Shayan’s wife Peeya at the Barrackpore court. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

Calcutta, May 13: Shayan Munshi cannot shake off this seven-year hitch.

When he played the celebrity bartender at a Delhi party in 1999, little did he know that a shake here and a stir there could go on to jeopardise his life in the limelight.

At the wrong place at the wrong time ? Tamarind Bar on April 29 ? and the grandson of eye specialist Nihar Munshi finds his every move under the hawk eye of the law and a question mark on his fledgling film career.

Having debuted with Sujoy Ghosh’s Jhankaar Beats, Shayan had disappeared from the Bollywood scene when he was signed by an international modelling agency. Several ramp walks later, he switched to the big screen but found the going tough.

Cameos were all he got before a plum role in the dark satire Amar Joshi Shaheed Ho Gaya. As luck would have it the film is lying in the cans.

Things started looking up with Shayan signing Anjan Dutt’s The Bong Connection opposite Raima Sen and bagging a berth in Shivam Nair’s Ahista Ahista starring Abhay Deol and Soha Ali Khan.

But the Jessica jinx caught up with him. He was barred from joining wife Peeya for the Houston leg of The Bong Connection shoot in March.

The Bangkok trip was to be their belated honeymoon.

Bong Connection producer Joy B. Ganguly feels his maiden venture wouldn’t be affected by the turn of events. “The shooting’s complete and Shayan’s finished his dubbing.”

Will the much-hyped “negative publicity” help? Ganguly won’t say so.

In Mumbai, Ahista produ-cer Anjum Rizvi said: “I can’t say whether this will benefit or harm my film. I’ll release it in July.”

Trade analyst Taran Adarsh felt the arrest wouldn’t have any bearing on Shayan’s releases “because he is not a big-enough star”.