Bounty offered for beheadings of Bollywood director, actress
NEW DELHI — A member of India’s Hindu nationalist ruling party offered 100 million rupees ($1.5 million) to anyone who beheads the lead actress and the director of an unreleased Bollywood film “Padmavati” rumoured to depict a relationship between a Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler.
Suraj Pal Amu, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from the northern state of Haryana, offered the bounty against actress Deepika Padukone and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Sunday. The film’s producers postponed the release of the film, which was set to be in theatres Dec. 1, and Amu was reported by local media to have said at a public rally that the film would not be allowed to be released at all.
“Padmavati” is based on a 16th century Sufi epic poem, “Padmavat,” in which a brave and beautiful Rajput queen chose to kill herself rather than be captured by the Muslim sultan of Delhi, Allaudin Khilji. Over centuries of its retelling, the epic has come to be seen as history, despite little evidence.
Padukone plays Padmini, the legendary queen who committed “jauhar,” the medieval Rajput practice in which female royals walked into funeral fires to embrace death over the dishonour of being taken captive.