Varma: 'My film is not a Maria Susairaj bio pic!'

The Maria Susairaj case has earned the media spotlight with Emily Jerome guilty of culpable homicide and Maria guilty of destroying the evidence. By an eerie twist of providence, director Ram Gopal Varma had recently unveiled the 'first look' of his flick Not A Love Story based on the Neeraj Grover, Emile Jerome and Maria Susairaj case.

"The film starts out with the idea of love and then it develops into this horrendous criminal incident because of the third angle involved," states Varma. "My film is not a bio pic, it is only inspired by the Maria Susairaj case and that is why I did not meet the prime accused. I did plenty of research for the subject, meeting up with lawyers, police officers and others before I put together the final script."

As regards his casting, Varma states, "I think that Mahie Gill was the most obvious choice for the role of Maria. I cast Deepak Dobiryal, because I felt that he would be a very unlikely choice since something like a murder would be the least expected from him. While I was making Not A Love Story, I was concerned about capturing the emotions of the main characters, looking at the emotional state of what lead them to do what they finally did and that was my prime concern."