Camera stolen from under RGV's nose

High drama ensued on the sets of the director's thriller, after expensive equipment went missing

According to the grapevine, one of the six expensive 5D cameras (each costing Rs 1.5 lakh) being used for the shoot of Ram Gopal Varma's Department has gone missing. It was stolen from Essel Studios, Chembur, where Ramu was shooting the cop thriller featuring Sanjay Dutt and Rana Daggubati.



It is learnt that the unit found out about the missing camera on Monday, when Varma resumed shooting after lunch break.

Naturally, when his team of camera operators couldn't locate the equipment, they were in panic. "More so because they had not retrieved the footage shot on it. Their routine procedure is to dump the footage at the end of the day's shoot," said our source.

Varma's team registered a complaint with the local police station.

When contacted, Arun Kumar of FX School, from where the camera operators have been hired, said that it was not the Canon 5D, but a GoPro camera (worth R 20,000) that went missing. He said, "It seems someone had accidentally picked it up from outside the floor where Department was being shot.
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When they realised that it belongs to us, the people from the shoot in the adjoining floor came to give it back."
While Varma didn't revert to our text messages, Sandeep Ghangatkar from his company confirmed that it was a GoPro that went missing.
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He said, "Everything was sorted out before the police arrived and we even checked to see if the footage was intact. Thankfully, it was not a major cause of concern."

However, our source maintains, "The camera wasn't recovered. They merely put up a fa ade of having found the camera by borrowing it from another crew that was shooting for a TV show in the same studio premises."
RGV had also shot Not A Love Story with a 5D camera.

Lost items...
While shooting at a college in Kandivali a couple of years ago, Priyanka Chopra lost her branded watch. After she called the cops, her spot boy confessed to stealing it and he was arrested.

During the shoot of his film Thank You in Canada, Anees Bazmee's bag with his documents, smartphones, designer eyewear, money etc were stolen.