“I developed so many blood clots after being hit by Mannara” – Shraddha Das

December 1, 2014 - 11:21 AM IST

Zid has released and now everything can be told as it happened. Shraddha Das, who wasn't quite willing to brush things under the carpet was still reasonably restrained when she wanted to share the plight around what truly transpired between her and co-star Mannara during the making of the film. However, now that the film is out and the physical bout between the two young women is there for all to see, Shraddha isn't holding back her emotions while narrating the chain of events that led to her being as vocal as she is today.

For the uninitiated, Shraddha Das had accused Mannara of causing her injury during the shoot of Zid. Even though tidbits around the incident made headlines, we go deep down into the series of incidents and give a 'blow by blow' account. No pun intended. In an exclusive conversation, Shraddha bares her heart out and gives a first person account of what really happened.

I was hit hard

We had a lot of action scenes in the film between her and me. I play a positive character and she plays a negative character. Being a positive character, I confront her. While she beats me up, I defend myself. This was pretty much at the beginning of the first schedule itself. However, she started beating me up in real instead of faking it. It is a very long scene that carried off for two days as she would just keep beating me. I would keep telling her that 'please be a little softer with me and don't hit me'. She would acknowledge but then again come back to hit me.

My eye was hurt

This was a sequence that required her to hit me with a stick while I had to dodge. What is so important in such scenes is to maintain an eye contact to see the point where you are hitting the person. You have to fake it. I don't know what happened to see her but then she got a real stick from somewhere instead of using a dummy stick. She hit me on my right eye and that too with full force. I howled out of pain. Everything was blacked out for me. We had to stop shoot and I had to be taken to the hospital. Later I came back and shot with a swollen eye. There were so many blood clots that I developed.

This is not a publicity stunt

It is not a publicity stunt. I cannot make up such a long story. If I had to indulge in that, I would have been in Mumbai giving interviews left, right and center. Instead I have been shooting for my other film. See, this is a story that needed to be told but then there was a time that had to be done. If I would have spoken about it earlier then the shoot would have been jeopardized. I warn anyone that if you are working with Mannara and have an action scene then use a duplicate, otherwise you would definitely get hit. Yes, she is a good actress and acts well but then she acts well in real life too!

We tried contacting Mannara to hear her side of the story. However, all she said was that her focus was on her work and release, and hence she didn't wish to react to such accusations.