James Bond finally meets his match: Indian bureaucracy

James Bond may have foiled Dr No and Blofeld, but he has finally met his match in an Indian Railway Ministry bureaucrat licensed to kill off plans to film a number of key action scenes on top of the country’s celebrated trains.

A member of the Indian production team for what is known as Bond 23 told The Daily Telegraph the plans had been abandoned and that the film’s producers  will not now be shooting 007’s first Indian scenes since 1983’s Octopussy, which starred Roger Moore and Indian tennis legend Vijay Amritraj.

Last month the Railway Ministry confirmed the film would be shot in India and said its officials were in talks with the producers over their request to film Bond, played by Daniel Craig, fight a villain on a the roof of a train and another action scene inside a train tunnel.

But officials said it was up to the producers to make arrangements which would not inconvenience India’s 30 million people who travel by rail every day.

They said the producers wanted to film in New Delhi’s Sarojini market, where shoppers buy discounted western brands made in local sweatshops, Daryaganj in the heart of its old walled city, and on the beaches of Goa and Mumbai’s commercial capital.

Talks initially focused on the possibility of filming the railway action scenes in North Goa but came to halt over security objections to shooting some bridges and tunnels in the state.