SRINAGAR: One of the two militants shot dead by the government forces in a gunfight in Mujgund area on the outskirts of Srinagar on Sunday had done a short role in Bollywood thriller Haider.
Saqib Bilal (17) was a theatre artist and had even done a brief role in a Bollywood movie, reported Hindustan Times.
Bilal and Mudasir (14) from Hajin in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district were killed along with a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba militant in an 18-hour firefight in Mujgund on the outskirts of Srinagar on December 9.
Both the boys had left their homes on August 31 to join militancy.
“For more than a month, we went to places to find them. Ultimately, we realised the unthinkable,” Asim Aijaz, Bilal’s maternal uncle, said, according to the report.
Bilal who had passed his Class 10 with a distinction had an interest in acting and had done a small role in Vishal Bhardwaj’s movie Haider.
“He was in his sixth class when he appeared for two brief shots in Haider which have appeared in the film. In one of the shots he appeared as a ‘chocolate boy’ and in another, he acted of surviving a violent incident in a bus,” Aijaz said.
The uncle said the boy was a theatre artist as well.
“Before his Haider stint, he appeared in a stage show ‘Weath chi Yeahi (This is the river)’ at Tagore Hall in which he was the protagonist. He managed to get an award and even went to Odisha to repeat the performance,” Aijaz said.