Indore, April 17: Ever wondered that Dilawar Khan and Ayesha Bi are two of the country’s leading film actors?

If petitioners at a local court here are to be believed, the duo is popularly known as Dharmendra and Hema Malini.

Garam Dharam is in the electoral fray from Bikaner, Rajasthan, and wife Hema is one of the BJP’s star campaigners.

According to the petitioners, Akhtar Baig and K.K. Mishra, who belong to the local Congress unit, Dharmendra and Hema got married on May 2, 1980, in accordance with the Shariat law, embracing Islam. Dharmendra was rechristened Dilawar.

The petition said the actor should now be tried for “giving false information” about his religion and name to the Election Commission.

Though the Madhya Pradesh Congress unit was dismissive about the petition, the first judicial magistrate at Indore accepted it and fixed April 19 for the next hearing.

In Delhi, Congress spokesman Kapil Sibal demanded an explanation from the actor on the confusion over his wife and marital status.

The actor had first married Prakash Kaur and then Hema.

The party today said this was a serious matter and the Election Commission should immediately look into it.

Stoutly denying the allegations, the actor made a statement that may embarrass his own party. He said he prayed to god that he should be made “a dictator for five years to clean all the rubbish”. He said the Congress was “stooping low” to malign him.

Dharmendra, however, admitted that as a Jat who did not study beyond higher secondary, he was not good at filling forms. “There was a clause that asked about wife so I filled Prakash’s name. It did not ask me about wives,” he said, explaining why Hema Malini’s name did not figure in it.

Denying that he had ever changed his religion, he said: “Main itna ghatia aadmi nahin hoon ki apne swarth ki khatir apna mazhab badal loon (I am not not such a cheap person that I will change my religion for selfish reasons).”

The actors’ marriage had created a controversy back in 1980.

The matter was then raised in the Rajya Sabha by Congress MP Begum Hamida Habibullah.

Speaking from Lucknow, she said: “Yes, I had raised a matter in the Rajya Sabha on the ground that a film actor of his stature should not have married a second time as our film heroes tend to be role models of (our) society. I had asked why he was allowed to get away as common persons have faced some action.”