Latest news with #Tejpal
Hindustan Times
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
{Hindu girl- Muslim boy marriage} Locals want boy's family to leave Charkhi Dadri village
A 25-year old Muslim boy and his family are facing pressure to leave their home in Mehrana village in Charkhi Dadri over marriage with a Hindu girl of the same village. Locals demand meeting of three-village panchayat to decide action against the boy's family (HT File) 'A 25-year-old Hindu girl, who was pursuing masters degree from Rohtak changed her religion and married a 25-year-old Muslim youth on July 3 seeking protection from the court after which they were ordered to move into a safe house,' Charkhi Dadri Sadar police station house officer (SHO) Tejpal said. When the people of the village got to know about the marriage it caused an uproar. Athgama Khap head Dharampal Mehrana said that they called a panchayat and asked the family members of the Muslim youth to break off the marriage. 'The families agreed to the panchayat's demand and took the couple to the local police station where the young man and woman signed an affidavit to start proceedings to part ways. The Muslim youth and the Hindu girl are now living with their own parents and we are now exploring legal options to end this relationship,' he added. He said that this incident has broken the social fabric of the rural society where people consider girls from the same and neighbouring villages as sisters and these youngsters have committed this act which is unforgivable. 'Now villagers are asking us to hold a panchayat of three villages and take strict action against the family of the Muslim youth. Peace has been restored in the village but everyone feels cheated. This village has helped the Muslim family in every situation and their boy has done the unthinkable by fleeing with the Hindu girl,' he added. Vishnu, a resident of Mehrana village said that both the girl and boy are responsible for 'breaking social fabric and brotherhood' by solemnising the marriage. 'We have urged Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini several times to bring a legislation ensuring ban on marriages in same villages, neighbouring villages and in the same gotra but the government is still in deep slumber. Such incidents will come to light more in future and these will create a rift in the society,' he added. Four policemen have been deployed at the youth's house and the girl's family has been staying in Charkhi Dadri for the last some years. The villagers had asked the Muslim youth's family to shut their grocery shop. A youth from the same village, requesting anonymity said that the girl, who lived with her family in Charkhi Dadri, came in contact with Muslim youth during the wedding of the latter's sister in December 2023. 'The Muslim youth's sister was a friend of the Hindu girl and then he befriended her. The girl's family was aware of their relationship and a few months ago, they asked the Muslim youth to stay away from their daughter but to no avail,' he added. Charkhi Dadri Sadar police station house officer (SHO) Tejpal said that the boy and the girl signed affidavits declaring that they will stay with their parents and decided to break off the marriage, adding they are monitoring the situation in the village.
Hindustan Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Wanted to create a compelling story about disparate worlds colliding: 'Stolen' director Karan Tejpal
New Delhi, Karan Tejpal had almost given up on his dream to become a director when he stumbled upon the idea of his critically-acclaimed film "Stolen", about two brothers who are forced to confront their privilege after they witness a baby being stolen from an impoverished tribal woman at a small town railway station. The director, who worked as an assistant on films like '3 Idiots' and 'Delhi 6', said he wrote "Stolen" after he came across a video where two businessmen lost their lives in a lynching because they were mistaken as baby snatchers by the crowd. "Disparate worlds are always clashing and coming together and it's not something unique in itself in India. But the way we have sort of addressed it in 'Stolen' is to create a compelling story out of it, and to have that intersection kind of take our privileged characters to a place where they have a transformation," Tejpal told PTI in a virtual interview. "We never set out with this idea that we are telling some really unique story about this intersection. But the idea was to tell an honest story about it, which compels you to think about these intersections." After