Media persons allege they’ve been assaulted, FIR filed, shooting halted for two days
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 4, 2017)


The shooting of Sanjay Dutt’s comeback film, Bhoomi, came to an abrupt halt in Agra on Thursday when some media persons claimed that they had been roughed up by the actor’s bouncer. A local journalist even filed an FIR with the Tajganj police station claiming he and some others had been assaulted and their cameras, snatched.

Producer Sandeep Singh, however, claims that this is an attempt to get publicity on Sanjay’s name. He informs that they’ve been shooting in the city since the last 10 days and yesterday’s location was a petha shop. There were two shops available in the area and after deciding on one of them, they blocked off the entire road because they knew Sanjay Dutt, Aditi Rao Hydari and Sidhant Gupta would attract huge crowds and with their lead already unwell, they didn’t want to add to his troubles. So they hired 20 bouncers and a posse of policemen to beef up the security.

“The owner of the rival shop, who runs a local website, was flitting around clicking pictures to upload on it. The bouncers politely requested him not to do so and he got aggressive and started hitting them with his helmet and tripod. Others joined in and threatened to break cameras and vanity vans. We were forced to stop shooting and return to our hotel,” says Sandeep.

He says he’s not sure if they can continue filming in Agra despite having an additional 20 guards as the mobs landed up outside their hotel too. “Luckily Sanjay had left the location an hour before the incident but at the hotel he had to come out and apologise. The man who started it all was wearing a blue shirt earlier. He turned up in a torn, white shirt at the hotel and claimed the bouncers had ripped it. If such incidents continue, producers will be afraid to shoot outside Maharashtra,” he warns, admitting he’s lost two days of work and claims he’s unaware of the FIR. “We were supposed to shoot for another month here but now I’m not sure.”

Sanjay, when quizzed about the incident, said that he was not present when it happened. “Had I been there, this wouldn’t have happened. Through our films we promote a city too and such mishaps shame everybody,” he signs off.