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Taliban is displeased at Afghan - Bengali couple's story going on celluloid

Taliban is displeased at Afghan - Bengali couple's story going on celluloid

Author: PTI
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 8, 2001

The shadow of the Taliban looms large over the celluloid depiction of the traumatic experience of a Bengali housewife in Afghanistan, with the husband threatening to give talaq out of fear for the safety of his relatives.

The student militia have threatened the family members of Janbaz Khan, a Pashtun money-lender here in Kolkata, if the shooting of the film Escape from Afghanistan, with Bollywood star Manisha Koirala playing the role of the wife, is not stopped.

The film, to be screened in English and Hindi, is being currently shot in Ladakh, and is directed by Ujjal Chatterjee.

The real life husband, Janbaz Khan, said, "I am being pressurised to give talaq to my Bengali wife, Sushmita Bandopadhay, whom I married here in Kolkata in 1989, if the shooting of the film is not stopped. The Taliban has sent word they cannot guarantee the safety of my family members who live in Sharana village near Ghazni if the film is made."

Sushmita, who has penned the books Wife of an Afghan Money- lender, Not a Single Word is Untrue and Afghan, Taliban and I also seems to be afraid.

She filed an FIR with the Bowbazar police after she was accosted by a number of burly youths at a coffee house on Central Avenue, last Friday. "I feel threatened. I want to live in peace. I want my husband's family members in Afghanistan to live in peace," said Sushmita, who fled Afghanistan in 1995.

She has also informed the deputy commissioner of polite that she felt threatened. The staff members of the coffee house came to her rescue and the youths left after directing menacing glances at her.

"After my marriage, I spent three years at Sharana village alone. My husband had returned to Kolkata. I was subjected to physical and mental torture by my male in laws which I wrote about in my books", she said at her Santoshpur residence.

"My husband has been threatened. He has been told to divorce me if I fail to stop the film from being shot," Sushmita said.

She, however, does not know how the film is being made on her autobiographical accounts. "I have neither seen the script, nor did director Ujjal Chatterjee discuss its contents with me. The only contract I signed was with the publisher after my autobiographical accounts were published serially in a vernacular daily," she said.

"However, if they surreptitiously included making of the film as part of the deal, it was done without my consent," Sushmita said, adding that her husband had objected when she had published her first book. "It soured our relations for some time and we lived apart then. But I don't want it to happen again."

Yasmin Nigar Khan, the president of All-India Pashtun Firga-e- Hind, claimed to be the country's only association of Pashtuns, knows about the controversy surrounding the publication of Sushmita's autobiographical accounts.

"We are against the Taliban. Had he depicted the Taliban only we would not have objected. But going by the contents of Sushmita's books, the Pashtun community in general is denigrated. Although we came to know about many contentious parts in these books, we did not object at that time as the reach of Bengali publication is limited," said Yasmin, the great-grand daughter of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

"But in case the film is made, it will show the Pashtun community in a poor light and create a wrong image about Pashtuns among Indians. We think it is unethical on the part of the director to shoot the film without bothering to show us the script, or discussing it with us," she said, adding, "We will consider approaching the censor board if nothing stops the producer."

The director and producer of the film could not be contacted as they were away shooting in Ladakh. (PTI)
 


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