its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, "Stolen" travelled to many international festivals like BFI London, and the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne Produced and co-written by Gaurav Dhingra of Jungle Book Studio, the film features Abhishek Banerjee and Shubham as two brothers and Mia Maelzer as the tribal woman. Harish Khanna and Sahidur Rahaman also star in key roles. The movie released on Prime Video earlier this month. Tejpal said his personal motto while making a movie is to find the "heart of the story". "If filmmakers do not find their heart within a story and they don't find that personal link to a story, then that story is never going to have any potency. For me, this project, or for any in the future, I think the hardest part is finding the heart of that story." Banerjee, who plays sheltered rich brat Gautam Bansal in the movie, said his motivations to do the film were simple: he wanted to be part of an action drama. 'I really love the action genre and just wanted to have fun on the set without thinking much... Both Karan and Gaurav had designed the film so well that you could see the film even when they were giving the narration,' he said. He, however, said being on the "Stolen" set felt like being in a proper acting college. 'This was the most planned film I've ever shot. Not a single minute was wasted. If we are on set, we are doing something productive. And if we are not on set, then still, we are doing something productive, either rehearsing or writing,' he added. Shubham, who graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India and co-wrote the critically-acclaimed "Eeb Allay Ooo!" with Prateek Vats, said he also loved that the movie was rooted in the action genre. Shubham's Raman is the empathetic brother who ropes in a reluctant Guatam to help the woman, Jhumpa Mahato, in her perilous journey into the heartland to find her missing baby. The actor said he was initially worried about coming off as a boring character. "I decided that instead of concentrating on the morality part of it, I would focus on my relationship with my brother? How are my decisions being taken because of my brother? Sometimes these are very complicated, detailed things like if he's saying tea, I will say coffee. It is just that toxic brother relationship, which sometimes leads to problems,' he added. Melzer said she wanted her portrayal of Jhumpa to be relevant to the real mothers. "At no point should it come across as if I am trying to enact it. This kind of pain cannot be acted on, that's what I feel. I tried to use my craft to go as close as possible to this feeling and maybe our film did justice to the story. The material, the films Karan gave me to watch and study and the research brought me closer to the role,' she added. Tejpal admitted that "Stolen" was a difficult film to make though it has found a lot of support from within the industry with filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap, Vikramaditya Motwane, Kiran Rao and Nikhil Advani boarding it as executive producers. Dhingra said when Tejpal showed him the video, he felt scared and they decided to work on the movie together. Initially, he said, the director wanted to shoot the movie in Maharashtra but they eventually decided Pushkar in Rajasthan would be more suited. "The pandemic delayed our film and many on the team fell sick during the shooting but once it was over and the film premiered in Venice, it was like a bullet train and there was no looking back," Dhingra said. Tejpal also looks back at the experience with a lot of gratitude. "Making a first film for any filmmaker is an uphill battle. It is something that we all have to fight. Prior to 'Stolen', I had been fighting that fight for a long time, very unsuccessfully, in fact. And just before 'Stolen', I had kind of given up on this thing. I thought I would give up and become a writer and then the film happened very organically," he said. "I've been blessed on this journey along the way as the film has given back to me 500 times what I could have ever expected or even imagined."
India Today
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- India Today
Karan Tejpal's 'Stolen'
The journey from apathy to empathy is a fraught one in Karan Tejpal's debut film, Stolen, which is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Inspired by the horrific events in Karbi Anglong in Assam, in which two young men mistaken for being child kidnappers were lynched by a mob, Tejpal crafts a survival drama that pushes the anxiety buttons and touches on many pertinent issues afflicting society today.
