires a bunch of people they call them goons in a lot of news sources. He hired a bunch of people to kidnap this kid.
Speaker 2:He's 23, 22 I think from his pharmacy job, abduct him, take him to a shed somewhere. They beat him to death and apparently and his girlfriend were both present and apparently participated for a moment or two and then they leave and then he dies because it was terrible, brutal killing. Then he has to pay them extra to dispose of the body all right, so that almost sounds like a movie he would be in, which is also very creepy. So you have to wonder, like this is where fans and stars like you would think a guy who was a huge star and, you know, big action star in in the kanata, in film industry, would let something like that bother him. And so what do you guys think about all of this?
Speaker 3:It's interesting. I don't know too many cases of Indian actors that have gone through something like this, but there are a few that come to mind. I know Sanjay Dutt has had a few issues with crime.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think he used to smuggle arms or something like that and he spent time in jail. There's actually a movie called Sanju which details it a little bit but it, yeah, I mean it's kind of a biography, I don't know how accurate.
Speaker 2:That is because it's probably maybe in a better light, because the fact that it's about him and he would have been involved somewhat.
Speaker 1:That's a good movie, but the other one was, I think even Salman Khan.
Speaker 3:He had some issue where he ran over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it was supposedly a drunk driving where there was someone sleeping on a sidewalk. That was killed and then his driver took the blame for him. And there was also a hunting incident where Salman Khan supposedly was hunting like a deer, some kind like a deer, some kind of a deer animal that was on extinction list or you know, an endangered animal or something like that. So there's been a couple of bad boy kind of things yeah so yeah, I mean the Salman Khan driving incident.
Speaker 1:It's like not only that, but I mean there's also domestic violence with with him. You know, oh yeah ashwarya rai had to drop out of the movie.
Speaker 2:That she was. People are protesting against um.
Speaker 1:She was dating someone and wasn't happy about it, and he completely trashed the set and so she was trapped in the movie and running took her place, strapped in the movie, and Rani Mukherjee took her place. So there's been a number of issues, but I'm not familiar with this particular actor. But you are completely right, catherine, that the whole convoluted plot is like something that we would see in a movie.
Speaker 1:I mean, shah Rukh Khan did do a movie called Fan where he had a crazed fan who was going after him in all different kinds of ways. A movie called Fan, where he had a crazy fan who was, you know, going after him in all different kinds of ways. And social media, you know, you think about back in the day, like big Hollywood stars were nervous about the gossip columnist and newspapers, right. And now that the same way that a star can really connect with their fans one-on-one in social media, but, you know, having that connection, but then there's the dark side of it, right, is that also a star? Is not, it can't. It's hard to filter out when someone is being, you know, coming after them on social media. So it's a it's a double edged thing, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's such a new age where there can be that level playing field where you can speak directly to the star that you're a fan of, you know, and you can if someone is not smart enough as a star, to. I mean, I don't know if these were public messages that he was sending to the woman involved or if it was, you know, private messages or whatever, that she didn't close those off to strangers or whatever. You know, I don't even know. I don't know what the circumstances was, but that's the thing, like if you are a public figure, there's all different ways that people can harass you, right Like I mean, back in the day people would send nasty letters, right Like you, that's right.
Speaker 1:No, right Now you can just be bombarded. You can be bombarded with it, so that's right. I'm not advocating for hiring goons and beating people up, I'm just saying that people lives on the internet can be extremely difficult, right, like if you have to have a public presence, you know, then horrible things can happen, or you can just have horrible things coming at you. So I don't know, but this whole thing is crazy.
Speaker 3:I think it's harder, especially for, like some of these older actors who have come, Like Darshan I'm assuming he's in his forties or something like that Like he's been, like he's been around since I think I was reading, like you know, like he's in the same age background as like Puneet Rajkumar and like like Kitchasdeep, I think he's around the same timeline as those two actors.
Speaker 3:So you know, when he saw probably started acting, this stuff wasn't there, the social media stuff under the microscope wasn't there. Um, so you could probably get away with maybe some more things you know, or you can just keep to the side, but now it's harder to do that.
Speaker 3:Um yeah technology and how that's changed. So, yeah, it's, it's just something else to sort of um, I guess actors have to go through, but but that doesn't obviously excuse him. I mean, he's not proven guilty yet, so I don't want to jump the gun and say that he's done this. It is a legal trial, but it's a fascinating case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unfortunately for him, there's CCTV that seems to be everywhere. So we have the victim arriving to work, we have video of the goons in a car coming and getting him and driving away with him, then we have his car going to the same location. So there's all these interesting.
