Slum dwellers in Patna burn effigies of 'Slumdog Millionaire' director

Hundreds of slum dwellers in Patna burned effigies of Danny Boyle, the director of Oscar-nominated film "Slumdog Millionaire", demanding the filmmaker drop the word "dog" from the title.

Hundreds of slum dwellers in Patna on Sunday burned effigies of Danny Boyle, the director of Oscar-nominated film "Slumdog Millionaire", demanding the filmmaker drop the word "dog" from the title.

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"Slum dwellers burnt effigies of Danny Boyle and others, at Kamla Nehru slum to show their protest against 'Slumdog Millionaire'," Tapeshwar Vishwakarma, representing a slum dwellers welfare group, told IANS in Patna.

Vishwakarma said the slum dwellers objected to the word "dog" in the title of the fim. "It is against the basic human values and violate human rights of poorest of the poor living in slums across India," he said.

Madhu Paswan, a slum dweller who was part of protest, said: "We will continue to protest against 'Slumdog Millionaire' till we will get justice."

Vishwakarma has also filed a defamation case against film's music composer A.R. Rahman and one of its stars Anil Kapoor for "depicting slum dwellers in a bad light" and "violating their human rights".

The court of the chief judicial magistrate in Patna began hearing the case against the film and fixed Feb 24 as the next date of hearing.

The Golden Globe-winning film tells the rags-to-riches story of a young orphan from Mumbai who defies expectations to win the Indian version of the popular game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"

The film has been nominated in 10 categories for the Oscars which will be presented at Los Angeles Sunday night (India early Monday).