The son of Bradford’s first Asian Lord Mayor is to play the role of an Islamic terrorist from Leeds in a film based on the July 7 bombings.
The Bollywood movie Suicide Bomber will be based on the events of 2005 and will be shown in this country.
Irfan Ajeeb, 31, is the son of Mohammed Ajeeb who became the first Asian Lord Mayor in Britain in 1985.
He will leave his Bradford home shortly for Mumbai to commence shooting the film which is to be set in India and Yorkshire.
Its writer and producer, Mahesh Bhatt, introduced Ajeeb to Bollywood several years ago and encouraged him to take up a career as an actor. At that time Ajeeb worked at the National Media Museum in Bradford where he was involved in their annual Bite the Mango festival which invited some of Bollywood’s biggest names from India to Bradford.
One of them was Mr Bhatt, recognised as one of India’s best-known film- makers whose work is not typical of the escapist
Bollywood song-and-dance movie.
Ajeeb has been involved in developing the script of Suicide Bomber and has visited Beeston where the Leeds-based London bombers came from.
“I firmly believe that when you look at these guys, we are more or less all the same,” he said.
“We live in households that are similar. I’ve been on the streets of Beeston and imagined how it would be if I had grown up there. Beeston reminded me of walking the streets of Manningham.
“I also watch the television images of the American bombing of Afghan-istan and Iraq. The solution isn’t to strap a bomb to yourself and bomb innocent people in London.
“I am not agreeing with what they did. I am trying to understand why. That for me is the challenge.”
Mr Bhatt says Suicide Bomber will explore the alienation of the terrorists within a framework of the Iraq war and the bloodshed in Palestine. Some of it may be shot in Yorkshire, although studio sets in Mumbai might be used instead.
The offer to Ajeeb to play a part in the film came up after he had completed a course at an acting school in Mumbai run by a Hindi film star.
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