A Director friend of 23-year-old murdered model and actress Bidushi Barde claims the young woman was desperately in need of cash and had approached him for money and work a few days ago.

`Please provide me some money so I can get some medicines for myself,` Barde had said, according to the director.

The director said Barde had also wanted a modelling assignment so she could feed herself.

As he had sent her an SMS for an assignment, the director was among those questioned by the police after the murder.

Barde, who was found lying in a pool of blood in her flat in Andheri (West) on Monday, was facing a financial crisis and finding it tough to sustain herself in the industry.

The director, who does several reality shows on a national channel, said Barde had met him at an audition six months ago through an acquaintance. After three days of the meeting, the acquaintance had called the director and told him that he should be approached if there were any assignments for Barde.

After 15 days, the director spoke to the acquaintance about a role in a Bhojpuri movie for Barde, but he demanded Rs 1 lakh and as the director felt it was too much, he refused to take the agreement further.

`After some days, Bidushi gave me a call and said that if there were any assignments for her, I should inform her directly because the middleman kept half the amount and she was in need of money,` the director said.

`Bidushi was always depressed; I had never seen her smile. She used to inject three insulin injections everyday and needed money for them as one injection used to cost Rs 1,100. Six days ago she had called me to say that she wanted money for her medicines and needed me to give her an assignment.`

When she first came to the city, Barde lived as a paying guest with a well-known TV actress. In 2009, after she got married, she and her husband rented a flat in DN Nagar.

As Hindi cinema had impressed her, she started refusing work in South Indian films. As she did not get work in Bollywood, she became depressed.


Her husband, Kedar, earned Rs 60,000 per month, and he reportedly told his wife it was not enough for both of them and asked her to meet her expenses on her own.

Officals of the DN Nagar police station now want to find out what time Kedar had reached his office in Nariman Point on Monday.

The police want to verify Kedar's statement, in which he said he had left home in the morning, when his wife was alive, and returned at night.

`Kedar is the main suspect in the case,` an officer said.

The police said Kedar had made only three calls in the entire day and had not bothered to alert their landlord, who lives above the couple's ground floor flat in Manish Garden building, to check on her. The officers said that at 10 am Kedar called up his father to tell him that his wife was not answering her phone.

The officers said at 7 pm he called his father-in-law, Shantanu Dash, to wish him on Ashtami and inform him that Bidushi was not answering her phone and told him that she had an audition for a role in an upcoming children's show.

`Bidushi's father told us that in the past three years Kedar had never called him up and would speak only for a few minutes when he called up his daughter,` the officer said.

The police also said that Kedar and Bidushi often fought as she had many medical problems.

Kedar had deleted from his mobile phone all the angry messages by Bidushi after a fight and kept only the ones displaying affection, which police officials said was suspicious.

Police officers said only one phone call was favourable for Kedar. `Bidushi had made a phone call to the nearby chemist at 8.30 am ordering a few medicines. It was half-an-hour after Kedar left. We are now verifying Kedar's claim and tracing the timings of his movements,` Vishwas Nangre- Patil, additional commissioner of police (west region), said.