Before the trailer and posters came out, the most happening thing about Paltan was the abrupt departure of Abhishek Bachchan from the film. Abhishek has often considered Paltan's director JP Dutta as his mentor, after the latter launched him in 2000 with Refugee. Later, Abhishek had also worked with Dutta in LOC Kargil and Umrao Jaan. So his departure from Paltan just a day prior to the shoot of the film was shocking.

But then, Abhishek Bachchan was not the only actor to walk out of Paltan, though it was his exit that got the maximum publicity. When JP Dutta first announced the star cast for his war drama in July 2017, the lineup was like this - Abhishek Bachchan, Arjun Rampal, Suniel Shetty, Sonu Sood, Jimmy Shergill, Pulkit Samrat, Luv Sinha, Siddhant Kapoor and Jackie Shroff (female leads - Esha Gupta, Sonal Chauhan, Monica Gill and Dipika Kakkar - were added later). Then Abhishek Bachchan walked out, and he was replaced with Harshvardhan Rane.

But when the character posters came out a few days back and even in the trailer, Suneil Shetty, Pulkit Samrat and Jimmy Sheirgill were not part of the action. So what happened here?

Suneil Shetty, who worked with JP Dutta in Border, Refugee, LOC Kargil and Umrao Jaan, made his exit around November last year, though not many were aware of his departure. He had spoken to DC about this, "Unfortunately, I will not be a part of JP Dutta’s Paltan. But I am preparing myself for an Afghan-Indian movie in which I will have to sport a long beard. So I am in the process of growing my beard right now."

Talking about Pulkit Samrat, even his exit wasn't much talked about. Interestingly in an interview with Dainik Bhaskar, he gave this mysterious answer, "I was never a part of Paltan.  Yes, there were some discussions with the film's team, but it never got locked."

If that was the case then why did he tweet this out? Strange!

Finally, there is Jimmy Sheirgill, who has mysteriously disappeared from the film, even though he also confirmed to be a part of Paltan with this tweet -

So why aren't people talking about the unexplained departures of these stars?

As of now, Paltan stars Jackie Shroff, Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Gurmeet Choudhary, Harshvardhan Rane and Luv Sinha. The movie is based on the Nathu La and Cho La military clashes of 1967 which took place along the Sikkim border. Paltan is all set to release on September 7.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 02, 2018 05:00 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).