Dilip Kumar’s last stalled film Aag Ka Dariya to release soon?

By Jyothi Venkatesh

S. V. Rajendra Singh aka SV RAJENDRASINGH BABU after completing his film Sharara with Raaj Kumar and Hema Malini in 1984, which was based on Irving Wallace’s classic ‘The Second Lady’, was very excited to start another big film, Aag Ka Dariya, in the same year with again big and major stars like Dilip Kumar and Rekha and the writer of the film was Rajendra Krishan. The director said the film would be ready in one year and then suddenly delays started. In the meanwhile the writer Rajendra Krishan died.

There were problems between the producers and financers. So many films from the south were made at that time and all those films were completed fast on schedule and released on time. It is not known what happened with this important awaited film. In the 1990s Dilip Kumar himself as director shot some courtroom scenes and then it was announced that the film was complete and then ads mentioned as “Dilip Kumar presents Aag Ka Dariya”.

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S. V. Rajender Babu, had gone on record that the film did not get released initially because of a financial dispute and the original print of the film was badly damaged in the intervening years. S. V. Rajender Babu recently found a perfect print of the film with a distributor in Singapore and said that he was surprised when he saw the negative of the print, as it was kept so carefully. The audio cassette of the songs of Aag Ka Dariya was released in the year 1995, more than 26 years back. The script, dialogues and the songs of Aag Ka Dariya have been written by Rajendra Krishan and this film is his last work. Rajendra Kishan had written the dialogues of Dilip Kumar film Dharm Adhikari which came in the year 1986.

The shooting of this film Aag Ka Dariya had started in the year 1984. Rajeev Kapoor was angry at the producers for announcing his name in the papers when he just gave them a verbal ok that he was doing the film. This almost caused him to walk out of the film. He was yet to officially sign anything. Padmini Kolhapure, Avtar Gill, Amrish Puri, and Amrita Singh play pivotal roles in this courtroom drama and the release of the film augurs well for producer R. Venkatraman.