MUMBAI: Actor Deepika Padukone's debut production, to be directed by Meghna Gulzar, is titled "Chhapaak" and will see the actor in the role of acid attack survivor and activist Laxmi Agarwal.
"A Death in the Gunj" actor Vikrant Massey is the latest to join the cast of the film.
"Honoured to be part of #Chhapaak! Thank you @meghnagulzar Ma'am for giving me this opportunity & believing in me. Looking forward to working with the supremely talented @DeepikaPadukone," Massey wrote.
Deepika welcomed the actor to the film with a tweet.
"Welcome to the team @masseysahib !!!Thrilled to have you on board!!!" she wrote.
In an interview with PTI, Gulzar said she chose Agarwal's story because it gives her the scope to tell a larger story about acid violence in India.
"In the film with Deepika on acid violence, I'm using Laxmi Agarwal as a subject because she is the most known acid fighter. Plus her case and her story has been the most relevant in terms of where legislation on acid violence, medical advancement, compensation for victims and things like that was concerned.
"There was a whole socio-medical and legal impact that her case had. Therefore, I am using her as a lens to tell a larger story on acid violence in India because even though acid is banned and the sale of acid is regulated in our country as of five years now, we still have acid attacks."
It is still the simplest thing to get in a 'kirana' store in a tier-3 city," the "Raazi" director had said.
In 2005, while Laxmi was waiting at a bus stop in Delhi, she was attacked by an assailant, a man twice her age, known to her family and an unlikely suitor whose advances she had declined.