Pathemari issue: Director Salim Ahamed apologized

Director Salim Ahamed who written and directed the film Pathemari had apologized to the family members of Lanchi Velayudhan. In his film named Pathemari which released last year, Salim Ahamed had told the story of the Malayalees who left to gulf countries in 1960’s from Kerala. He had took many real life characters after conducting a research on this subject and one such character is Lanchi Velayudhan played by actor Siddique.

Lanchi Velayudhan is the one who helped many people from Kerala to cross the ocean in a Pathemari and reach the gulf countries to earn a better living. He has a great place in the history as well. But in the film, Salim Ahamed showed Lanchi Velayudhan as a mentally disturbed person towards the end of the story. But, it was not the fact and Lanchi Velayudhan had no such problems till his death. So his family members had filed a case against Salim Ahammad for portraying Velayudhan wrongly. Salim Ahamed had realized his mistake and apologized to the family members of Lanchi Velayudhan in a press conference.

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He said that the family members of Lanchi Velayudhan did not ask him any compensation for the wrong portrayal. They said that they felt great pain after watching the wrong portrayal of the character. Salim Ahamed said that he had to portray that character in such a way to make it more cinematic. But it is unacceptable for Velayudhan’s family and he is really apologetic about what he did.

Velayudhan had died 8 years back. After Salim Ahammad’s apology, the case filed against him had withdrawn by the family of Velayudhan.