india

Updated: Jan 29, 2015 08:51 IST

An imam in Kashmir valley has claimed he lost his job after featuring in the movie Haider. He has sent a legal notice to director Vishal Bhardwaj to pay the damages.

Imam Ghulam Hassan Shah, a resident of south Kashmir’s Qazigund area, alleged he read the nikah and participated in a video shoot with a promise of the video ‘being utilised for some educative purposes’.

“But it was later utilised in the film,” said Shah’s lawyer Firdous Ahmad Bhat in a legal notice sent to the director.

Haider, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, was shot in the Valley.

The director, Vishal Bhardwaj, worked with a number of local artists to authentically portray Kashmir in the backdrop of when the Valley faced the peak of militancy in the early 1990s.

Shah’s lawyer claimed the imam lost his job after people saw him in the movie, considered un-Islamic by many in the Valley.

“Shah was expelled from the Masjid Baba Dawood Khaki, Gulshan Mohalla Bachi Darwaza, Srinagar,” said the lawyer.

The imam has demanded a public apology from the director and claimed damages to the tune of Rs 50 lakh if the apology is not tendered.

Haider was released last year and faced a number of controversies on the subject and characters.

The movie was co-authored by Valley-based writer Basharat Peer and featured actors Shahid Kapur, Tabu, Shraddha Kapoor, Kay Kay Menon and Irrfan Khan in lead roles.