The Delhi High Court Thursday issued notices to Bollywood actors Aamir Khan and Rani Mukherjee and others linked with Hindi film "Mangal Pandey - The Rising" on a suit by the kin of the pre-independence hero.

Raghunath Pandey -- a great grandson of Mangal Pandey's brother -- and his son Omkar Nath Pandey sought a permanent injunction on the screening of "The Rising" on grounds that the film showed the revolutionary in an uncharitable manner by depicting his relations with a nautch girl who he later accepted as his wife.

Justice O.P. Dwivedi issued notices to Aamir Khan, who played the title role, Rani Mukherjee who was cast as the nautch girl, director Ketan Mehta, producers Bobby Bedi and Deepa Sahi, scriptwriter Farooq Dhondy and distributor Yash Chopra, asking them to file replies to the petition by Sep 21.

Seeking a nominal damage of Re.1 against the filmmakers, the plaintiffs also alleged that the film did not mention Mangal's native village Nagwa in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh.

The film's producer and director had distorted the history of the freedom struggle by falsely claiming that the story of Mangal, the Indian sepoy believed to have triggered the first war of independence in 1857, was based on actual events, the petition said.

"The defendant filmmakers owe an apology to the people of India for the senseless and wilful misrepresentations so made and withdraw the screening of the film immediately."

They also urged the court to declare that the film could not be termed as based on actual events relating to the personal life and character of Mangal Pandey and was defamatory to him.

The suit urged the court to stay the screening of the film till certain objectionable shots in it were removed.

The depiction of Mangal's relationship with a nautch girl was "out of context" and "unhistorical", the Pandey father-son duo pleaded.