A member of India's Hindu nationalist ruling party has offered 100 million rupees to anyone who beheads the lead actress and the director of an unreleased Bollywood film rumoured to depict a relationship between a Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler.
Suraj Pal Amu, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from the northern state of Haryana, offered the $A2.03 million bounty against Deepika Padukone and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Sunday.
The producers of Padmavati postponed the release of the film, which was set to be in cinemas on December 1, and Amu was reported to have said the film would not be allowed to be released at all.
Padmavati is based on a 16th century Sufi epic poem in which a Rajput queen chooses to kill herself rather than be captured by the Muslim sultan of Delhi, Allaudin Khilji.
Over centuries of its retelling, the epic has come to be seen as history, despite little evidence.
Padukone plays Padmini, the legendary queen who committed "jauhar", the medieval Rajput practice in which female royals walked into funeral fires to embrace death over the dishonor of being taken captive.
Padmavati has been in trouble since the beginning of the year, with fringe groups in the western state of Rajasthan attacking the film's set, threatening to burn down cinemas that show it and even physically attacking Bhansali.
Most of the anger appears to stem from allegations that Bhansali filmed a romantic dream sequence between the protagonists, which Bhansali has denied.
Earlier in November, the head of the Rajput Karni Sena in Rajasthan said Padukone should have her nose cut - a symbol of public humiliation - for being part of a film that allegedly insulted the famed queen.
