Director Rajkumar Periasamy has joined a long list of celebrities and politicians who had voiced their concern surrounding the attack on tourists in Pahalgam, which led to the loss of 28 lives. He called the attack a "cruel act of terror" and said it is a "severe blow to humanity, peace and progression."
The director, who had helmed Amaran (2024), the biopic of the life of Major Mukund Varadarajan mentioned that he had a memorable experience shooting the film there.
"Beautiful Pahalgam is the heart of tourism in Kashmir attracting more than 2 crore tourists annually. Have had wonderful memories while filming Amaran there and people there are extremely kind towards tourists. May the actual perpetrators get punished. Prayers for the bereaved families and the injured," he wrote on his X handle.
Starring Sivakarthikeyan as Major Mukund Varadarajan and Sai Pallavi as his wife Indhu Rebecca Varghese in lead roles, Amaran is an adaptation of the book series India's Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes by Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh, which contains a segment based on Mukund who was posthumously awarded the Ashok Chakra for his actions during a counterterrorism operation while on deputation to the 44th Rashtriya Rifles battalion in Jammu and Kashmir. He passed away in 2014 after sustaining bullet wounds in the operation. The film was a critical and commercial success.
Earlier, actors like Akshay Kumar, Kamal Haasan, Hina Khan, Sanjay Bhat, Anupam Kher, Mohanlal, Vijay Devarakonda, Nani, and Adivi Sesh, among others took to their social media pages to condemn the terrorist attack.
Security agencies have released pictures of the four terrorists from Lashkar-e-Toiba involved in the attack. Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir government announced Rs 10 lakh ex gratia for each deceased’s family; Rs 2 lakh for the seriously injured and Rs 1 lakh for injured victims.
On the work front, Rajkumar Periasamy is also working on Dhanush's 55th film. The untitled film will be produced by Anbuchezhiyan and Sushmita Anbu of Gopuram Films.