The Kerala film industry plunged into sadness when the news came of ailing popular film director and scriptwriter K.R. Sachidanandan passing away at a hospital in Thrissur on Thursday night, film industry sources said. Popularly known as Sachy, the 48-year-old was recovering from hip surgery when he suffered a cardiac arrest on Tuesday. He was admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of a leading hospital in Thrissur.

Sachy, a practicing lawyer in the Kerala High Court, turned to the film industry first by jointly writing scripts before going solo. His second film as a director, Ayyapanum Koshyum, turned out to be the biggest grosser this year, till the lockdown kicked in.

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His brief film career began in 2007, when he scripted the film, Chocolate, along with Sethu with whom he wrote four more scripts. He wrote his first solo script for the Mohanlal starrer, Run Baby Run, in 2012 and went on to write another six scripts, which included Anarkali, his first film as director, in 2015.

On Wednesday, his close aides, including leading film personalities like actor Prithviraj and Biju Menon, and directors Renjith and B. Unnikrishnan, joined hands to see how the best medical care could be given to him and even expressed their desire to hire an air ambulance to shift him to another hospital.