Partnership drift, lockdown, OTT and strained ties cause for Art Director Nitin Desai’s death
Partnership drift, lockdown, OTT and strained ties cause for Art Director Nitin Desai’s death
Finally the cause for art director and producer Nitin Chandrakant Desai’s suicide has come to light. His partners moved to South, then the Covid-19 induced lockdown, OTT and strained ties pushed him to debt trap. Caught in a cob-web, Nitin Desai was left with no option but to take the drastic step to end his life.
As per police reports, Nitin and his wife Neha set up the ND studio in Karjat in 2004, a year before it became functional, and he took charge of its operations. However, his wife Neha, in the FIR had revealed that they had initially applied for and repaid a loan of Rs 2.5 lakh.
The 43 acre ND Studio was a landmark in Karjat for tourists.
An “Indian Mount Rushmore” greets one barely a kilometre after taking a left from the old Mumbai-Pune Highway at Karjat. Faces of Bollywood stars etched on a mountain welcomed visitors to the celebrated art director-production designer Nitin Desai’s ND Studio, and a theme park, ND’s Film World.
The entrance to these properties features a filmy deewar (wall), posters and graffiti inspired by Bollywood and entrances called “
“Box Office”.
According tosome of the media personnel who visited the studio on a weekday afternoon, they found only a handful of tourists and security guards posted at the entrance to the sprawling studio. The entry fee had been slashed to Rs 500 a ticket, nearly half of the Rs 999 charged when the theme park was inaugurated in 2018. “
A security guard informed the media personnel that as of now few tourists come to the studio. Although open to the general public, he says the media is not allowed inside “since the matter has become sensitive”.
Outside the studio, seven life-size elephants stand guard at the royal entrance.
For many, the (white) elephants were symbolic of Desai’s “royal vision” and the huge expenses he incurred to set up the studio in the hopes that it would make its mark globally.
In the process, Desai only ended up accruing loans worth crores, which many believe eventually cost him his life. Desai was found hanging on one of the stages of ND Studio on August 2, just days before his 58th birthday.
News Edit K.V.Raman
