Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University on Tuesday became a hotbed of real life drama after it emerged that the crew of the Bollywood film No One Killed Jessica had shot extensively on campus the day before without the knowledge of Vice-Chancellor K Bandyopadhyay. To add to Bandyopadhyays distress on Monday,security personnel accompanying the film crew had locked the very gate he uses to enter the university. The Vice-Chancellor spent several uncomfortable moments smarting outside around 10.30 in the morning. He has ordered an inquiry on why the shooting when the film crews request to shoot on campus was still on his table and under consideration. The crew of the film based on the murder of former model Jessica Lall and starring Vidya Balan and Rani Mukherjee arrived at the Kashmere Gate campus around 7 am. They were to shoot in the University School of Information Technology,a colonial-era building that once housed the Delhi Institute of Technology. The set designers spent Sunday recreating the Patiala House courts inside. Bandopadhyay said on Tuesday that he was not informed about the shooting. It caused major inconvenience at a time when many people visit the campus to buy application forms, he said. The procedure (to look into the request for shooting) were initiated but not followed properly. We will constitute an inquiry committee to see how the VC was kept in the dark. It will be an internal inquiry and based on the report we shall decide whether to approach the police. Sources said a faculty in Centre for Media Studies had jumped the gun and informed the crew that permission to film had been granted even though the file was being processed. Consultant with the University Centre for Media Studies (UCMS) Ambrish Saxena had written a letter on April 13 to the producers saying: The concerned authorities have accepted your request and you are allowed to conduct your shooting in the corridor of the University School of Information Technology on Monday,April 19,2010 from 6 am to 7 pm without causing any disturbance to classes. University officials were surprised that permission was given on a working day,and that too,without charging any fee from the film crew. This was reportedly because UCMS students were promised a first-hand experience of filmmaking. We would like to remind you that as per your commitment to Mr Raj Kumar Gupta,director of the film being shot on the university campus,may oblige us by interacting with our TV Production students, Saxenas letter said. No such interaction,however,took place,sources said. The crew shot till 6 pm.
