Aptharakshaka

Aptharakshaka
Promotional poster
Directed by	P. Vasu
Produced by	Krishna Kumar (Krishna Prajwal)
Written by	P. Vasu Bhaskar
Starring	Vishnuvardhan Avinash Akhil Sahni Sandhya Vimala Raman Bhavana Lakshmi Gopalaswamy Komal Kumar Srinivasa Murthy Ramesh Bhat
Music by	Gurukiran
Edited by	Suresh Urs
Production company	Udaya Ravi Films
Distributed by	Krishna Prajwal
Release date	19 February 2010 (2010-02-19)
Running time	152 minutes
Country	India
Language	Kannada
Budget	₹ 15 crore
Box office	₹ 40 crore

Aaptharakshaka (English: Dearest Savior) is a Kannada blockbuster film released in 2010 starring Vishnuvardhan in his 200th Kannada film and posthumous film along with Sandhya, Vimala Raman, Avinash, Srinivasa Murthy, Bhavana, Lakshmi Gopalaswamy and Komal among others. The film was written and directed by P. Vasu and is a sequel to the 2004 blockbuster film Apthamitra also directed by Vasu and starring Vishnuvardhan.

The film was released on 19 February 2010 to highly positive reviews. The movie was remade in Telugu as Nagavalli with Venkatesh Daggubati. The movie was dubbed in Telugu as Raja Vijaya Rajendra Bahadur (Nagavalli - Return of Chandramukhi), in Hindi as Sab Ka Rakhwala under the production of Sumeet Arts and in Bengali as "Amar Rakshak".

The story starts off with an ancient painting of Nagavalli (Vimala Raman) floating away to distant places, where it finally comes into the hands of a village painter. The painter brings it home so as to restore it back to its original look. However, when his wife asks him to sell the painting, he becomes furious, saying that he wouldn't sell it off even at the cost of his life. The next day, the painter is shown to be dead under mysterious circumstances, possibly being a suicide. The painting is then sold off to a dance competition, which was distributed as a prize to Bharata Natyam dancer Saraswathi (Lakshmi Gopalaswamy), her husband and her family. On the Engagement day of Gowri (Sandhya), one of her friends had fainted by encountering a huge thirty-feet Snake, and the bridegroom had run away from the family house fearing of something. All strange incidents happen as the family called for a snake charmer to the house, but the snake charmer had died when he attempted to make the serpent appear. The members of the family are psychologically affected by the presence of Nagavalli's painting and things have not been going well in the house. So they decide to contact Acharya Ramchandra Shastry (Avinash), an astrologer cum sage. The father of the three daughters tells the Acharya that Saraswathi and her husband met with a fatal accident and died, after the bharathanatyam competition. The Acharya takes the help of Dr Vijay (Vishnuvardhan), a psychiatrist, to solve the problem. All directions point to the huge portrait of Nagavalli, and is observed that the portrait is the cause for this. Everyone is warned to not go to the outhouse or to the room where Nagavalli's painting is. One night, Dr. Vijay goes to the outhouse as he heard anklet sounds, and he sees another smaller portrait of Nagavalli in the outhouse. It is then revealed that Saraswathi is still alive, but became mad after the truck accident in which her husband died while he was carrying the painting of Nagavalli, and that she said that no one accepted to marry the second daughter Geetha because Saraswathi was mad and so Geetha vowed that she wouldn't marry, and since they didn't want Gowri's situation to be like this, they lied saying Saraswathi was dead, and locked her up in the outhouse. In a few occasions, someone attempted to murder the Acharya twice. Suspecting Saraswathi, the acharya asks the family members to bring Saraswathi to the temple and that he will show everyone that Nagavalli is in Saraswathi's body, but as Saraswathi steps the temple, all the animals run out of the temple. Suspecting each and every person in the family, Dr. Vijay starts to investigate everything so he goes to the library to read a book based on Vijaya Rajendra Bahaddur's life and further information on Nagavalli too.