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Cricket and cake: How Sanjay Dutt won the hearts of his young Torbaaz co-actors

Girish Malik’s Torbaaz has been quite the experience for Sanjay Dutt. The film centres around child suicide bombers of Afghanistan, who have been trained to believe that killing is a virtue and glory is in an afterlife. Dutt plays a retired army officer in the film, who reaches out to them and uses cricket to rehabilitate children in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

The shooting had teed off in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek in December last year. Beautiful Bishkek is passing off as Afghanistan in the film and the actor has developed quite a liking for the place. Not surprisingly, his young co-actors have also developed quite a liking for him. They have been having many fun games of cricket together in their free time. Dutt is a big softie when it comes to kids anyway. He also thoughtfully had a cake brought in to celebrate the birthday of one of the boys. Now the bonding grows as the four young actors have accompanied him back to the bay.
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The four Kashmiri boys, Baaz, Aishan Jawaid Malik, Khosh Bakht and Hamid Shafi play young suicide bombers in Torbaaz. In fact, one of them is even responsible for killing the parents of Sanjay’s character. The boys had to undergo a workshop to understand their characters better.

Dutt and the boys also had to learn Pashto for the film. It is the language of the Pashtuns. Pashto is known in Persian literature as Afghāni and in Urdu and Hindi literature as Paṭhānī.
Torbaaz, which also stars Nargis Fakhri, will also be shot across Kyrgyzstan in Osh and Tokmok. It will also be filmed at Balykchy which is 220 km away from Bishkek. Filming will be completed by June 3.

Speaking about his decision to take up Torbaaz, Dutt had earlier said in an interview, “I am keen to be a part of films that are highly content driven. I want to create a memorable slate of films for my fans.”

Looks like he picked the right film to do that!

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