A fresh round of uproar has been created around the supposed controversy in the casting of the 2017 rom-com Half Girlfriend, the Chetan Bhagat authored adaptation about a Bihari youngster’s affair with a sophisticated Delhite.

While Shraddha Kapoor was the one and only choice for the female lead, it has now been divulged that Sushant Singh Rajput, who is from Bihar, was the first choice for the role of the Bihari hero. The role finally went to Arjun Kapoor

Then what happened? Was he “pushed out” of the project, as his angry fans seem to think?

“No, not true at all,” says the Half Girlfriend director Mohit Suri. “We didn’t ask him to leave, he left Half Girlfriend. He chose another film over ours. He left Half Girlfriend. We respected his decision and we moved on.”

This is not the first film that Sushant left voluntarily for another project. Sushant gave two years of his (brief) life to Shekhar Kapur’s (shelved) Paani and gave up Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani.

Incidentally, the film that Sushant gave up Half Girlfriend for was Dinesh Vijan’s Raabta.