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In 1977, a 12-year-old boy opened the door of his Mumbai home to find his mother tottering outside - she'd been drugged and brutally gang-raped all night by four men who vanished after dumping her where she lived.

The victim was no ordinary woman. She was  Sheila Ray, a well-known 1970s model and Bollywood socialite.

And the young boy,  Ashok Banker, who hugged, consoled and cried with his mother  that fateful morning, is  today one of India's most successful authors.

Last month, the reclusive Banker dropped a bombshell when he unexpectedly announced plans to chronicle the traumatic events of 28 years ago in a film entitled Beautiful Ugly.

The best-selling author has promised that the film documenting his mother's rape and subsequent blackmail will  be ready by September - in time for its screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Apparently, the script is almost ready and Banker is auditioning actresses for  Ray's role in the film.

Ray, who never reported the crime,  died in 1990 aged 44. Banker is her only child, and  both her husbands passed  away recently.

Banker, the author of several crime and fantasy novels, says that he's the only person his mother ever confided in. 'I must tell her tragic story to the whole world for her sake and mine,'  he says.

Besides the celluloid venture, he's signed a book contract with Penguin. According to the author, his mother was sexually assaulted and abused in a flat in Usha  Kiran building, one of Mumbai's poshest addresses, where the rich and famous, including movie stars and business tycoons, live.  'She was drugged and dragged into a room by one person,' Banker says. 'Three other  men joined him, including a photographer who took pictures of the gang rape. The host didn't know about it.

'In the morning, she was dumped  from a big black car outside our building. The watchman carried her to the  door of our flat. He told  everyone in the building about  the incident. My mother and I became social lepers.

'It became worse when the photographer started calling, threatening to make the pictures public if she didn't pay up. Adding to her trauma was the treatment we got from our relatives and friends. We were shunned until the day she died. None of her husbands turned up at her funeral. She was a raving lunatic when she died.'

Banker says he won't name  the rapists - they are dead -  or identify the flat where it happened. 'I don't want justice - it will be pointless now. Or revenge, which I don't believe in,' he says. 'I will not show the rape in the film. The film will trace  the aftermath of the rape, the  way my mother degenerated into alcoholism, how I had to take care of her, and how my larger family treated us. Above all, it will expose the underbelly of the glamour world that has been kept secret  for long.'

One of Banker's objectives is  to show that rape  happens in the so-called glamour world of films and modelling and isn't just something that happens on the streets and in villages.

According to the federal Crime Records Bureau,  there are two rapes every hour in India. But most cases aren't pursued by victims for fear of stigmatisation. And barely 25 per cent of rapists are convicted.

Sexual exploitation of young women is rampant in Bollywood. Actresses and models from all over the country make a bee- line for Mumbai in search  of opportunities in India's entertainment capital. And many of them fall easy prey to directors and producers.

In the past few years, some starlets have filed rape cases against filmmakers, but most victims of sexual assault don't  go to the police because they don't want to jeopardise their careers. Moreover, Mumbai's notoriously corrupt police refuse to entertain complaints against industry bigwigs.

'My message is: if something like this happens, don't keep quiet,' Banker says. 'But what  still makes me most angry is how everyone we knew thought that my mother deserved what she  got - something she brought on herself. It left me and her with the guilt and shame that should have been borne by those men. But they went scot free.'

He says that even though Beautiful Ugly won't be a typical Bollywood movie, it's bound to attract a lot of attention in India and outside because of its unconventional content.

'I don't expect this film to be a money-spinner, but I hope that views can be changed and these high-profile men who work in  the industry realise that they no longer can take advantage of young women and get away with it,'  he says.

Banker says he'll release the film, financed entirely by him, on DVD and VCD. He's not planning  a theatre release.

'I'm not sure if the film will get a Indian censor board certificate because of its sexual content,'  he says. 'But I will take it to  film festivals across the world.'



Best-selling author goes public with his mother's brutal rape