For versatile actor Siddique, who has been part of the tinsel town for over three decades, travelling in the front seat of a police jeep with a flashing beacon light is not something new. But to have that experience in real life was special for him.
“That was my only condition to attend a function organised by the police in Thripunithura. Like every common man, I had also dreamed of becoming a powerful cop and travelling in a police jeep. Consider it as my vanity but that ride gave me immense pleasure,” said Siddique to an all-round laughter at an interaction organised to de-stress police personnel at the rural police headquarters at Aluva on Tuesday.
When District Police Chief (Ernakulam Rural) K. Karthik wanted to know why the actor, unlike most others, always spoke up for the police, Siddique said he always had good experience with the uniformed men and not necessarily on account of being a celebrity. He said that people who were always critical of others did so to fulfil their craving to be in the limelight and urged the force not to be disheartened by such criticism.
When a police association office-bearer pointed out how the first-look poster of the movie Lucifer showing actor Mohanlal with his foot on the chest of a character playing a senior police officer defamed the police force, Siddique said that it was a marketing technique to keep the movie in the news. “While that poster was a paid publicity, the opposition it generated kept the movie in news and gave it free publicity worth many fold,” the actor observed.
The actor recollected the memory of donning a police officer’s role for the first time in the movie Cheppadyvidya in 1992 and how a retired Inspector General had mistaken him for a real cop during the shooting, thanks to his impeccable way of wearing the uniform.
Though the organisers tried to wrap up the programme after an hour, the actor stayed back and spent more than two hours with the police personnel.
