Arrey aap toh bekaar hi gussa kar rahe hain. Aapko pata hai mere daddy kaun hain?... Yahi to problem hai. Mein use chahta hoon, jaanta hoon, magar chahna to door ki baat hai, woh to mujhe jaanti tak nahin... Mera koi iraada nahi hai. Actually iraada hai. Achcha iraada hai. Mein ek bahut hi achcha ladka hoon...

Surely Shayan Munshi will recognise these lines. They are his, in reasonably good Hindi, from the runaway hit Jhankar Beats.

Yet Shayan, the model-turned actor and a key witness in the trial of the Jessica Lall murder case, told the court that he neither knew Hindi nor what the police had written in Hindi in the FIR he had lodged initially. His retraction of the statement indicting prime accused Manu Sharma was one of the key factors which led to the acquittal of all nine accused in the case.

In its March 13 appeal in the Delhi High Court, Delhi Police pointed out that Shayan had a basic idea of Hindi since he studied the language till Class VII and had worked in Hindi films too.

Shayan, flown to Delhi from Kolkata where he was stopped at the airport last Saturday before boarding a flight for Bangkok, was one of the leads in the 2003 hit Jhankar Beats. He has done roles in films like My Brother Nikhil, Home Delivery and co-hosted Cook Na Kaho, a TV food show. Chef Karen Anand worked with him on his cookery show which required him to speak both Hindi and English.

... contd.