The Wire
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Wire
‘Stolen' Embraces Contemporary India With All its Faults and Messiness
A still from 'Stolen'. Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute Now Karan Tejpal's Stolen might look like a thriller on the surface. But if one pays attention, it reveals itself as a survival film. For the uninitiated, a survival film is a subgenre of films telling tales of a character surviving an adventure gone awry. In Stolen, the misadventure entails residing in India in the 2020s. A nation with obscene inequalities, a broken law-and-order system that couldn't be less bothered about the people who need it the most, and a culture that is a sinister concoction of ancient traditionalism and new-age apathy – India in the 2020s is a whole new beast. It's a place that has picked up the vocabulary of empathy, privilege and virtue-signalling from the West, but one where fans of a cricket team throng a stadium and remorselessly stomp over dozens of people – as a part of their 'celebration'. It's where parts of a country insist on organic vegetables and alkaline water, while in another, farmers kill themselves after being unable to procure water, or a fair price for their produce. It's a country where a routine police complaint or a witness statement can become a life-long trauma in a close-up, and seems like a dark comedy in a long shot. In this country, anyone who thinks they can imbibe a few bookish ideals and implement them in an ordinary day of small-town India, is being too naive. The closer one gets, the more India can seem like a labyrinth – with each corner springing a surprise. It's something Tejpal's film knows all too well. Hence, it doesn't claim to know how to 'solve' it – instead stressing on what one can do with their limited intent. Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer) is one of the countless people asleep on a bench of a platform in a nondescript railway station in Northern India (the dialect suggests Haryana). Next to her is her five-month old infant, Champa. In the film's first scene, a veiled woman – the only one awake on the platform — steals the infant and flees. While running, she bumps into a train passenger, Raman Bansal (Shubham Vardhan), who has gotten off a train to attend his mother's wedding. Raman's brother Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) is asleep in the parking lot of the station, having driven there in the dead of the night to pick him up. When Jhumpa wakes up a few minutes later, and can't seem to find her infant daughter – all hell understandably breaks loose. She alleges Raman stole her child, who is holding a pink beanie, which fell from the baby when the thief bumped into him. A mob gathers around them, and like it happens in India's smartphone revolution, people start recording the confrontation. It takes Gautam to diffuse the rising tensions, when he asks a simple question to Jhumpa and the police constable nearby – 'Would a thief stick around at the crime scene, holding on to evidence that will implicate him?' Something Tejpal's film does exceedingly well is layer the exposition into throwaway lines of dialogue without drawing attention to themselves. In the first five minutes, it's established that Gautam and Raman have a Shashi Kapoor-Amitabh Bachchan dynamic from Deewar (1975). Gautam is the pragmatic business-owner, while Raman is the idealistic photographer. Raman is painted by Gautam as someone who indulges his bad mental health ('I don't understand this celebration of depression', he says), and feels things a little too strongly. On the other hand, Raman can't understand Gautam throwing money at all the problems he encounters, and someone so consumed with his sheltered life and his efforts to preserve it – that he couldn't be bothered about even the most mundane acts of kindness and consideration. A still from 'Stolen'. It's because of Raman that the two brothers get embroiled in the search for Jhumpa's infant. He knows what Jhumpa has already made her peace with – the cops will probably do something to save face, but it will be too late to find her daughter. Gautam can smell the stink of the situation from far away, because he's dealt with the twisted Indian law enforcement system more than Raman would know. He repeatedly tells him that this is a trap and they should walk away. Both Banerjee and Vardhan have appeared in minor roles before and are painfully on-point as the two brothers, with entirely different skill-sets. While Raman is the empathetic social media warrior, out of his depth while trying to do the right thing, Gautam knows how quickly idealism can curdle into a witch-hunt in the hands of less-than-competent investigators, working out of their many ideological, social biases. Also, Jhumpa is a tribal, making the cops that much more suspicious of anything she says. Not only is she poor, but she's also a woman. The slightest outburst as a result of her desperation and helplessness, means she gets labelled 'hysterical'. Maelzer plays Jhumpa like an open wound of a character, impossible to look away from. Tejpal's film embraces