Dinesh Kamath’s column on movie ‘Beehad – The Ravines’ under the title ‘New movie-releases in Navi Mumbai’ that was published in Newsband

New movie-releases in Navi Mumbai

By Dinesh Kamath

Beehad – The Ravines

Beehad of Chambel river valley, spread in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, are notorious for producing the dreaded dacoits of India. Feared dacoits like Maan Singh, Putil bhai, Malkhan Singh, Mohar Singh etc are all products of this river valley region called Beehad. This trend still continues. However, today they have lost their sheen of self righteousness and become sort of mercenaries.

Slowly and steadily their practice turned into kidnapping and except for a few of them, others turned into a sort of mercenaries. The film, Beehad - The Ravines, deals with this mix of dacoits from 1975 to the year 2005. After a research of five years, this film went on floor and was shot at actual locations of Beehad in Chambal Ravines.

Initially Beehad nurtured extremist like Shriram, Lalaram, Fakkad, Mustakeem etc who terrorized the entire Chambal valley. Later Shriram Singh guided Vikram Mallah and Phoolan Devi into this art of terror and they ignited the valley with religious conflicts. Result of this was Kusuma Nain's birth as a dacoit who later killed Vikram Mallah. While Phoolan Devi vindicated her rape by killing 23 innocent people in Behmai village after her marriage to Maan Singh, it was Kusuma Nain who became the most evil and feared dacoit. Along with Shriram and Lalaram, Kusuma killed 15 Mallah at mai aasta. Later she surrendered to police and is waiting judgment in Orai Jail.

Today Chambal valley does not have any real time dacoit, but the name beehad still evokes fear.

Film Beehad - The Ravines is the story of these dacoits, their social exploitation, their taking to arms against this injustice and their reign of terror against opposite sects and castes.

Beehad - The Ravines is directed by Krishna Mishra. The star cast consists of Maan Singh Deep as Maan Singh, Mangal Singh as Doctor, Sunil Sawara as Bikram Mallah, Anamika Pandey as Kusuma Nain, Deepa Singh as Phoolan Devi, Rajesh Tiwari as Shree Ram, Piyush Sahane as Lala Ram, Sudesh Paul as Mustkeen Baba, Jitender Naruka as Lathi, Shweta Singh as Sarla Jathav, Anjali Rana as Munni Pandey and Anil Sharma as Fakkad Baba. Music Directors are Ravindra Jain, Arif Khan and Ramesh Mishra. Singers are Udit Narayan, Ravindra Jain, Malini Awasthy, Vinod Rathod, Mamta Sharma and Prem Prakash. Lyricists are Ravindra Jain, Sunil Sawara, Arif Khan and Krishna Mishra.