Legal Dangal for Aamir? Wrestling coach considering action after negative portrayal

Aamir Khan’s Dangal is rocking the box office but not everyone is thrilled. One person who is agitated by the movie is coach PR Sondhi  who has been portrayed as a negative character in the movie. To be fair, the coach’s portrayal was the only bit that rankled in near-perfect movie. The 2010 CWG Women’s wrestling coach is used as a template for PR Kadam (played by Girish Kulkarni), who disagrees with Mahavir Singh Phogat’s wrestling techniques.

Sondhi is now considering legal action against the team, and told SportsKeeda: “I know for a fact that Mahavir Phogat will never say such things to the filmmakers as he is a gentleman. I have not seen the film yet, but the facts told to me by my students highlight things that I didn't do. Firstly, there were as many as 5 coaches, including foreign ones from Georgia. Why was I depicted as the only one?”

He was also appalled at the scene, where his character locks Phogat in a room during his daughter’s match. He claimed that the scene was ‘preposterous’, and said it was wrong to defame someone just to spice things up.

Sondhi also said: “The movie made it spicy but didn't really convey anything of what actually happened. Everything was amicable, but distorting of facts just hurts my reputation. (My work was) something which saw me become national wrestling coach. I will watch the film and take a call whether to take some serious legal action or not.”

The Wrestling Federation is also not happy with the portrayal. An official told ABP: “Sondhi is a respected coach. The treatment given to his character is not acceptable. If a national coach had locked someone during the Commonwealth Games then why nobody reported the incident? It’s baseless and that’s exactly why I was not consulted during the shooting".