Lakshmikanthan murder case

C. N. Lakshmikanthan was a Tamil film journalist who ran the magazines Cinema Thoothu and later Hindu Nesan, publications known for scandalous coverage of the personal lives of leading actors and actresses of the Madras film industry. According to film historian Randor Guy, as recounted in the Wikipedia article, Lakshmikanthan had a prior criminal record involving forgery, imprisonment at Rajahmundry jail, and deportation to the Andaman Islands, from which he returned to India and took up journalism after the islands came under Japanese occupation during the Second World War. His reporting reportedly led some prominent film figures to pay him to avoid unfavorable coverage. Tensions escalated when actors M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar and N. S. Krishnan, along with director S. M. Sriramulu Naidu, petitioned the Governor of Madras, Arthur Oswald James Hope, to revoke the license of Cinema Thoothu, which was granted; Lakshmikanthan subsequently started Hindu Nesan and continued similar coverage.

On the morning of 8 November 1944, Lakshmikanthan visited his friend and lawyer J. Nargunam in Vepery, Madras. While returning home by hand-rickshaw at around 10:00 a.m., he was attacked by a group of unidentified assailants in General Collins Road, one of whom stabbed him. He walked, bleeding, to Nargunam's house, and was then sent toward General Hospital, Madras, accompanied by a friend identified as Brew. En route, he stopped at the Vepery police station to dictate a description of the attack to Inspector Krishnan Nambiyar. At the hospital, he was treated by Dr. P. R. Balakrishnan, but his condition worsened, and he died at 4:15 a.m. on 9 November 1944 due to secondary shock from kidney damage. The Indian Express reported he was "aged about fifty" at the time of his death.

Police arrested a man named Vadivelu on the day of the attack, and five more suspects in the following days, including Bhagavathar, Krishnan, and Naidu. All three were tried for the murder. Naidu was acquitted, while Bhagavathar and Krishnan were convicted and sentenced by the Madras High Court to transportation for life. Their appeal to the Madras High Court was rejected. The two remained imprisoned until an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council succeeded roughly 30 months after their arrest; the Privy Council directed a retrial, at which both were found innocent and acquitted. The real perpetrators of the killing were never identified, and the case remains unsolved.

The prosecution and imprisonment had lasting personal and professional consequences for both men. Bhagavathar, previously the highest-paid Tamil film actor at the peak of his career, lost his fortune and reputation, and died in 1959 in poverty. Krishnan, a prominent comedian and playback singer, continued to work in films after his release, though with only intermittent success, and the legal battle left him financially depleted as well.