Hyderabad, Nov. 16: Silk Smitha’s family has moved court to stop the release of The Dirty Picture, supposedly based on her life story, alleging the film wrongly portrays her as a “wayward” woman.

V. Naga Prasad, the younger brother of the late actress, has asked the censor board not to clear the Vidya Balan-starrer. The movie is due for release on December 2.

In his writ petition filed in Andhra High Court yesterday, Prasad has claimed Smitha’s character, played by Vidya, portrays her as a woman of loose morals through “indiscriminate sex scenes”. “My sister was not like that in real life. She took on the role of vamps and created a niche for herself though sensuality,” he said, who objected to her film career and had strained ties with her.

Smitha committed suicide in 1996 at the age of 35, allegedly over unrequited love.

In his 10-page petition, Prasad said pre-release stills, publicity material and trailers suggested that Smitha was a “bad girl”. Such a portrayal not only denigrated the late actress but womanhood in general, Prasad added.

His petition has listed the chairperson of the Central Board of Film Certification (censor board), producers Ekta Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor, director Milan Luthria and distributors Balaji Motion Pictures as respondents.

The Dirty Picture cast also includes Emraan Hashmi, Naseeruddin Shah and Tusshar Kapoor.

Smitha, whose real name was Vijayalakshmi, acted in over 400 films over a span of 17 years. Most of these movies were in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada, but she also acted in some Hindi films.

The sobriquet “Silk” stuck to her since 1979 when she did her first Tamil film, Vandi Chakkaram, playing a bar girl named Silk.

But Prasad suggested in his petition that his sister was unhappy doing such roles. “My sister used to weep for hours each time her sleazy films released,” he said.

Smitha’s celluloid debut and her popularity in the late 70s and early 80s represented a meteoric rise from her early days as a make-up girl and a mere prop in scenes.

The actress, a school dropout, traced her roots to Andhra Pradesh’s Guntur. She grew up there and was married off by her family in her teens because of financial problems. But she left her husband after alleged abuse and moved to her aunt’s place in Chennai where she started out as a make-up artiste for a small-time actress.