Speaker 1:You mean Darshan's car? Yes, oh, I see, okay.
Speaker 2:So they're all going to the same place and apparently you can see Darshan and his girlfriend in the car as they go there, so you can see the whole thing.
Speaker 1:They're going through, you know traffic stops and everything else.
Speaker 2:And then, apparently just recently, there was some blood evidence that on Darshan's clothes the victim's blood is on his clothes. See, that's where I'm like why are you keeping your clothes with blood on? So that doesn't look good, because where else?
Speaker 3:would he get?
Speaker 2:that, and also, apparently he had a domestic violence case in the past too. So there's sort of an element of violence in that.
Speaker 2:So it's not looking good, but you're right he's still innocent until proven guilty apparently one of the many hired, which is what happens when you hire idiots who would do something like this they have turned on him and are now turned state witness and have taken them to the shed where everything happened and told them everything that happened. And so there we are. So this is what happens, so interesting that you know there's that collision of fan and star. And then the star takes it too seriously and doesn't know how to protect himself from the fragile ego that his or whatever honor he thought he was protecting and then he kind of goes into star mode like I'm gonna be active star, I'm gonna this guy's gonna pay a price. Everybody gets all caught up in it or something.
Speaker 2:It's just. It's just really tragic and horrible and apparently a lot of um, a lot of india's biggest stars are coming out in uh, in speaking out for the victim kitcha, sudip, sudeep and then Upendra had his Cs coming out about it. He's commanding an inquiry on behalf of the family. So as time is going by, more and more people are coming out and saying find justice. Nobody really seems to be super defending this guy. So we need to find out.
Speaker 1:Well, devil is just one of the projects I think he was involved with, I mean the problem, the problem of the flip side of the movie business being such a collaborative process is that who knows if this movie will ever be released. And think about all the people that were involved with the movie are now um t, possibly by association, you know, are not going to get the money whatever. Like they were expecting this movie, I'm sure, to be another big success in a line of his hits. And now, what Right? You know everyone from the producers on down who are affected, affected by this, by the, by the star.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the kind of industry is still.
Speaker 3:It's not I mean, it's a it's still up and coming. It was not the biggest industry. So we mentioned Upendra recently like we were talking. We had done a few reactions to his movie and that disappeared for some reason. I haven't heard anything about that.
Speaker 2:And it looks amazing. I hope it's coming out soon.
Speaker 3:That's the project that's in question mark at the moment Three Darshan movies. His last movie was apparently a massive hit. There's a look in this article here. Yeah, so it made a lot of money called Katira and he has a lot of fans. So you know it does take up. It hits the industry like this, even more so when you lose a prominent player like that he was prominent player like that, like it's. You know, um, he was a lead actor, so you know they've sort of lost that and a lot of work now as well. So that's that's really bad.
Speaker 3:That sucks that this happens, um, to a lot of people that had nothing to do with this case. Like you know, like all the people, that person that would have edited that trailer would have been expected to do some more work, upcoming right, and now that's all gone, um, yeah, so a lot of people like that have just lost their jobs, lost income, um, lost a project. So that that's. That's the sad part. Like you know, people that have nothing to do with the case nothing with anything have indirectly been affected.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have, like, a man who was murdered for just saying some rude things. He had a pregnant wife at home and now he has a family who's missing him. And so now we have here's this guy who thought he was oh, I'm the tough guy, I'm going to go and I'm going to be part of this big you know, beat down and it goes bad. And then you're like, oh shit, now we have a body and then it becomes that. So we're keeping track of the story.
Speaker 2:If you guys have more interest, you know information about the case. You know we're it's harder to get information here, but we're looking for stuff, always interested in seeing how. You know how this affects the movie industry and you know the psychology of the big star and his persona and how that bleeds over to real life Sometimes. I think it was an interesting thing to take a look at and I'm glad you guys were here to talk about it. Lots of very, very smart things that were said and I think we got a good understanding of like you know how it must be to be in that weird, weird, bizarre world of movie making and then yes you know, dealing with people who don't know you, who think they do, you know, it's just.
Speaker 2:It's just a weird. It's a weird thing a lot of you know there have been have been murders by fans of stars in Hollywood too. I mean John London's, one of the biggest stars that was killed by a fan, so it happens and that's the danger of huge stars is that there's an overlap. Usually it's the other way around. This time it was a star, Anyway. So thank you, Be sure to post comments and let us know what you think. We thought we'd say something about that and we'll talk to you guys later. Bye.