Bengaluru: Five months after the tragic incident in the sets of Kannada movie 'Maasthigudi', where two artistes drowned in the Thippagondanahalli Lake during a shoot, the Tavarekere police submitted the chargesheet to the Magadi JMFC Court on Wednesday.
In the chargesheet, which runs to 400 pages, the police have framed charges against the film producer Sundar P Gowda as accused number one, director Nagashekhar as accused number two, followed by assistant director Siddu, stunt choreographer Ravi Verma, and Unit Manager S. Bharath as accused number 3, 4 & 5 respectively. The police have also booked Prakash Biradar, the pilot of the helicopter used in the shoot, as accused number six.
It is learnt that the police have charged the accused mainly for flouting various conditions laid by the BWSSB while carrying out shooting at the T. G. Halli reservoir. Though the BWSSB authorities had clearly mentioned in the permission letter that no aerial shots could be done, the film team had brought in a helicopter for the same.
"Despite knowing the fact that shooting in the reservoir is dangerous, the film crew asked the two actors to jump from the helicopter. Also, they had forced the actors to jump into the reservoir even after they had expressed their apprehension and told them that they did not know swimming. Moreover, there was no proper safety measure taken. Thus, the accused are directly responsible for the death of the two actors. All these points have been mentioned in the chargesheet with appropriate evidence," a police official said.
The police have booked the accused under section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) read with 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the IPC. It is learnt that the police have included statements of 78 witnesses, including actor Duniya Vijay and cinematographer Satya Hegde, in the chargesheet.
It may be recalled that actors, Raghav Uday and Anil, who had acted as villains in several movies, got drowned in the T. G. Halli reservoir during the climax shoot of 'Maasthigudi' starring Duniya Vijay.
