When Sabrina Lall said Vidya Balan wasn’t like her ‘at all’ in No One Killed Jessica

Sabrina Lall, who fought for justice in the murder case of her sister Jessica Lall, died of liver cirrhosis on Sunday evening. “She was not keeping well and had been in and out of hospital. Yesterday, her condition deteriorated at home and we took her to hospital. Today, in the evening, she passed away,” her elder brother Ranjith Lall told PTI over phone.

Jessica and her story was adapted on the big screen by Raj Kumar Gupta in the 2011 movie titled No One Killed Jessica. Vidya Balan played Sabrina in the movie while Rani Mukerji played journalist Meera Gaity.

Upon the film’s release, 10 years ago, Sabrina said that she was impressed by Vidya’s performance and also mentioned how she did not try to be like her. “Vidya is brilliant. But I don’t think she was trying to replicate my personality in any way. No,we are not similar at all. But the girl plays Jessica is so much like Jessica in her vivacity and joie de vivre. In fact there’s a sequence of a candle-light vigil where Myra’s picture looks so much like Jessica in that picture we’ve seen of her in all the newspapers,” she told a leading daily.

Sabrina also mentioned that Raj Kumar Gupta got a lot of things right. “Rajkumar Gupta has replicated almost every detail of the events of the proceedings after Jessica’s death. Even the dialogues and conversations in the film are what I’ve gone through. All of us, my sister cousins etc , were like, ‘My god how did the director know all this’,” she had said.

Jessica Lall was murdered in 1999 at a restaurant in New Delhi. Siddharth Vashisht, also known as Manu Sharma, was accused of her murder. When he was first acquitted by court, it caused a huge uproar across the country, sparking citizens marches and protests. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment on 20 December 2006. On 2 June 2020, he was released from jail