Amid cries on social media seeking Aamir Khan’s response to educationist Sonam Wangchuk sitting on a hunger strike for 20 days now at Jantar Mantar over the NEET paper leak, the actor has finally commented on the issue. Firstly, he dismissed the widespread belief that his character of Phunsukh Wangdu from the 2009 film 3 Idiots was based on Wangchuk adding that the engineer and education reformer doesn’t need a film for people to know about his work.

The actor was speaking at the BFI Southbank on July 16, held as the closing gala of the 17th edition of the London Indian Film Festival, when an audience member took up the mic during a Q n A session and said, “3 Idiots was a film that had a great impact on us while growing up. And you were inspired by a certain person, Sonam Wangchuk, that’s what I am told.”

Aamir immediately corrected the assumption. “No. That’s not true actually. That is a misconception. I didn’t know about Mr Sonam at the time when we were doing the film 3 Idiots.”

He then referred to actor Omi Vaidya’s recent appeal for Wangchuk, in which the actor, reprising his “Chatur” persona from the film, said, “I don’t want Phunsukh Wangdu to die.” Responding to it, Aamir said with a smile, “He is wrong.”

He further explained, “Neither Raju and Abhijat, who were the two writers, nor I knew about Sonam. However, what Mr Sonam is doing doesn’t have to be based on the character of 3 Idiots for us to respect him. In fact, Mr Sonam himself has said that the character is not based on him. He has also clarified.”

When the audience member asked about Wangchuk’s fast Aamir added, “I think all of us are very concerned for his health and life. We hope that he ends his fast.”

Previously, Sonam Wangchuk too had distanced himself from the film, saying he was never approached by the filmmakers or asked for his consent despite similarities people drew between him and the film’s character, Phunsukh Wangdu. Speaking at a Josh Talks event, Wangchuk recalled meeting Aamir in 2008 at a CNN-IBN awards ceremony.

“I told him, ‘Can you make a film on the tension in Siachen, where countries are fighting over a piece of ice while spending nearly Rs 7 crore every day? Can we show that ordinary people from both countries solve the problem and that money is instead used for education?'” According to Wangchuk, Aamir listened with interest and watched an audio-visual presentation about his work that was screened during the event.

Soon after, Wangchuk travelled to France to study Earth Architecture. A year later, after 3 Idiots was released, he began receiving congratulatory emails. “People told me, ‘The film based on you is fantastic.’ I was shocked. They also said they had shown my school.”

When he contacted his school, Wangchuk was told that a film crew had indeed visited but had kept the project under wraps. “They were planning to bring a lot of plastic material, so we refused permission. Later, they shot in another nearby school,” he recalled.

The ongoing protest at Jantar Mantar, led by the social media collective Cockroach Janta Party, began on June 20, with Wangchuk joining the movement on June 28. The demonstrators are demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Rs 1 crore in compensation for the families of students who allegedly died by suicide following the NEET-UG paper leak controversy. They have also announced a peaceful march to Parliament on July 20, the opening day of the Monsoon Session.