Sonali Joshi Pitale (MID-DAY; April 7, 2014)

Priyanka Chopra is busy wrapping up shoot for her forthcoming film, a biopic on boxer Mary Kom. She was shooting for the film in Manali, but a couple of days ago, the unit had to cancel a shoot for some hours due to the crowds swelling around the scene of shoot. A unit member says, “We have recreated Darjeeling in Manali and shooting over the past weeks has gone off smoothly. The last leg of the shoot is currently on, and for one of the sequences, we had to shoot in a market place. Since the area is not thickly populated, we thought it wouldn’t be a difficult task. Accordingly, we had arranged for limited security on the sets.”

But this seems to have backfired when word about the shoot spread among locals. “Soon the situation was out of control. More than 10,000 people gathered on the sets and the security could not handle the crowds. When Priyanka stepped out of her van, some fans tried to approach her. Finally, we had to cancel the shoot and move out of the location. After nearly four hours, the area was evacuated and we asked for more security on the sets. Half of the day was wasted due to this chaos,” adds the source.

The film’s spokesperson remained unavailable for comment.