FIR Against Filmmaker For Screening Uncensored Film At Multiplex

Filmmaker Rahat Kazmi who has made Mantostaan ,an omnibus of 4 Partition stories  by Urdu litterateur Sadat Hassan Manto, has landed himself in a  legal soup.

The film was apparently screened on Thursday evening  at  a theatre in the suburbs of Mumbai  owned by a nationwide multiplex without a  censor certificate.

And now the Censor Board of Film Certification is all set to lodge an FIR against the offending parties.

Confirming the development CFBC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani says, “We’ve received information that filmmaker Rahat Kazmi held a screening on Thursday April 20 of his new film Mantostaan without a censor certificate.This is  completely illegal and a shocking example of how creative people flaunt rules to taunt the government .”

Nihalani says  Mantostaan is pending censor  certification. “Kazmi has submitted the film for censor certification.  But  we haven’t issued a certification. How can he screen a film without a censor certification? You can’t even screen a 10-second without a censor certificate,let alone  a full-length feature film.”

The onus  of publicly broadcasting an uncensored film lies with the digital content provider.

Says  Nihalani, “We are lodging an FIR against Kazmi, and Real Image  the digital content provider who  provided the content for the screening to the theatre knowing fully well that the film had not received a censor certificate, and also  the multiple  chain where the screening was held.”