Director Ram Gopal Varma’s selection of a hitman in his latest underworld flick Sarkar could be heading for some diplomatic awkwardness between India and the United Arab Emirates.The movie shows an Olympic gold medal-winning shooter from Dubai being hired to eliminate a Mumbai Don—played by Amitabh Bachchan. Only, in real life, there’s only one such Olympic medalist from the United Arab Emirates, Ahmed al-Maktoum, winner of two gold medals at Athens.The character mirroring al-Maktoum—a member of the Dubai’s powerful ruling family—is now being viewed as an insult to the Emirate.‘‘This is a direct insult,’’ al-Maktoum told The Indian Express from Dubai. He’s now waiting for a reaction from the makers of Sarkar and the royal family. Newspapers in the Emirate reported that Dubai’s Information and Culture Ministry is watching and contemplating if the issue should be taken up at an official level with India.‘‘I have said what I had to say and now it is for the public and others to decide if the comment was fair,’’ Al-Maktoum said. Although Varma was unavailable for comment, his official statement read: ‘‘This matter was raised at the time of the release on July 1, so two days later, we sent a letter of apology to the royal family of Dubai. It’s pure co-incidence, we weren’t even aware of Maktoum.’’The 32-year-old shooter enjoys iconic status in the UAE. Educated at the Western State University in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Ahmed was the flag-bearer for his country in the Busan Asian Games and the Athens Olympics.After his historic gold at Athens, ahead of the Indian army’s Rajyavardhan Rathore, Ahmed hasn’t looked back.After the Olympic gold, Ahmed captured by the World Championship title and the World Cup-a feat no other shooter has ever achieved. Rathore, who Ahmed refers to as his Indian brother, too is perturbed by the Sarkar reference. ‘‘This is ridiculous, there was no need for such a reference in the movie,’’ he said.Script-writer Manish Gupta said he had no idea who Maktoum was. ‘‘The character, Mani, is a person who exaggerates and puns constantly. So it was a joke, not meant to be taken seriously. We’re aware that professional shooters do not indulge in underworld activities,’’ he said.Most hurt by this has been India’s double-trap shooter Morad Ali, who was training with Ahmed in Dubai when the controversy broke. ‘‘Those 10 days in Dubai were very embarrassing for me. Wherever I went, there were questions asked to me. Ahmed saw the movie and asked me about it. I had no answer,’’ Ali said.Ali gave an idea about Ahmed’s celebrity status in Dubai. ‘‘Whenever I went out with him, he was mobbed. There were people asking for autographs or asking him to pose for a picture,’’ he said.Commenting on the controversy, Ali said: ‘‘It is an insult to the whole shooting fraternity. It takes years of hard work to get a Olympic medal and no one has the right to run down that effort by comparing him to a hitman.’’The film had already generated pre-release controvery about whether it was about Bal Thackeray or merely an adaptation of Godfather.(With Swati Anand)
