Actress Mahira Khan who was to make her big Bollywood debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in ‘Raees’ might now only be visible in a few scenes.
The actress reportedly had two songs in the film, one of which had been canned earlier this year.
The actress was in India last February to shoot for the film with Shah Rukh Khan in Bhuj and later in Mumbai before she went back to Pakistan.
Mumbai Mirror has reported that she will not be coming back to India to shoot the second song. Also, a romantic scene between SRK and Mahira has also reportedly been chopped off.
According to the source who reported to Mumbai Mirror, it was easy to cut short Mahira’s role in the film, because her role was similar to Parveen Babi’s role in Yash Chopra’s 1975 film Deewar. The film revolved around two warring brothers, Vijay and Ravi, played by Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor.
Speaking about Raees, he said, “This one revolves around the conflict between Shah Rukh Khan who plays a bootlegger, Raees Alam, and ACP Ghulam Patel enacted by Nawaz (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) who is on his trail. So, it wasn’t difficult to trim her role which has been done with the intention of not hurting public sentiment.”
However, Shah Rukh Khan is currently shooting his introduction scene alone in Mumbai and will wrap up all his portions in two-three days.
After the September 18 Uri attack, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had issued an ultimatum to Pakistani artistes to leave India and said they would not let their movies release in India. The Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association passed a resolution banning Pakistanis from working in films being made in India as they were upset that Pakistani artistes did not condemn the incident.
