News & Pics: Rons Bantwal
Daijiworld Media Network – Mumbai (VA)

Mumbai, Mar 16: Mumbai girls Neelakshi Singh, Avantika Sharma and Anaya Das have started shooting for the film Jhansi Ki Rani – the great escape.

The film produced by the Cochin-based Red Ruby Films is being made in Tamil, but will be dubbed in about four additional languages including Hindi, Bengali and English.
 
It is a big budget movie by South film industry and is primarily a fictionalized version of the historical narrative of the British general Hugh Rose who had commented that the Rani of Jhansi was "remarkable for her beauty, cleverness and perseverance and was the most dangerous of all the rebel leaders”.

In the film, the Rani uses the charms and gullibility of the young Rachel Nunes played by the Avantika Sharma against her own father –a colonel in the British army. Rachel Nunes falls in love with one of the soldiers in the Rani’s army who is asked to kidnap and elope with the 20-year-old thus distracting and delaying her father who is hot in pursuit of the Rani’s unorganized army of women volunteers.
 
According to Flynn Remedios, publicist and spokesperson for Red Ruby Films, the film is bound to create a big controversy as it shows the Rani as a scheming, devious woman who would stop at nothing to reach her goal. “All is fair in love and war,” was apparently Rani Laxmi bai’s motto when she used some ‘women of the night’ in her army to seduce and distract the British soldiers during the siege of Jhansi, says Flynn Remedios.

While Neelakshi Singh plays Rani Laxmibai, Avantika Sharma is the 20-year-old daughter of a British colonel. Anaya Das plays the role of Jhansi rani’s dasi who helps her to escape from the British onslaught.