Ahaan Panday to play gangster in Ali Abbas Zafar’s next, Jimmy Sheirgill joins cast: Report

Following the success of Saiyaara, breakout actor Ahaan Panday is set to step into a markedly different space with his second feature film. As per a report by Variety India, the actor will portray a gangster in filmmaker Ali Abbas Zafar’s upcoming action-romance. The role signals a shift from Ahaan’s debut performance as a troubled musician dealing with past trauma in Saiyaara. For the new project, the actor has reportedly undergone intensive preparation that includes hand-to-hand combat and weapon training to align with the physical demands of the character’s aggressive screen presence. The report also states that Jimmy Shergill has joined the cast in a pivotal role. The film marks his return to a collaboration with Yash Raj Films after more than two decades. One of his most notable earlier associations with the banner remains Mohabbatein, in which he appeared alongside Shah Rukh Khan. Details about the storyline and other casting elements have not been officially confirmed at this...

‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

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