Did Abhishek lie about ‘Raavan’ dive?

A former diving champion claims that he, not the star, performed the dangerous stunt

The ‘Raavan’ controversies keep coming. First, Amitabh Bachchan criticised the editing in the movie, blaming it for Abhishek’s inconsistent performance. And now there’s talk that one of the daredevil stunts in the movie that Abhishek said he performed, was in fact done by someone else.

It seems that M S Balram, a former national diving champion, has claimed that the fantastic diving off a cliff scene in ‘Raavan’ was performed by him and not Abhishek. The scene starts off the movie, and was also highlighted in the promos. Besides, Abhishek spoke in many interviews about how he did the scene even though the movie’s insurers refused to cover him, the star, doing such a dangerous stunt.

Balram said that he had a lot of respect for Abhishek Bachchan and Mani Ratnam, and that he did not want to create a controversy but that he was proud of the stunt he did.

Team ‘Raavan’, including Abhishek Bachchan and Mani Ratnam, have not responded to Balram’s claim as yet.