India with all its faults and messiness, realising the many conflicts between the different social orders, schizophrenic ideologies, and a society where truth takes many forms. It's an era where a growing number of people hold smartphones, without a hint of the wisdom to not get carried away by a WhatsApp forward and lynch people in broad daylight. The film delivers biting commentary on how these parts of India are 'consumed' from behind the safety of a screen. One of the film's most tense sequences is viewed from inside the car, almost making us voyeurs to a crime. How does one react — put away the phone and pretend like nothing happened, or introspect about what they just saw? A still from 'Stolen'. As Stolen teases us with the bleakest of ends, some things are contrived in the last 20 minutes to make the climax hopeful. Slightly put off by the contrivances at first, I think I understood the reason behind them much later. Even in the starkest tales, maybe it's the makers' responsibility to leave people with a 'moral' that emphasises on doing the right thing, with the knowledge that it's hard to do over a prolonged period. In India, if you aren't at the receiving end of the system, it's probably because of blind luck or privilege, or both. Tejpal's film wants to tell you that even if you can't go around rectifying an impoverished country battling an identity crisis, when injustice stares you in the face, don't look away. Despite what disenchanted voices will say, Karan Tejpal's film is a reminder that despite all the bad faith around us, it can't be an excuse to do nothing. *Stolen is streaming on Amazon Prime Video The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
Scroll.in
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Stolen' director Karan Tejpal: ‘The film is about trust and having a conscience'
Karan Tejpal's Stolen was premiered to a rapturous response at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2023. Tejpal's feature debut, about the nightmarish experiences of two affluent brothers who are mistaken for kidnappers in a rural corner of India, was expected to get a theatrical release. Instead, Stolen has been picked up by Prime Video, where it will be streamed from June 4. The Hindi movie's emergence has benefitted from the backing of directors Anurag Kashyap, Kiran Rao, Nikkhil Advani and Vikramaditya Motwane. Written by Tejpal, Gaurav Dhingra and Swapnil Salkar-Agadbumb, Stolen stars Shubham Vardhan, Abhishek Banerjee, Mia Maelzer, Harish Khanna and Sahidur Rahaman. In an interview, 40-year-old Tejpal described himself as an 'accidental filmmaker'. A product of Mayo College in Ajmer and St Stephen's College in Delhi, Tejpal set out to be a hockey player but instead veered towards cinema. Tejpal worked in the Hindi film industry as an assistant director for several years, starting with Lage Raho Munnabhai (2006). Tejpal squeezed in a filmmaking course at the New York Film Academy, returning to Mumbai to develop scripts and shoot commercials. Stolen was inspired by a lynching that took place in Assam in 2018, a horrific incident that haunts Tejpal to this day, he told Scroll. Here are excerpts from the interview. Stolen is meant for the big screen. Why is it getting a release on a streaming platform? It would have done quite well in theatres. But the theatrical landscape across the world has become muddled with big-ticket films and star-led vehicles. Nobody is willing to take a punt or has a risk-taking appetite any longer. As more and more films with stars fail, this opportunity is shrinking further. In fact, it was a challenge even to get the film onto a streamer. Why is that, considering that Stolen was well received at the Mumbai Film Festival in 2023? It is exactly the kind of movie that streaming platforms are supposed to be championing. It's been an uphill battle. It was eventually only because of the filmmakers who got attached to Stolen as executive producers that we managed to push the film over the line. The Indian landscape is very determined by who is attached to a film. I always thought that if you made a good film, there would be a home for it. The streamers were so busy in the market that you were confident. Perhaps the latest downturn has got them thinking twice about every project. Also, they have backed films that have done poorly on their platforms. That has affected everybody else's chances as well. Every film has its own journey. This has been our journey – a trial by fire. At this point, I am relieved that audiences will get to watch the film. What inspired Stolen? The film was initially a 30-page treatment born out of an incident that took place in Karbi Anglong in Assam. Two men, a musician and a businessman, were wrongly accused of being child kidnappers and were beaten to death by a mob. The videos still give me nightmares. I had already been working as a screenwriter for smaller projects and on advertising films. I met Gaurav Dhingra during an advertising campaign. I pitched the Stolen treatment note. The coronavirus pandemic hit soon after. It was a start-and-stop time for the industry as a whole. We managed to start