On a day when Madhur Bhandarkar’s Indu Sarkar hit the screens after the Supreme Court refused to stay the release of the film, the board members of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) were forced to fly down to Thiruvananthapuram to ‘review’ the Indie film KaBodyscapes after the Kerala High Court pulled up the certifying body in a contempt case.
Several screening committees of the CBFC had watched the film thrice before at different locations at the expense of the makers, but refused to certify it, arguing that it hurt Hindu religious sentiments and was anti-women. A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court, in a December 2016 order, had asked the CBFC’s board to review the film in response to a plea from its director Jayan Cherian, who had earlier made the critically acclaimed feature Papilio Buddha.
However, the CBFC continued to drag its feet on the film and set up another revising committee in defiance of the court’s order.
On July 25, responding to a contempt petition, the High Court rapped the CBFC for non-compliance of its order and said, “There’s a distinction between the Board and the chairman of the Board. The Board is a compendious body of members notified for the purpose of film certification. Chairman is not a substitute for the Board. The action of the Board was not in compliance of the order, rather it was clearly in defiance of the judgment of the Division Bench,” the court observed, asking the CBFC to comply with its orders in a weeks’ time.
Mr. Cherian was represented by his counsel Vijay Paul at the CBFC screening held on Friday.
After watching the film, the board members were learnt to have been divided over clearing the film for public viewing with necessary excisions while a section demanded outright ban.
A. Pratibha, regional officer of the CBFC in Thiruvananthapuram, told The Hindu over the phone that a decision on granting certification would be at the discretion of CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani.