Subhash K Jha (DNA; April 24, 2017)

Filmmaker Rahat Kazmi who has made Mantostaan, an omnibus of four 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 Mumbai owned by a nationwide multiplex chain, without a censor certificate. And now the Censor Board of Film Certification is all set to lodge an FIR against the offending parties. CFBC chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani confirms, “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.” Nihalani says Mantostaan is pending censor certification. “Kazmi has submitted the film for censor certification but we haven’t issued it. How can he screen a film without a censor certification? You can’t even scream a 10-second film without a censor certificate, let alone a full length feature film.” The onus of publicly broadcasting an uncensored film lies with the content provider. Says Nihalani, “We are lodging an FIR against Kazmi, and Real Image, the content provider who provided the content for the screening to the theatre and also the multiplex, where the screening was held.”