A baggage handler at the Glasgow airport in the UK, who helped thwart the terrorist attack involving Indian-origin Kafeel Ahmed last year, has been offered a role to play himself in a Bollywood movie.

John Smeaton has received several awards, including a gallantry medal from Queen Elizabeth, for the bravery he had shown during the foiled attack.

The Bollywood film, currently titled Beyond Belief, is directed by Nileish Malhotra. Shooting for the movie starts in Glasgow in June.

Malhotra, who was in Dundee this week to launch the project, told the “Daily Record”, “We’ve heard all about John Smeaton and what he got up to and we are very keen for him to play himself.”

“Everyone knows him in Scotland. It will be great for the movie if we can get him on board.”

Malhotra added, “The film is a thriller with some music in it and it will look into the events leading up to and including the Glasgow attack.

“It won’t be an exact representation of what happened but it will be as accurate as we can make it. We don’t want to kill the terrorists, we want to kill the roots of terrorism.”

“We hope to film in Glasgow as well as Dundee and we’ll be getting some of Bollywood’s leading actors involved.
But we won’t be making any announcements until they have signed on the line,” he said.

The movie will be shot by three-time Oscar-nominated Hollywood cameraman Jack Conroy in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The airport baggage-handler has been lavished with praise since the terror attack on June 30 last year when it was reported he tackled a terrorist.

He has met Prime Minister Gordon Brown four times and, in December, he went to New York to receive an Everyday Superhero award from CNN.