How this murder convict hid for 12 years on silver screen

Hemant Modi was arrested last week from Ahmedabad. He’d jumped parole in 2014 and spent over a decade acting in everything from commercials to films starring Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Ranveer SinghFor 12 years, Hemant Modi kept performing without a pause. What he did on camera not only paid his bills, it also kept him out of jail. From Ahmedabad’s stages to Mumbai’s film sets, he had a dozen names.

Spandan Kumar one day. Spandan Modi the next. Twinkle Dave, when he wanted to sound like a star. He chased auditions, sent portfolios to producers, took any role anyone would give him.What none knew was that Hemant Modi was a murder convict who had in 2014 walked out of prison on a 30-day parole and never returned. Since then, the parole jumper is said to have acted in six Hindi films, one South Indian production, 10 Gujarati films, 27 TV commercials, 26 stage dramas, more than 3,000 stage shows, and 14 short films.

He ran a YouTube channel, Amdavadi Uncle, on which he uploaded audition videos. He even put up performance clips on Instagram.Playing innocentPolice also got a taste of his acting chops, when they finally turned up to arrest Modi from a rented house in Ahmedabad’s Gheekanta area on May 20. The 54-year-old, cops say, nearly convinced them that they had got the wrong man.“When we approached him, he behaved like a law-abiding citizen, politely objecting to his arrest in a manner that even had us confused for some time.

He spoke calmly and confidently, there was no panic in him. We wondered whether we were arresting the wrong person,” said a senior police officer.Modi ended up in jail over a 2005 dispute involving neighbours that was related to a staircase and common passage in Naroda’s Parshwanath Township. When an argument took a violent turn, Narendra alias Nanno Kamble, was attacked with swords, iron pipes and baseball bats. Modi and six others were found guilty for the killing in 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Two years later, Modi’s marriage ended.He was lodged in Sabarmati Central Jail. But after he reportedly witnessed the murder of gangster Chetan Patel alias Chetan Battery during a gang war inside prison in 2005, authorities moved him to Mehsana jail to ensure his safety. In July 2014, Gujarat HC granted him 30 days’ parole, after which he disappeared — but not in the way one would have expected.“If a murder convict jumps parole, one naturally assumes he will go underground and avoid being seen in public.

But this man chose the film industry,” said a senior officer. “He was openly giving auditions, acting in films, attending events and uploading his videos online.” Police now admit that years of inaction played a role in Modi remaining free. Sources said that his name did not appear on the list of 1,115 parole absconders uploaded by Gujarat Police on the National Prison Portal.Sources claimed that it was a tip-off from a close relative regarding Modi’s stay in Ahmedabad that eventually led crime branch teams to a house near Gheekanta metro station.

Officers spent nearly a month confirming his identity before moving in for the arrest.Committed to His CraftAccording to crime branch officials, Modi had been involved in theatre since college days, between 1998 and 2001. He took the stage name ‘Spandan Modi’ during this phase. Theatre, however, failed to provide financial stability and he took up law. While in jail, he cleared the judicial magistrate first class exam in 2008. Cops are now probing whether he appeared as an advocate in court while he was absconding.After jumping parole, Modi first turned up in north Gujarat’s Patan. For the next two years, he made a living by acting in awareness skits, street plays, and govt campaigns on vaccination, hygiene and sanitation. “From vaccination to cleanliness drives, he performed in several awareness skits in north Gujarat,” said an officer. “At the same time, he was desperately trying to get proper acting assignments.”His efforts eventually paid off. Between 2016 and 2017, Modi began appearing in Gujarati films and videos of popular Gujarati singers, mostly in devotional and religious roles.

Since he already knew people in the drama circuit, securing small assignments was not difficult. “He had theatre experience, people saw him only as an actor,” said an investigator.What’s remarkable was how he could change identities repeatedly. The aliases police have identified include Spandan Modi, Spandan Joshi, Spandan Vyas, Hemang Modi, Hemang Vyas, Hemang Vaishnav, Hemang Kumar and Spandan Kumar. Cops suspect he switched names to match the caste or community of whoever was hiring him, slipping into whatever identity felt apt.

“Identity became like a costume change for him,” a cop said.A theatre personality from Ahmedabad, who has known Modi since the late 1990s, recalled how Modi often circulated photographs of himself in different looks and get-ups. “It looked like an actor experimenting with roles. Now, it feels like it was a survival tactic,” he said.Bollywood, on the runIn 2018, Modi shifted to Mumbai. His first major mainstream appearance, according to police and publicly available profiles, was in ‘Thugs of Hindostan’, starring Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan.

It was not a major role but, for a struggling actor, it marked an entry into big Bollywood productions.Since then, his resume steadily expanded. Modi later worked in projects including ‘Jayeshbhai Jordaar’, starring Ranveer Singh, ‘Metro... In Dino’ featuring Konkona Sen Sharma and Pankaj Tripathi, and the Malayalam big-budget production, ‘L2: Empuraan’, starring Mohanlal and Prithviraj Sukumaran. His latest appearance was in the Emraan Hashmi-starrer, ‘Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web’, that came out earlier this year.During the Covid lockdown years, Modi reportedly stayed at a paying guest facility in Mumbai’s Borivali. The other actors he shared the accommodation with remember him as a man who never stopped talking about making it. “He used to motivate others by narrating how he’d struggled and eventually got opportunities,” said an actor who knew him during that period. “Nobody imagined that he was an absconder.”As he chased acting opportunities, police said that Modi survived by taking up clerical work and odd jobs.

Sleuths say he sent his portfolio to about 200 directors, producers and production houses in Bollywood and South India. Whatever role he received, no matter how small, he accepted enthusiastically. “He was happy even with minor character roles as he wanted only to act,” said an officer. That passion for acting is something almost everyone who encountered Modi noticed.Perfect imageThe portrait of Modi one pieces together from the descriptions of those who knew him is the kind he seemed to have consciously worked to create — “polite”, “sincere”, “hardworking”.Actor, singer and music director Nisarg Trivedi said he knew Modi from college days, when the latter was deeply involved in drama. “He came across as polite and warm back then,” Trivedi recalls. Years later, Modi approached Trivedi for work, saying he had been released from jail. “He told me his jail term was over and asked for work. Since he was talented, I recommended him for some assignments.” Trivedi insists there was nothing suspicious about Modi’s conduct.

“He moved around openly and confidently. Nobody felt he was hiding something.”The same impression came from Bhavesh Bhanu, a casting director in Ahmedabad, who worked with Modi for a character role in a film. “Nothing about his approach seemed off to me,” Bhanu said. “He never behaved like someone trying to conceal his identity.” Bhanu, however, said that Modi had asked for his payment to be routed through someone else’s bank account, claiming his own wasn’t working.

That’s the only factor that could arouse suspicion, Bhanu says, looking back.Director Kartavya Shah, who cast Modi in ‘53 Mu Panu’ and earlier worked with him in a stage drama titled, ‘Sasraji Nu Sursuriyu’, described him as “deeply affected by prison life”. “He had told me that he spent many years in jail and was released on parole, but I never knew he was a murder convict or a parole jumper,” Shah said. “He used to share emotional stories from his time in jail and even wanted to make a film based on those experiences.

”According to Shah, nobody from the theatre or film fraternity knew the full extent of Modi’s criminal background. “To us, he was just another actor trying to rebuild his life after struggle,” he said. Another Ahmedabad theatre personality remembers Modi as someone desperately chasing work. “He used to send portfolios and audition videos very frequently and worked as if there was no tomorrow.”To the cops, he was a fugitive who manipulated identities and escaped justice for more than a decade. To the theatre community, he was the man who lived for the next part. He had been both for so long, it is not clear he himself could have told them apart.