The ban on Mithun Chakraborty's films in Bihar, due to an ongoing tussle between the actor and a local producer-distributor, has taken its toll in unlikely quarters. The casualty is none other than director-turned-producer E Niwas whose on-release film My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves has been prevented from release in Bihar.

Niwas who's running helterskelter trying to find his bearings in his new role as a producer, is aghast. "I had no clue about Mithun-da's ban in Bihar. It seems so strange to be kept out of the state where my first film Shool was set. I really wouldn't want My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves to be kept out of Bihar. But I don't know how I can help the situation."

The ban on Mithun's films in Bihar has its antecedents in a Bengali film entitled Coolie which its producer dubbed into Bhojpuri without the actor's consent and by using someone else's voice in dubbed Bhojpuri film. The incensed actor retaliated by refusing to return money paid as signing amount for another proposed film to be made by the same Bihari producer-distributor.

Mithun who plays a priest in My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves is determined to see the fight to the last. For the moment the big beneficiary is Raj Kumar Santoshi's Halla Bol which gets a clear unrivalled run in Bihar this Friday. Incidentally, the last film that got left out of Bihar was Aamir Khan's Taare Zameen Par, apparently because the producers demanded too high a price for the Bihar territory.