Darshan Thogudeepa's arrest echoes an 80-year-old murder that ruined the life of Tamil cinema's first superstar

Both Renuka Swamy and Lakshmikanthan were murdered by hired hitmen for writing libellous comments/articles. Both their murders led to the arrest of reigning superstars of the Kannada and Tamil film industry, respectively.

Bhagavathar was one of the biggest stars of Tamil cinema whose popularity was immense. For instance, it was widely believed that he bathed in rose petals and ate fish flown in by a charter flight from Madras to Trichy every day.

Krishnan was an activist of the Dravidian movement, which was gaining popularity in the 1930s and the 1940s. He played character roles and comedic roles.

Laksmikanthan (the journalist), however, was a convicted criminal, who had been released from jail during the Second World War. After that, he started writing gossip about film stars in his magazines, finding one way or the other to get them printed despite protests. According to Tamil cinema historian Randor Guy, Lakshmikanthan ran ‘Cinema Thoothu’ (Cinema Messenger) and ‘Indu Nesan’ (Patriot).

Murdered for words

Laksmikanthan gained popularity and notoriety in equal measure for writing about personal actors and actresses of the Tamil film industry. In fact, Krishnan and Bhagavathar had petitioned the then governor of Madras to revoke Kanthan’s licence to operate a printing press. Despite pressure from all quarters, Kanthan continued to write libellous articles. Some of the actors paid him to buy his silence.

On November 8, 1944, Kanthan was stabbed in a busy road in Madras, he succumbed to the injuries the next morning. Bhagavathar and Krishnan were the main suspects in the murder and the authorities wasted no time in arresting them in early 1945.

Their trial was one of the last jury trials in the Madras, they were found guilty by the jury in a 6 to 3 verdict and sentenced to transportation for life. The reigning demigods of Tamil cinema, Krishnan and Bhagavathar were now to languish in Andaman jail.

They appealed against the verdict before Alfred Henry Lionel Leach, the Chief Justice of Madras High Court. Leach’s order said, “Lakshmikanthan was a person of bad character. He professed to have a mission in life to protect the chastity of Indian womanhood, but his profession was merely a cloak for the writing of most scurrilous articles attacking the characters of prominent persons, especially persons well known in the cinema world.”

The order said Krishnan and Bhagavathar were among the persons he attacked and they were both cinema actors and prominent in their profession. According to the order, “They (articles) accuse them of seduction of innocent girls. Week after week he returned to the attack and in the same scurrilous manner.”
The Chief Justice's order noted that Kanthan was in fact attacked once in October 1944, though no serious injury was caused. Kanthan wanted to file a complaint against the two actors for this and had approached a lawyer for the same. Kanthan was murdered when he was returning from the lawyer’s office with a copy of the complaint.

The order noted that one of the assailants had met the Bhagavathar who promised to pay his gang and him Rs 2,500 for Kanthan’s murder. Furthermore, Bhagavathar and Krishnan had said, “If by any chance they (assailants) were detected he and his friends would give them all the help possible. At the instigation of the actors, the accused took an oath that even if they lost their heads they would not expose them.”

The court then went into detail and analysed the evidence, statements of witnesses and other things. It thus decided that Krishnan and Bhagavathar were guilty of Lakshmikanthan’s murder and upheld their conviction and transportation. This order was rendered in October 1945.

The case then went to the Privy Council, where Bhagavathar and Krishnan were represented by KM Munshi, who later became a minister in independent India and played a key role in the framing of the Constitution. The Privy Council ultimately overturned their conviction, freeing Bhagavathar and Krishnan from jail.

A retrial of the case was ordered, however, it failed to reveal who had committed Lakshmikanthan’s murder. Eight decades on, the Lakshmikanthan murder case remains unsolved.

The aftermath

When Bhagavathar and Krishnan walked out of the jail, they were broke and their popularity had waned. Bhagavathar, who had as many as 12 projects lined up before his arrest, had none after his release. Krishnan, too, had no money left to his name. They tried to re-enter the film industry, which, however, ended in a failure.

Bhagavathar had lost all his money and died in 1959 in poverty due to diabetes related complications. He tried to make ends meet by giving concerts. Bhagavathar was not even 40 at the time of his death. Krishnan however fared better; he managed to do a few roles before dying in 1957 at the age of 48.

Incidentally, their decline led to the rise of MG Ramachandran, who would reign as the superstar of Tamil cinema for three decades before becoming Tamil Nadu’s chief minister for a decade.