Mahmood Farooqui, convicted on Saturday for sexually assaulting a 35-year-old US-based woman from Columbia University in March 2015 in a drunken state, is married to film director and writer Anusha Rizvi, who shot to fame with her directorial debut Peepli Live— a movie addressing the issue of farmer suicides in the country.
The movie was produced by Actor Aamir Khan and co-directed by Mahmood Farooqui. He also has written the screenplay for the movie Harud.
Farooqui did his schooling at Doon School and then studied BA history (Hons) at St Stephen’s College, Delhi and University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
His uncle S R Faruqi, pre-eminent Urdu critic and writer, was his guide and helped him in honing his skills as a writer and story teller.
He also contributed opinion pieces to India’s leading newspapers and magazines. His notable work ‘Beseiged: Voices from Delhi, 1857’, was an extensive translation into English of the Mutiny Papers dating from Delhi’s 1857 siege, originally written in Persian and Shikastah Urdu.
He is renowned for promoting ‘Dastangoi’, a dying Urdu oral story telling art form. He has enhanced this art form by using it to deliver modern tales in that format.