Bollywood's trysts with encounter specialists

REEL-LIFE ENCOUNTERS: The rise of encounter specialists and their fall has made for an ideal film script.

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Mumbai: Ever since the names of Mumbai's controversial encounter specialists started making headlines in early 2000, Bollywood was inspired. The industry churned out a couple of thrillers which reflected the life and times of Mumbai's trigger-happy cops.

The most recent was Apoorva Lakhia's Sanjay Dutt-starrer Shootout at Lokhandwala, based on the well-known encounter by top cop Aftab Ahmed Khan in which gangster Maya Dolas was killed in Mumbai's popular residential area Lokhandwala in 1991. Dutt who played the role of Khan in the film was actually shooting in Mumbai when the real encounter took place.

“I was actually shooting in Mumbai when the real encounter happened, I was not too far from Lokhandwala and suddenly a lot of cop vans came on our film-set. They asked us to lend them our lights as their encounter could continue till late night, so I clearly remember when and how this incident happened,” Sanjay Dutt recounted.

The heroic rise of names such as Daya Nayak, Pradeep Sharma, Vijay Salaskar and their subsequent controversial fall was ideal for a great script.

Much before Shimit Amin hit the bulls-eye with Chak De India, he gave us the hard-hitting story of an encounter specialist in his debut Ab Tak Chappan.

Nana Patekar played Sadhu Agashe, an encounter specialist whose successful career ended tragically after he is alleged to have underworld links.

In 2003, filmmaker N Chandra came up with Kagaar, another gritty tale on the life of a Mumbai cop who believes in mowing down gangsters rather than locking them up.

Though Bollywood's obsession with the underworld has continued over the years, its date with encounter cops seems to have had an abrupt end. Blame that on the slowly fading halo around these encounter specialists. For now, Bollywood's looking for new heroes.