Mehbooba all set to go on the floors

Afzal Khan is finally ready to release the Sanjay Dutt-Ajay Devgan- Manisha Koirala starrer Mehbooba. A lesser-known fact about the film's delay was its climax, which was shot in Bikaner. The scene, featuring all the three lead heroes and actresses - Sanjay, Ajay and Manisha, involved a moving train being chased by a car. It took over 18 months to can the scene.
Afzal Khan said that for the climax scene, they needed a railway track in the middle of the desert. After looking for the location in Jodhpur, Jaipur and Ajmer, they finally found an ideal spot in Bikaner. He was with his action director Bhiku Verma and my DOP Ashok Mehta who also loved the location. However, the major hitch was that the sand around the track was extremely fine and certainly not fit for walking, let alone a car being driven on it. They also wanted a one-and-a-half kilometer long road for the sequence, so he called art director Nitin Desai to create a pukka road for him at that location. It took about three months for the entire road to be laid out. Then he had to get the combined dates of Sanju, Ajay and Manisha who were all busy. He had to wait for nearly eight months to get their dates.
But, Afzal's torment didn't end there. He added that to his horror, when he went back to shoot at the location the military was carrying out a training program there. When he spoke to them, he learnt that they will be there for at least four weeks and couldn't let him shoot there. He had about 25 days from his heroes but his dates were wasted again. When Afzal finally managed to get everything in place again, he found that there was more problem in store for him. He had trouble bringing an old steam engine, which was on display in Chandigarh for an exhibition. When he went there, he realised that it is just a dummy train and no longer in use. The only way it could move was with the help of three diesel engines, which would help push the train all the way from Chandigarh to Bikaner.
However, the worst was yet to come, as Afzal realised that the train from Chandigarh came from the opposite side of the track in Bikaner and they could not shoot from that end as they had already made the road on the opposite side of the tracks. He had to call for a special crane from Delhi, which could lift the train and put it on the right side of the track. The crane finally came after 20 days while the coal for the dummy train came after about three weeks. Everything went haywire but he knew that he had to stick to the original plans for the film's climax. After watching Mehbooba, people will know that the particular train sequence is very crucial to his climax.