Filmmaker shoots accused cop's court hearing on the day he's sentenced 
By Subhash K. Jha, March 26, 2008 - 11:08 IST
On March 18, when top cop Ravi Kant Sharma was sentenced for the murder of journalist Shivani Bhatnagar, director Sushen Bhatnagar shot a dramatized version of the Sharma hearing for his film Monica which is based on the life of Shivani Bhatnagar.
Director Sushen Bhatnagar, who shares his surname with the murdered mediaperson, sounds stunned. "It wasn't planned that way at all. But while we were shooting the murder trial and verdict in our film with an actor named Dadhi Pandey playing Varma's role, we got to know that the real-life cop had been sentenced. It was uncanny, almost as if the dead girl was telling us something."
Sushen has taken his namesake's signal from heaven very seriously. "I want to complete Monica and release it as fast as possible. Shivani's story, of a small-town girl's ambitions, has to be told. The issue is alive right now because of Sharma's sentencing. And Shivani's story cannot be allowed to die."
The role of the celluloid Shivani is played by the gifted Divya Dutta. Says the director, "I've earlier done a true-life drama, Trisha, with Divya. It's important for me as a filmmaker to use cinema as an extension of the newspaper. I feel Divya understands the mindset and the yearnings of an ambitious small-town girl better than most actresses in Bollywood who don't know of the existence of a world outside the metropolis."
Ashutosh Rana plays a character inspired by the late Pramod Mahajan.
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