Duleep Singh’s kin moves court against filmmakers

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 5

Alleging distortion of facts, city-based Damandeep Singh Sandhawalia has moved the Delhi High Court against the makers of Hollywood film “The Black Prince”.

Damandeep’s ancestor Thakur Singh Sandhawalia was a cousin of Maharaja Duleep Singh, on whose life the film is based.

The HC has issued a notice to Brillstein Entertainment Partners, Firdaus Productions, Jasjeet Singh (executive producer) and Kavi Raj (director), seeking their response within four weeks.

Damandeep, a software engineer, said Maharaja Duleep Singh had been portrayed as a weak, confused and depressed person, which was not true. He said Thakur Singh Sandhawalia had been shown as an aide rather than a cousin of Duleep Singh.

“I had been associated with the production house of the film since December 2014 and provided them our personal family records, photographs, some records procured from the British Library in London and copyright information documents. We had asked them to show us the movie before releasing it. Though they promised but later on they gave us a verbal assurance that historical facts have been incorporated and nothing has been distorted. We, too, relied on them.”

“When we watched the movie, we found that the movie does not truly depict the major part of the history regarding the government-in-exile led by Maharaja Duleep Singh from Russia and France, wherein he made Thakur Singh Sandhawalia Prime Minister and second-in-command of the entire anti-British movement up to August 1887, besides other important facts. Similarly, Maharaja Duleep Singh’s encounter with a beggar (a former king) on a street is fictional,” he said.

In the film, Maharaja Duleep Singh is shown getting a stroke and then he gets paralysed on seeing the blood-dripping sword. “This scene is fictional and defamatory to the son of the Lion of Punjab. Maharaja Duleep Singh was not a weak man who couldn’t even bear the sight of blood.

“The shortcomings have done damage to our family’s dignity, which compelled us to move court,” he said.