Darshan Thoogudeepa: The Indian film star arrested in fan’s murder case

In connection with a violence that has a story that resembles a movie, Darshan Thoogudeepa, a star of the Kannada-language film industry in Karnataka, has been arrested for the past ten days.

He is one of 17 people who were detained by the police for the death of Renukaswamy, a 33-year-old artist fan, after his body was found in a drain.

Renukaswamy was “killed in a very harsh and primitive way,” according to Bengaluru city police inspector B Dayananda earlier this week, and it was described as a “heinous crime committed in a brutal manner.”

Police said they believe the 47- yr- old actor was furious with Renukaswamy, who worked for a pharmacy company, because he had reportedly sent sexual messages on cultural media to Pavithra Gowda, an actress who has been described in the American press as Darshan’s girlfriend. She is among those arrested.

The costs against the defendants include “murder, theft, loss of facts and legal conspiracy”.

Darshan is currently incarcerated and has not commented on the allegations, but his solicitor, Ranganath Reddy, told the BBC that the artist denied the allegations against him during one of their conferences.

” These are simple complaints at the moment”, he said. ” The authorities have no compelling proof against Darshan. It’s a situation of contextual information”. Additionally, Mr. Reddy referred to Pavithra’s says that she was married to Darshan as” a blatant lie.”

Darshan has appeared in about 60 movies, many of which have been great visits, and is regarded as the most financially successful legend of the Kannada movie industry.

” He’s the biggest star in the Kannada movie industry, with a large fan following. Fans pour milk on his signboards as he is plastered behind auto-rickshaws, according to film writer S Shiva Kumar, and new releases of his pictures also feature his face.

Yogish Dwarakish, a maker of Kannada films, says Darshan is “one professional who can promise you an amazing opening.”

” His videos release in 600- 700 windows in 400 venues. His supporters revere him. He is a household name and consistently delivers. His latest, Kaatera, grossed more than 1bn rupees ($ 12m, £9.4m ) and was a mammoth hit”.

According to reports, he is demanding$ 200 to 250 million rupees for a role, a figure unheard of in the local film industry, where movies typically have small budgets and the majority of them do n’t even appear in the neighboring southern states.

But, it’s not surprising that since June 11 when the police arrived at the hotel in Mysuru area where Darshan was staying while shooting for Devil, his most recent movie, his extraordinary imprisonment and the aftereffects have continued to garner media attention in the position.

Officially, officers are not giving out any information of what – if any- information they have against the artist and the other suspects, but the local media have reported magical allegations, attributing them to officers sources.

Blurry CCTV film has been shown on TV stations, with reporters claiming that it shows Renukaswamy’s violence.

Details from what’s being described as the deceased man’s post-mortem have been discussed threadbare and the press went into a frenzy after reports that the shoes Darshan wore on the night of the murder were found in his wife Vijayalakshmi’s house, forcing her to obtain a restraining order against the press.

Stories of Darshan’s past behavior are being repeated on news and social media, as well as his relationship with his wife Vijayalakshmi and his relationship with Pavithra Gowda.

A post from January on Pavithra’s Instagram account, which talks about a 10-year-long relationship with the actor, has gone viral since their arrest.

Darshan is the son of actor Srinivas Thoogudeepa, who became “very popular and successful playing negative roles” in the 1970s.

Producer Yogish, who has known Darshan for three decades, claims the actor experienced a lot of hardship in his early years after his father passed away, leaving the family in poverty.

His first job was with a cinematographer, working as part of the lighting crew on the sets for 150 rupees a day.

However, Mr. Shiva Kumar advises the” strapped young man with an imposing presence” to take to the stage and begin playing small roles in movies and TV, adding that his big break came in 2002.

He “brought himself to fame and became a star with Majestic,” a movie in which he played a loving thug, an anti-hero, catapulted him to fame and became a star.

It also won him legions of fans, says Muralidhar Khajane, film critic and author of a book on Kannada cinema. He rose above the socially underrepresented. They identified with Darshan”.

In his early years, he was “humble, hardworking and disciplined”, says Mr Yogish, who worked closely with him on a film in 2005- 2006. ” At the time, I predicted that he’d become the darling of the masses. And he did”.

His films, Mr Shiva Kumar says, were “very run of the mill”, his roles repetitive and his acting was “wooden”, but he built a successful career playing an action hero.

In many of his movies, the underdog was featured as a justification for his taking the law into his own hands.

And for over a decade, Darshan ruled the industry, along with Kichcha Sudeepa and Puneeth Rajkumar, the other two big Kannada stars.

As he continued to deliver hit films, his fans affectionately nicknamed him” D- Boss “]the boss ] and a” challenging star”- because “nothing came easy to him, everything was a challenge”, Mr Yogish says.

But, Mr Khajane says, “he could not manage this stardom and did n’t know how to behave when success came to him”.

The actor was arrested in 2011 and spent four weeks in jail after Vijayalakshmi accused him of domestic violence. News reports from the time quote her police complaint as saying that Darshan assaulted her, threatened her with a revolver and burnt her with cigarette butts.

” Despite her very obvious injuries, the industry and his supporters continued to cheer him.” His film Saarathi, which released while he was in jail, became a massive hit”.

Some claim in a truce that the industry brokered to allow him to be released after his wife withdrew the case against him.

“After he came out, he travelled around the state on a sort of thanksgiving tour, apologising to his fans. He said, ‘Please forgive me, I’ve set a bad example’,” Mr Yogish remembers.

After the episode, Mr. Khajane claims that some in the industry” who had previously supported him” started distance themselves from him, but it did not have an impact on his success at the box office.

And despite the horrifying accusations he’s currently facing, only a few actors have publicly spoken out about the situation.

According to Mr. Khajane, in some situations, the reason for the silence may be related to business interests.

” The industry is quiet because 1.5 billion rupees are riding on him,” he said. If he goes to prison, three of his movies will have to be delayed or shelved. So they ca n’t afford to ban him”.

Mr. Yogish acknowledges that Darshan’s arrest is” a huge loss for the industry” and that calls for a ban are premature because “he’s still being investigated and a man is innocent until proven guilty.”

” My only request is let there be a legal trial, not a media trial. I’m not saying he is innocent, but Darshan is being painted as a villain, he’s being pronounced guilty even before a trial”.