Since cricket issue didn’t work Sena picked on Fire, says Deepa

NEW DELHI, DEC 5: She is running a fever and is sniffing away in her photographer brother's home, but that hasn't doused her anger. Deepa...

NEW DELHI, DEC 5: She is running a fever and is sniffing away in her photographer brother’s home, but that hasn’t doused her anger. Deepa Mehta, who has just flown in from Toronto, has vowed to fight to the end to have her film, Fire, back in theatres. The director says she will begin by not only petitioning the Supreme Court for a directive in her favour, but also asking President K R Narayanan and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to intervene.

Accompanied by friends from the film industry, Dilip Kumar and Mahesh Bhatt, Mehta says she will tell Vajpayee to ensure the security of the theatres which are screening Fire. “Someone told me the Prime Minister writes poetry, I wonder how he will feel if someone were to tear up his work,” says Mehta. “To me this is not just about Fire, it is about our constitutional right. After this, no work of art is sacred,” she says.Mehta is hoping to establish the fact that her film is being used as a political pawn.

“Because the cricket controversydidn’t work, the Shiv Sena picked on my film. Otherwise, why attack a film that has been running for three weeks?” asks Mehta, referring to the Shiv Sena enforcing an unofficial ban on the film.

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But what has irked the Canada-based filmmaker most, is the film having been sent back to the Central Board for Film Certification by the Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting. “It is a clear ploy by Mr Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to appease his allies,” says Mehta, adding, “The public outrage that he is quoting as the main reason is actually a well-orchestrated campaign by the Shiv Sainiks. We have to suffer because they are afraid of this demi-God, Bal Thackeray.”

The controversy surrounding Fire has also made Mehta apprehensive about her forthcoming film, Earth. She is hoping to show the Aamir Khan, Rahul Khanna and Nandita Das-starrer at the International Film Festival of India in Hyderabad in January. The film, based on Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man, is set during the Partition.Seeing the problems that beset Bhatt’s Zakhm and her own Fire, Mehta now says, “Maybe, everyone will have to come and see Earth in London or maybe we’ll have another Government by then, who knows?”

The police said that Kumar, a resident of Turbhe MIDC in Navi Mumbai, was driving his concrete mixer truck when it collided with an SUV.

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