Kunal Kapoor’s terrorist encounter

Director Rahul Dholakia’s Lamhaa that aims at dissecting the issues plaguing the militancy-ridden Kashmir valley needed a lot of research to make the film have a balanced approach.

The cast and crew during their research on Kashmir met many well-known politicians, local leaders and even religious fundamentalists to get their perspective. But Kunal Kapoor, who plays a young political leader in the film, has done something quite daring to get into the skin of his character. 

DNA has learnt that he visited a trained ex-militant who had officially surrendered to the Indian army to know about why the people of Kashmir are ready to embrace the radical approach.

Kunal informs, “Rahul had researched everything about Kashmir thoroughly and the film wanted to have the various voices of Kashmir so that the movie is not perceived by any one group to be biased to anyone. But since I was playing a political leader, I decided to do a little bit of research myself by mixing with the people of Kashmir to know what they feel about what’s going on there and what their wants were.”

He then reveals, “I also got hold of an ex-militant who was trained to be a terrorist. I met with him just to know what the viewpoint of a terrorist is about the Kashmir issue. I cannot unfortunately reveal his name since that would be putting his life in jeopardy,” Kunal says.

“This person has now been rehabilitated in society after he surrendered as a terrorist. He now runs a shop and leads a completely normal life like any one of us. His perspective really helped me in understanding the minds of common people in the war-torn land and I could understand how to play my character too.”