Directed by Srinivas Omkar, My Name is Shruthi is a Telugu film currently streaming on Amazon Prime. The thriller explores the dark businesses of the organ mafias in the underbelly of Hyderabad. The concept of skin trafficking and the perils associated with it have attained better clarity in this film. The horrific world of human trafficking has also been presented in films like ‘Mardaani’. The film includes a wonderful cast, starring faces like Hansika Motwani, Pooja Ramachandran, and Murali Sharma. The multiple twists in the film add layers to every segment, raising several questions in our minds. What happened to Anu? What was Shruthi’s plan? Let’s find out!
Spoiler Alert
What Was MLA Gurumurthy’s Motive?
MLA Gurumurthy was one of the top skin mafias in Hyderabad, who had been kidnapping beautiful women and selling their skin at high prices in the illegal market. His illegal business had a wide network that involved many people who were close to Shruthi, without her having any information about it. He had been tracking Shruthi for the past year to ensure that she was sold off in the illegal market and they could trade her skin for a great fortune. However, Gurumurthy was tensed when a video of the place where he kept the girls captive got leaked. He was being blackmailed by an unknown entity, and he suspected that one of his own men was responsible for the leak. He later found out that Charan was involved in the matter!
What Happened To Tanish?
Tanish, a drug addict, used to collect his stash from Anu, who was also a part of the skin trafficking racket. When Tanish could not pay back Anu the money for the drugs that he had taken from her, she confiscated his car keys. Later, when he went to Anu to get back the keys, she gave him a plan to earn a lot of money, which would suffice for the next two years of his drug addiction. She told him to trap a girl named Priya and get her romantically involved with him. Later, she was kidnapped by the mafia, and her skin was grafted off of her and sold. After a year, when Tanish came across Priya, he saw her condition and took her to a doctor. He was told that her skin had been grafted several times, causing her to develop skin cancer. Tanish realized that Anu had used him to commit this horrendous activity and went to confront her, and then Anu threatened him and asked him to keep out of her affairs. Later, when the police got hold of the CCTV footage of Tanish’s confrontation with Anu, they sought him out. He was arrested and testified all about his crimes to them, and he also told them that he did not know about the skin trafficking racket before and had been dragged into the puddle by Anu. He, however, received a sentence for doing drugs.
What Happened To Charan?
Shruthi had traveled to Hyderabad to work for an advertising company and was initially living with her sister and brother-in-law. She later decided to give them some space and moved out of their apartment and shifted to a rented flat. She was romantically involved with her cousin, Charan, and had dreams of spending the rest of her life with him. Later, she found out that Charan had been cheating on her and was involved with her roommate. When she confronted Charan about it, he told her that he wanted to trade off her skin and earn a lot out of it, as she had a rare blood group. When he started forcing her to go with him, she resisted and ended up severely injuring him. When he lost consciousness, she tied him up and put him in her bathtub. Meanwhile, her neighbor had called her to get her help, as the next-door aunty had slipped inside the bathroom and hurt herself. When she went to help them out, Anu snuck into her room and saw Charan in such a state. She had hidden herself to keep a check on Shruthi’s activities. Later, when Shruthi had gone out of the house, Anu helped Charan out of the bathtub, and on gaining his senses, he murdered Anu as he was under drug’s influence. Later, he escaped Shruthi’s house through her window.
Later, when a robbery occurred at Shruthi’s complex, the police started interrogating her. Just when they were about to leave, they heard Shruthi shrieking at the top of her voice, and when they came in, they saw Anu lying dead in the bathtub. Shruthi narrated the entire event of how she had injured Charan and kept him in the bathtub, but had later come back home to find Anu’s dead body there, implying that Charan had killed her and ran out of the place.
What Was Shruthi’s Plan?
When Shruthi’s brother-in-law, Bobby, was driving Shruthi back home from the police station, Shruthi started telling him all about her real plan. She told him that she had actually lied to the police to get rid of the blame for Anu’s murder. While she was tying up Charan in the bathtub, Anu came into her apartment, and she started blackmailing her into coming with her so that she could sell her off to the skin traders. Shruthi noticed that Anu was high on drugs and took her opportunity to strike her head with an iron rod. She became unconscious at that point. She then realized that she had to put the blame on someone else, so she brought Charan back to his senses and, at gunpoint, made him strike a final blow to Anu with the rod. Later, when he asked her to help him, as he realized that he was overdosing, she asked him to climb down her window using a bedsheet and go to the hospital to seek help. Charan did as Shruthi told him but collapsed right after he entered the hospital. Shruthi told Bobby that she researched and found out that if painkillers were mixed in equal proportions with cocaine, then that would turn lethal. She had poisoned Charan to get him off her back.
She also ensured that Gurumurthy’s men got to know that it was Charan who was blackmailing them using the tape. Later, she also revealed that she knew that Bobby was involved with Gurumurthy, and just as he was going to attack her, one of Gurumurthy’s men shot him. He thought that Bobby was safeguarding Shruthi and, hence, had shot at him. Later, when he tried to kidnap Shruthi, the police officer came and saved her. He realized that Shruthi had taken a lot of risks for herself to make sure that the racket was exposed. She also informed the officer of the whereabouts of the tape that contained all the information against Gurumurthy, ultimately dismantling his entire organ trafficking racket.
Final Words
The riveting turns in the film are highly commendable, enhancing the intensity of the plot! The film reaches its zenith in the second half, when Shruthi reveals her real intentions. Her struggle to save herself had also been helpful in saving many lives over the course of her journey, as Gurumurthy’s vile business had been exposed in the process. She could have spared Charan’s life, but his betrayal turned her cold, and she did not think twice about putting herself over anyone! However, the overall impression of the film could have been augmented if the narrative had been continued in a linear manner rather than going off-track (swinging to-and-fro between the past and the present) at certain points, making it confusing for the viewers.
