MUMBAI, May 18: The story of forbidden love between two young couples from India and Pakistan has inspired a new Bollywood project about their plight, according to a newspaper report on Thursday.

Two Indian girls were halted by security forces last week as they tried to cross the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir to meet their Pakistani boyfriends.

Asha Patel, 24, from Mumbai, contacted Mumtaz Khalid, from Lahore, four years ago on the Internet but had managed only one snatched border meeting.

Last week she was thwarted again as she tried to cross the highly militarised LoC with her friend and turned back.

The incident inspired Bollywood — which is rarely slow to pick up on real-life incidents and turn them rapidly into movies — for a new film tagged ‘Hindu’.

“All stories are inspired from some real incident. This is a great story to be told on what actually happened,” producer Salim Aftab told the English-language Midday newspaper.

“I plan to shoot some parts of this film in Pakistan.”

Mr Aftab has already made Sun Zarra in Bollywood, as Mumbai’s movie industry is commonly known, but the film bombed at the box office.

He told the newspaper his son-in-law would play the male lead role in the film. Other roles have yet to be finalised. —AFP