Bollywood babe’ to play burqa-wearing Muslim sparks lawsuit

Andrabi was furious because Basu is known for revealing her voluptuous curves, playing vamps who scheme to steal other women’s husbands, and her long-term affair with heart-throb actor and male model John Abraham

Bipasha Basu

Andrabi decided to sue the makers of Lamhaa, a Bollywood blockbuster about the plight of Kashmir and the lives of militants fighting Indian rule, when she discovered Basu had been cast to play her character.

She had held a number of earlier meetings with the film’s producer, she said, in which he reassured her she would be truthfully portrayed and sympathetic to the struggle of Kashmiri separatists.

Andrabi became a militant women’s leader in the early 1980s and formed her own group, Dukhtaran e Millat (Daughters of the Nation) to campaign against families who married off their poor daughters, the payment of dowries and pornography. She led a group of activists who defaced Bollywood billboards showing revealing pictures of actresses like Basu.