Bollywood has a record of spinning dubious fiction out of real-life events, but the first film to be based on the Mumbai terror atrocity is likely to test the limits.
Total Ten purports to tell the life story of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who is alleged to be the sole terrorist gunman caught alive after the attack in November last year in which nearly 200 people died. The plot, which pitches a band of bearded Islamist baddies – Mr Kasab’s alleged Pakistani handlers – against a brigade of heroic, moustachioed Mumbai cops, could have come from any number of Bollywood potboilers.
The problem is the ending. It shows Mr Kasab, who is on trial and has pleaded not guilty to murder and the waging of war against India, being convicted and hanged.
The producers have shrugged off suggestions that they could prejudice the case, which is being heard before a judge without a jury. They want their film to be released as soon as possible, before it is beaten to the screen by one or more of the 17 others based on the attacks that are in production.
“We are not committing any crime. We are only showing what was shown to the world by TV channels live,” Sugath Kumar, one of the producers, said.
Advertisement
“The best part is that we have a Kasab lookalike playing the role,” he added. “This makes it all the more interesting for people, don’t you think?”
Abbas Kazmi, Mr Kasab’s lawyer and a veteran of terror cases, disagreed. He told The Times that the low-budget movie risked derailing one of the highest-profile trials ever held in Inida. “Any depiction of the attacks would jeopardise the proceedings,” he said.
The rush to depict the Mumba atrocity is fully in character for Bollywood, the world’s most prolific film industry. The most gruesome — and “glamorous” — murders committed across India are regularly adapted as screenplays. Within days of the strike on Mumbai, 18 related film titles were registered with the Indian Motion Pictures Producers Association. The first was applied for on November 28, when Indian army commandos were still involved in room-to-room fighting with several heavily armed terrorists in two luxury hotels.
With global interest in Mr Kasab’s trial so high, legal experts say that Total Ten is on shaky ground. Majeed Memon, one of India’s leading criminal lawyers, said: “A film likely to reflect on the character of an accused must be considered unjust.”
The Indian judiciary has fretted since his capture on the first night of the attacks over whether Mr Kasab, who has claimed a confession was beaten out of him by the police, can receive a fair trial. Concerns heightened when it took more than five months to find him a lawyer after several potential advocates were threatened by extremist Hindu groups.
Advertisement
For their part, the police seem unlikely to be swayed by the film’s celebration of their heroics. Deven Bharti, a senior officer with the Mumbai Crime Branch, which assembled the case against Mr Kasab, said: “The film-makers have not contacted us to check any details. I doubt the portrayal of events is at all accurate. When the film comes before the censors we will look into the matter.”
It also remains to be seen whether the Indian public — renowned for their love of escapist romances with lavish musical numbers — will flock to see recreations of scenes that were repeated endlessly on television and remain burnt into the minds of many. Not one big Bollywood star has yet signed up to a film based on the attacks.
“Television pushed the reality of the attacks into peoples’ faces,” said Mahesh Ramanathan, the chief operating officer for Reliance Big, Bollywood’s largest studio. “They won’t watch the same thing in the cinema.”