On July 8, Peepingmoon.com exclusively informed the readers that John Abraham has signed Naam Shabana and Special OPS director Shivam Nair’s next film, which will go on floors around October-November this year. Proving us right, the director announced the film yesterday, saying, "I have been working on this geopolitical thriller for a while now with team Fortune Pictures. A lot of hard work and research has gone into the creation of the story structure and this script. Truly, their sense of story crafting is impeccable. We have John Abraham as our lead for this, whose title we will reveal shortly. Pre-production for this joint venture with Wakaao Films has started as well."
Now, we have learned that the yet-untitled film is based on a real-life story of an Indian diplomat’s efforts to repatriate an Indian girl from Pakistan, where she was allegedly forced and duped into marrying against her choice. "Shivam Nair and John Abraham’s film is about the rescue mission of Uzma Ahmed, a Delhi girl who made headlines in 2017 when she was forced to marry a Pakistani resident at gunpoint and was brought back to India with the help of the Indian Embassy in Islamabad. John will play the role of JP Singh, India’s former Deputy High Commissioner in Islamabad, who helped Ahmed’s return to her homeland in 2017. The film is a heart-wrenching story about Uzma’s struggle to get free from her forceful marriage and her escape from Pakistan, however, has been designed as an edge-of-the-seat thriller, told through the eyes of Singh, who executed the whole rescue mission on the ground," a source close to the project told us, clarifying that the film is not a biopic, but rather a story about the Indian Embassy in Islamabad, which saves an Indian girl in trouble.
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While John Abraham plays JP Singh in the film, the hunt for the actress who can pull off Uzma’s role aptly is still on. The makers are looking for a prominent face, but they are yet to finalize someone. The casting is underway also for the role of Sushma Swaraj, the then Union Minister of External Affairs, who was completely involved in and personally monitoring the mission to rescue the girl. Shivam Nair is finally taking off on this project five years after the announcement. It was earlier supposed to happen with Saif Ali Khan and Shraddha Kapoor but was put on the backburner due to budgetary issues. The film has since gone through several casting changes and is finally set to roll with John Abraham headlining it. Ashwin Varde, Vipul D Sah and Rajesh Bahl’s Wakaoo Films is producing this film in association with Bhushan Kumar’s T-Series and Sameer Dixit, Jatish Varma and Girish Johar’s Fortune Pictures. Popular screenwriter Ritesh Shah (Kahaani, Pink, Airlift, Raid) has written the film.
For those unaware, Uzma Ahmed fell in love with a Pakistani taxi driver, Tahir Ali, during a trip to Malaysia. But her fairy tale turned ugly as soon as she stopped in the neighboring country, only to find that he was married and a father of four. What followed was a forced marriage at gunpoint and a sexual assault. She somehow managed to approach the Indian High Commission to come to her rescue, and she finally returned to India on May 25, 2017 through the Indian government’s intervention.
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