the shoot in January 2023. Since then, it has been like a bullet train. We shot for 26 days. We were at the Venice Film Festival in August that year. Stolen is set over a night and day, and involves fast-paced action sequences. What went into its making? It was really tough to make. A lot of work went into finding the locations. We shot the film close to where I grew up, in Pushkar, although it isn't set there or any other place in Rajasthan. I was looking for particular things in the locations, and I found them in Pushkar. I've not yet been paid a penny on the film. But what I gave up in terms of a salary, I got back multi-fold in terms of creative freedom to shoot the way I wanted and get the actors I wanted. That's the only way Stolen could have been made. No traditional producer would have let me hire Shubham or Mia, or allow me to shoot long takes. Nearly 50% of the film is one for one – meaning, there are no options for the edit, and you use the scenes as they have been shot. The film was edited in a month, I think. It was a tight schedule. Everything had to be efficient. It was such a rewarding experience that if I had to do it again the same way, I would. What conversations did you have with the cinematographers Isshaan Ghosh and Sachin S Pillai? The in- camera principles were very simple. I wanted the audiences to be on the same journey as my protagonists. I wanted to send viewers on a journey that felt a bit like a social horror. The moment this was decided, every shooting decision was backtracked onto that one principle. We shot 90% of the film with 25mm and 35mm lenses. We decided to shoot only with wide-angle lenses because we wanted an immersive experience that wouldn't be possible with long lenses because then you are looking at things from a distance. Once you have decided on the lenses, the camera position is automatically decided. You need to get close. You're over your main character's shoulder. The perspective becomes very personal because you are in a small space. Since the film is set over the period of a few hours, there are long takes. The less I cut, the more I stay with immediacy. Things are playing out in front of your eyes. There is a crunching of time, a feeling of breathlessness or claustrophobia, which is what the men who inspired the story must have felt like when they were being chased by a mob for no good reason at all. How do you prepare the actors for this kind of a shoot? The five primary actors are all highly trained. Several actors are semi-professional or real persons. Abhishek Banerjee was the first person we went to for the film. Shubham and Abhishek have been friends since college. They are super-close buddies. The chemistry that you see on the screen is real. Abhishek is instinctual and acts from his gut. Shubham is very mental, he performs in his mind. They are different in that sense. Mia Maelzer was cast after I saw some of her films. Harish Khanna and Sahidur Rahaman are again trained actors. It was a collaborative process. Since we shot for such a short period, we did a lot of in-camera rehearsals in advance. The performances were always on the lower scale of the spectrum. Because the shots were complicated and long, the actors were free to do what they had to do because they couldn't repeat the performance. We didn't even have a continuity supervisor. The spontaneity was maintained. If you are shooting from 25 angles and trying to match the shots later, it deadens the performances. What is Stolen saying about the perilous encounter between urban India and rural India? Is it inadvisable to help out in a crisis? The film does talk about the perils of having a conscience. That said, the film is about trust too. Without trust, civilisation would be nowhere, and none of our systems would work. I didn't want to make a nihilistic film. If you have a conscience in this country or anywhere else in the world, you could get into trouble. But have a conscience, do something. Perhaps the film is my callout to myself. Would I stand up in such a situation? I don't have the courage to get out onto the streets and picket against subjects, but perhaps that's why I make movies. The film could be viewed as privilege meeting the rest of India. Absolutely. I come from a privileged background. I got the best education. I belong to a bubble, and I engage with the rest of the country from within that bubble. But the inside and outside worlds intersect in weird ways. The film is about why the two worlds need to coexist, or at least be cognisant of each other. Now that Stolen will be out soon, what are your plans? I'm writing a feature for Mira Nair that will be set in Delhi. I'm also heading the writers' room for the second season of Dahaad. I have a couple of my own projects, one of which is called Umeed, a horror film about a lesbian couple trying to have a baby, written by Abhishek Banerjee, the writer of Pataal Lok and Pari. There's another film I have been working on for a long time, a romantic thriller about a young couple in a taboo relationship. The idea of combining genres with the subjects that I want to talk about is my sort of jam. Play
