Blind businessman plays role of a lifetime in Bollywood

NEW DELHI - A blind businessman is playing the role of a gunman who fights tigers and jumps off burning cars in a new Bollywood film to be released in August.

Naseer Khan performs various death-defying stunts in the upcoming new Bollywood thriller ‘Shadow - The Dark Side of Truth’, which features him as a gunman with normal vision.

He fights with tigers and jumps off burning cars.

Khan is playing a criminal and a car mechanic in a double role. The film also stars Milind Soman and Hrishita Bhatt.

“I played two characters in this film one is of a Arjun Sherawat, a professional shooter who can kill anyone for money. Sherawat kills in a very tricky manner so that and no one including police has his identity. The other character is of Raju, a car mechanic who is very talkative,” Khan told a news conference in New Delhi on Tuesday.

The 36-year-old hero of the film “Shadow,” lost his sight when he was in school.

Unlike in real life, Khan can see everything in the film, an idea that struck him during a visit to a film shooting a few years ago.

“My sole target was to make a film in which people can see how a blind man can play the character of a man with normal vision. Till now people only watch man with normal vision playing the role of a blind man,” he added.

Khan’s passion for Bollywood has brought him to Mumbai from India’s northern Kanpur district. He invested 5.3 million dollars from his own pocket to start his own production house, a music company and distribution company.

“They (distributors) thought that this film was produced on a good level and no one was ready to distribute my film, so the circumstances compel me to launch my own distribution company,” said Khan.

“Shadow” is a suspense thriller directed by Rohit Nayyar and has a surprising element where the lead character although visually impaired in real life plays the role of a sharp shooter. (ANI)