Deepika Padukone is busy promoting her upcoming film Chhapaak and she made headline for visiting JNU to support the students in protest.
The film is based on the life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, who was also making news for quite another reason. Yesterday on Twitter, ‘Nadeem Khan’ and ‘Rajesh’ began trending on the microblogging site after a magazine article claimed the name of the antagonist had been changed.
For those unaware, in 2005, Laxmi was disfigured for life when a man called Nadeem Khan and three others allegedly hurled acid at her in Delhi’s upscale Khan Market.
The claim:
The controversy arose when a magazine wrote an article headlined, “The Ways Of Bollywood: In Deepika Padukone-Starer Chhapaak, Acid Attacker Naeem Khan Becomes ‘Rajesh’.” “As part of a backlash against Padukone’s JNU ‘meet and greet’, social media users researched the names of the characters involved in the movie Chhapaak and conspicuously found the name of the main perpetrator Naeem Khan absent,” the article alleged.
The verdict:
In the film based on her life, the narrative remains the same but the names have been changed.
So, Laxmi is ‘Malti’ Agarwal and Nadeem become ‘Babboo’ aka ‘Bashir Khan’. Moreover, Rajesh is the name of Malti’s boyfriend.
But there is no mention of any Nadeem or Naeem Khan in the film.
