WORLD BULLETINS

Beheading offer in India film row

A MEMBER of India’s Hindu nationalist ruling party has offered a 100 million rupee (£1.2m) reward to anyone who beheads the lead actress and the director of the yet-to-be released Bollywood film Padmavati over its alleged handling of the relationship between a Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler.

Suraj Pal Amu, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from the northern state of Haryana, offered the bounty against actress Deepika Padukone and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

The film’s producers postponed the release of the film, which was set to be in cinemas on December 1. Padmavati is based on a 16th century Sufi epic poem, Padmavat, a fictional account of a Rajput queen who chose to kill herself rather than be captured by the Muslim sultan of Delhi.