He walked out of the shadows and into a police van the way a mystery film opens with a dramatic reveal. Hemant Nagindas Purshottamdas, better known to the screen as Hemant Modi, was taken into custody on the evening of Monday near Gheekanta Metro Station, only months before his next promotional event. The man had slipped through the cracks of the justice system back in 2014.
It dates back to a night in June 2005 when a land dispute in Parshwanath Township erupted into violence in Naroda, Ahmedabad. The clash left Narendra alias Nanno Yashwant Kamble dead, sparking a wave of arrests under IPC sections 302, 324, 147, 148, 149 and 120(B). The case also wound into Section 135(1) of the Bombay Police Act. In 2008, the Gujarat High Court lobbed him and his co‑defendants into life sentences, sending a clear message that the state would not forget that night.
Fast forward to July 2014: while still locked in Mehsana Jail, the high court granted him a 30‑day parole. The parole was a brief, controlled liberty aimed at facilitating predetermined visits. He should have stepped out, respected the deadline, and returned. Instead, he vanished. The policed corridor of the judicial system was breached not by gunfire but by a bureaucratic oversight. The police report confirms the parole expired on August 25, 2014 – or thereabouts – and he pulled off the run.
For the next twelve years, he made a life under the radar, a rare case of a convicted life‑sentence holder keeping a low profile in a state where the popular cinema often overflows into the streets. His name sometimes popped up in local news, not as a criminal, but as a husk of a former actor who had played a small role in a 2010 Gujarati drama. No official filmography records connect him to the Bollywood circuit, yet whispers of an upcoming project added a layer of intrigue. The world of regional cinema never passes
