Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; July 21, 2019)

Last year, he completed his war trilogy with Paltan, which revolved around the 1967 Nathu La and Cho La clashes between the Indian and Chinese troops. And now, filmmaker J P Dutta has gone back to the drawing board. While his daughter Nidhi and his plans to make a historical are already afoot, Dutta has also started penning a biopic. In a first of sorts, he does not plan to direct the film, but will only produce it with Nidhi.

Hearsay is that the biopic is based on Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani, the first Kashmiri to receive an Ashoka Chakra. He was awarded posthumously this Republic Day by President Ram Nath Kovind, and his wife Mehjabeen had collected the award. Wani, a Sena Medal winner, was lauded for his fearlessness and display of valour in a counter-insurgency operation in Kashmir in 2018.

The film is set in the strife-torn Kashmir of the 1990s and it encapsulates the soldier’s story alongside the key incidents, which occurred in the state across the last two decades, that have shaped its present. According to a source close to the Duttas, the filmmaker and his daughter are in talks to finalise a director and actors for this film before starting JP’s next as a director. “J P Dutta stumbled upon the idea of this biopic during the course of a conversation with friends from the army a few months ago. With this film, he plans to explore Kashmir as a subject; it’s something he has followed it for years,” says our source.