‘Coffee With D’ Makers Claim Getting Death Threats From The Mob

Sunil Grover in the trailer of the film, Coffee With D. (Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

The director and producer of Coffee With D, a film which revolves around a journalist’s attempt to fix an interview with Dawood Ibrahim, on Monday filed a complaint against callers who have been threatening them to make changes in the film if it shows the underworld don in a bad light.

The film’s director Vishal Mishra and producer Vinod Rahani alleged that they were receiving threat calls since 14 December 2016 from different numbers and locations on a daily basis.

We have been receiving calls from a man claiming to be the right hand of Dawood that is Chota Shakeel. We are law-abiding citizens and we stay in democratic country. We haven’t done anything wrong in making the film on Dawood and we will maintain that. We also don’t know how much truth lies behind the caller and his threats, but all we can do is at least let the police and people know of it.

Vishal Mishra, Director

“The trailer was launched on 14 December in Mumbai. Since then, we are getting threat calls from internet numbers and one of them was a Dubai number,” Mishra added.

Mishra also alleged that the movie’s entire team has got threats, and that’s why they moved to Delhi from Mumbai and lodged a complaint at the Parliament Street police station.

They urged the police officers to take action. Rahani said he received the first threat call on 26 December. “The first time I received a call was from one Nayeem when I was in Nagpur on 26 December. The caller threatened me to remove parts of the film which portray underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in the bad light and make fun of him,” Rahani alleged.

“Nayeem also told me that he was calling on behalf of ‘Chhota Shakeel’ and threatened to kill the entire families of the film crew if I fail to comply with his demands,” he said. R.P. Meena, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police, told IANS: “We have not registered a FIR in this connection on their allegations. Their complaint is being studied for further course of an investigation if needed.”

The movie features comedian Sunil Grover in the lead role of a TV journalist. Last month, Sunil wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra, urging him to get Dawood Ibrahim nabbed and to expedite the process of his trial for his involvement in the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

But regarding this complaint, the comedian chose to distance himself. Grover took to Twitter to clarify that he is not going to file “any police complaint against anybody”.

Coffee With D is slated to release on the 6 January 2016.

(With inputs from IANS)