BANGALORE: Following the arrest and subsequent collapse and hospitalisation of Sandalwood actor Darshan, and the Kannada Film Producers Association (KFPA) meeting with Darshan’s wife Vijaylakshmi, the KFPA has decided to impose a ban on actress Nikitha Thukral for three years from acting in Sandalwood movies.
Thukral is a Punjabi who has acted in a number of Hindi and South Indian films, including Kannada films, of which three are with Darshan as a female lead.
The episode and the subsequent fall out seem to be right out of an emotional South Indian pot boiler filmy drama.
A few days ago, Darshan was arrested for beating up his wife who lodged a police complaint against her husband and also named his co-star Thukral in her police compliant. There were reports of a few violent incidents that took place in Bangalore allegedly perpetuated by Darshan’s fans when they heard of his arrest.
Thukral was at Mumbai when the KFPA’s ban was announced. She is in consultation with her lawyers to take action against the KFPA’s unilateral decision as well the people involved in tarnishing her image. The actress says that she has never been projected in such bad light during the six years that she has been acting.
Darshan claimed that he was drunk and was not aware of his actions when he brutalized his wife who had been admitted to a private hospital for treatment and discharged from it on Sunday. Some KFPA members met Vijaylaksmi at the hospital and based on the discussions with her and the police complaint, decided to impose a three-year ban on Thukral as a lesson for other artistes to be more professional.
Acting on Vijaylakshmi’s complaint, the police took Drashan into judicial custody and lodged him at Parappana Agrahara Central Prison where the actor later collapsed.
The prison hospital doctors shifted Darshan first to NIMHANS and later on to the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases (RGICD) early on Saturday evening where he was diagnosed as suffering from a mild liver infection and a bronchial asthma condition that had got aggravated due to the prevalent weather conditions and high stress levels. A number of rules and norms have been violated by the concerned authorities in allowing all the bigwigs of the Kannada film industry to visit the actor at the RGICD’s Intensive Care Unit.
Meanwhile, on being discharged from the hospital on Sunday, Vijaylaksmi promptly visited her husband at RGICD and has filed an affidavit for the bail of her assailant husband. The case which was to come up for hearing today has been deferred to tomorrow. Legal experts are sure that the actor will be allowed bail and is unlikely to go the Parappana Agrahara again. As per the latest updates, charges under section 307 (attempt to murder) lodged against Drashan have been diluted to petty assault.
In a further twist, just a day after Vijaylaxmi filed a case against her husband which included dowry harassment, her sister-in-law – her brother Vasudev’s wife Srilakshmi has filed a dowry harassment case at the Girinagar Polic Station against Vijaylakshmi, Vijaylakshmi’s mother and Vasudev on Saturday last.
