After bringing the struggle of advocate Shahid Azmi against injustice to the centrestage, director Hansal Mehta is working on yet another life sketch. This time of an unassuming professor, who suddenly became controversial. In 2010 Professor Srinivas Ramchandra Siras made it to newspaper pages not as a linguist of repute but because of his sexual predilections. Siras, who used to teach Marathi at Aligarh Muslim University’s Department of Modern Indian Languages, was allegedly captured on camera in a compromising position with a rickshaw-puller at his residence. Salacious details were leaked to the media and Siras was suspended by the University authorities. He appealed against the decision in Allahabad High Court, which ruled in his favour, but a few days after the verdict he was found dead at his residence in mysterious circumstances. Police called it a suicide but there were many loopholes waiting to be plugged.
Now Mehta, armed with creative licence, is turning his poignant story into a feature film. “I got to know about his case from an acquaintance and I asked her to develop the story with my team. Now we have a script and I am going for the shoot soon,” says Mehta, who is also turning a producer with the film. “More than the homosexual and religious angle, I am looking at the human rights issue and the attitude of the society where even an educated man is not allowed the right to privacy,” says Mehta. The newspaper reports of the period suggest that it was the students of the university who made the video. “Since the verdict came at a time when Section 377 was declared unconstitutional by the Delhi High Court, a large portion of the film is set in court where the socio-legal angle of the subject is debated.” It is one of the strengths of Mehta as we have seen in the court room scenes of Shahid. “The film also deliberates that with the Supreme Court overturning the High Court judgment on Section 377, the professor could have been a criminal in the eyes of law as well.”
Mehta has roped in Manoj Bajpayee to play the lead role. “For the last one month he is undergoing coaching in Marathi language.” Mehta doesn’t want to divulge more details. “We will shoot in Uttar Pradesh but since it is a sensitive subject I don’t want the shooting to be disturbed.”
The year 2014 turned out to be a landmark year for Mehta where he won the National Award for Shahid and his Citylights was appreciated.
“All these years I had a muffled voice and I was asking for a megaphone but now I have finally found my voice.”
