Legal notice from Sanjay Gandhi’s ‘daughter’?

There’s hardly a month left for the release of Madhur Bhandarkar’s film, Indu Sarkar, which recreates the events during the Emergency of 1977 in India. And guess what? A woman who claims to be the daughter of Congress politician and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s late son, Sanjay Gandhi, has sent a legal notice to director Bhandarkar, producer Bharat Shah, Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Information & Broadcasting, and Pahlaj Nihalani, the chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), to stop the CBFC from giving it a go-ahead.

In a four-page legal notice (HT has a copy of the notice) dated June 23, Gurgaon-based Priya Singh Paul claims that she has come to know that her “father” Sanjay Gandhi and her grandmother Indira Gandhi (played by actors Neil Nitin Mukesh and Supriya Vinod in the film), are shown in roles “without accurate or with sufficient historical data” and may be shown in “poor light”. It asks for the release to be stopped until she is shown the film and gives her nod. The recipients of this startling legal notice have been given a week to respond.

While Bhandarkar refused to comment, Nihalani says, “We had no idea Shri Sanjay Gandhi had another child besides Varun Gandhi. The notice says Ms Priya Paul Singh is his ‘biological child’. Unless the Gandhi parivaar acknowledges her claims, we can’t act on Ms Singh’s objections to the film.”

Indira Gandhi with son, Sanjay Gandhi

Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar