Aishwarya Rai with Kiranjit Ahluwalia whom she plays in Provoked

London, May 14: Film director Jagmohun Mundhra today rejected the accusation that he was turning the serious issue of domestic violence into “cheap entertainment” by casting an actress as glamorous as Aishwarya Rai as a battered housewife.

Mundhra, who is in London preparing for the premiere of Provoked in Cannes on Thursday, revealed that it was Aishwarya who asked to play the role of Kiranjit Ahluwalia, whose landmark case was instrumental in changing the English “ law on provocation”.

“It was Aishwarya who asked to see me,” Mundhra told The Telegraph. “I related the storyline to her on March 8 last year. She said she would clear her diary and we were on the set by May 6.”

Aishwarya heard of the film through a mutual acquaintance who had called on her for social reasons. One suggestion is that Aishwarya could identify with the film’s theme of domestic violence because she had been slow to end her own much-talked-about and allegedly abusive relationship with her former boyfriend, Salman Khan.

Mundhra said Aishwarya, who will be in Cannes for the premiere, “is on tenterhooks” because her current release, Mistress of Spices, had not been well received either by critics or by audiences.

“I know I’m the director,” he said, defending Aishwarya. “But in Provoked, she used no make-up, except in some of the early family scenes, or where we use make-up to show the bruises. I think after a while people will forget they are watching Aishwarya. If I can do that, I will be happy. Sometimes, people fail to see beyond her beauty.”

The name of the film, Provoked, refers to the English “law on provocation”, which was softened, as a result of “Regina v Ahluwalia”, to take account of the abuse many women suffer in the period prior to the act of killing.

The trigger point for Ahluwalia was reached on May 9, 1989, when her husband, Deepak, attacked her with a hot iron but neither that nor the 10 years of abuse she had previously suffered were taken into account when she was found guilty of pre-meditated murder and sentenced to life.

It took a sustained campaign by the Southall Black Sisters, a women’s rights group working in the field of domestic violence, to secure a fresh trial, when the charge was reduced to manslaughter and Ahuwalia released on grounds of diminished responsibility because she had already served three years and four months in prison.

After her case, the courts took a much more understanding view of women who had killed their husbands or partners, and following further campaigns by the Women for Justice and the Southall Black Sisters, there were several high-profile releases, all of them white women.

Other important roles in the film have gone to Miranda Richardson, whose character befriends Ahluwalia in prison, and Robbie Coltrane as the Queen’s Counsel who takes up the legal fight on her behalf.

Rahila Gupta, a member of the Southall Black Sisters who helped Ahluwalia write her autobiography, Circle of Light, and has also co-written the screenplay for Provoked, said_ today: “The reason why Kiranjit’s case was a breakthrough was that it helped redefine the law on provocation. Before, even if there was a time lapse of two hours before the final act of killing, it was taken as a ‘cooling off’ period. Later, the courts judged that if a woman had suffered years of abuse, that was considered a ‘slow burn’ period.”

Mundhra added that he decided to make the film after reading one line in Circle of Light ? “On her first day in prison, she was asked, ‘How do you feel?’ She replied, ‘I feel free.’ ”

He also revealed that Aishwarya and Ahluwalia were allowed to meet ? the two women hugged each other ? only after the film had been shot.

Mundhra explained: “I wanted Aishwarya to get into the character’s inner self, not consciously or sub-consciously copy her mannerisms or hairstyle.”

Ahluwalia won’t be going to Cannes.

“She is attending a family wedding in Canada,” said Mundhra. “But she has said she will come to the UK premiere in August. I want the film released simultaneously in the UK and in India.”