Tweaking trouble in tinseltown Premium

Actor Shine Tom Chacko's daring escape from police during a drug raid exposes drug abuse and harassment issues in Malayalam cinema.

The hotel at Kaloor in the heart of Kochi city was rather quiet when a loud thud pierced through the quietness of midnight on April 16. There was a crack on the asbestos cover of the second floor, and a silhouette could be seen sliding down to the swimming pool area.

The hotel’s CCTV network captured a man in a cap, a T-shirt, three-fourths, and white sneakers frenetically running down a flight of stairs to the reception area. He was out of the hotel in a flash.

A few moments before the drama reminiscent of a movie unfolded, a bunch of plainclothesmen attached to the District Anti-Narcotics Special Action Force of the Kochi City police had knocked on the door of room 314 on the third floor in which Shine Tom Chacko, an actor from the Malayalam movie industry, had booked into earlier in the day. Soon, it emerged that the man who made the dramatic exit was Shine, who jumped out of the window of his room, no less.

This was arguably the actor’s most daring act, without a body double, albeit in real life, in his career spanning over two decades.

“We had gone to the hotel in search of a drug peddler. It was while scanning the guest register that we stumbled upon the name of the actor,” recalls a member of the special force.

Shine known for his brilliant portrayal of characters such as Bhasi, a seedy criminal in the hit Malayalam movie Kurup, and Reji Mathew, a snarling cop who flies off the handle far too easily in another runaway hit Thallumala, after all, was incarcerated in a drug-related case. Later, Shine and six others were acquitted by a trial court here after a decade-long legal fight in a case registered over the seizure of alleged cocaine from an apartment in Kochi five years ago.

“Initially, our repeated knocks on the door went unanswered. As our knocks grew louder, the door was eventually unbolted by another man, who identified himself as Ahmmed Murshad of Malappuram. Ahmmed claimed to be a friend of the actor. But Shine was nowhere to be seen,” says the officer. Ahmmed pointed to the cops, much to their shock, the open window through which the actor had fled.