Ajay and Akshaye talk about Aakrosh

Reclusive duo Ajay Devgn and Akshaye Khanna talk about fighting honour killings in Aakrosh at the Screen preview

Neither of them is a talker but both Ajay Devgn and Akshaye Khanna find themselves completing each other’s sentences at the Screen preview for their forthcoming film Aakrosh at the Screen office in Mumbai’s Express Towers along with producer Kumar Mangat Pathak. “The film uses the recent spate of controversial honour killings in North India as the background of a typical Bollywood action-drama,” says Devgn who, fresh out of the success of Raajneeti and Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, is now hoping for a hat-trick. Khanna, who will be seen on the big screen after a year’s gap, is quick to add, “The story has been fictionalised and we have taken precautions to not name any town or caste in particular.”

The film sees Devgn play an army officer and Khanna, a CBI officer, both sent to a small town to investigate a missing person case which they eventually discover is a murder. Directed by veteran filmmaker Priyadarshan, the concept for the film was instantly approved by Mangat who has himself witnessed one such killing in his Punjab village. “A Brahmin girl married her lower caste lover on the sly. Upon knowledge, her parents kidnapped her and were marrying her off to someone else when the boy arrived at the wedding. He was set on fire and thrashed just to set an example. The memory of it alone gives me the chills,” he recounts.