BENGALURU: Rajanukunte police started the investigation into the death of 41-year-old junior artiste Padmavathy and filed a case against seven people, including the director of a film she was part of and the owner of the building where she was found dead.
Padmavathy was found dead in a lift pit of an under-construction building in Rajanukunte on Monday evening where the shooting for a remake of the Tamil film ‘Vele Illa Pattadhari’ was taking place.
A senior police officer is investigating the case and the accused are the film’s director Nandakishore, film crew members Narasimha, Hegde, Shekar, Gowramma, owner and contractor of Prestige Builders. The officer said all the accused are absconding. When the police visited their houses, they were not available and their mobile phones were switched off, said the officer.
A senior police officer said “We are investigating the case. We are also waiting for the postmortem report.” On Monday, the director had told the police that she must have fallen by accident.
Nandakishore told the police that her family was making it a big issue to claim money, adding that she must have stepped on a metal sheet which was used to cover the lift pit and fallen in.
Meanwhile, V Gopal, executive director of Projects & Planning, Prestige Group, in a press release stated, “We were requested for the use of our property for the shooting...We have a letter from the film producer taking full responsibility for the safety and security of his team while shooting on location. We are extremely sorry that such an incident took place and resulted in the loss of a precious life. Our heartfelt condolences to victim’s family on their loss.
Henceforth, Prestige will not allow any such activity/ shoots on their sites to avoid such incidents in the future. We also hope that going forward, film producers will become more serious about following proper safety regulations during shoots to avoid such unfortunate incidents.”