Wonder who has more reason to feel offended, cricketers or sex workers. But Mahesh Bhatt's forthcoming film Jannat where Emran Hashmi plays a bookie compares the two professions….and explicitly says cricketers are like prostitutes.

What's more, the censor board saw nothing objectionable on the world's poshest profession being compared with the oldest. Says a character in Jannat, "Dekhiye Sir. Cricketers aur prostitutes ke beech zyada farq nahin hota. Donon ki jawani khatm to kahani khatm."

In fact producer Mahesh Bhatt is supremely gung-ho about this latest eyebrow-raising tryst with controversy. "Yes, those are the exact words in Jannat. And what's wrong with that? If you think about it, we're all prostitutes. And at least they deliver what they promise. I'm no different from a prostitute. I too am a pleasure peddler. And please, I'd rather be a prostitute than a saint," says the eternal celluloid renegade who has earlier whipped up a frenzy of controversies in movies like Arth, Zakhm and Woh Lamhe.

Jannat is the story of a man caught in a quagmire of crime and consumerism as he struggles to find heaven on earth.

Arjun is a reckless young man with an obsession for making money at card games. A chance meeting with a girl in a mall, Zoya gives him the reasons he was looking for to move out of his ordinary life. He steps up from playing small-time card games to becoming a bookie.

Stuck in a triangle of sorts between the woman he loves and his addiction to make a quick buck, Arjun moves on from being a bookie to a runner for the mafia. He steps into the world of match fixing. Arjun switches on the limelight to bigger, better, faster, more, until his dizzying rise attracts the attention of the police.

Arjun has to now choose between the love of his life, Zoya, and this new found success and power. As Arjun struggles to choose between the two, the Don offers the forbidden apple of limitless wealth in exchange of his soul and draws him into his core entourage of money spinners.

How far will the horizon of reality stretch as Arjun and Zoya tread a fine, fast-blurring line between right and wrong to find the heaven they have been looking for?