Nagarjuna, SS Rajamouli and Ranbir Kapoor during the promotions of the film Brahmastra. (Photo: Varinder Chawla)Fans and the media were left disappointed on Friday, after a pre-release event for actors Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt’s upcoming film Brahmastra was cancelled at the last minute. The event was also supposed to feature actor Jr NTR as the chief guest. According to certain reports, the police permission for the event was denied because the application was submitted at the last minute. However, the organisers for the event have denied this.
According to Hindustan Times, a letter purportedly from the Hyderabad police claims that the organisers made the request for security the last minute and it wasn’t possible to deploy heavy security for the event at such a short notice. Sources from the department confirmed that the letter is genuine and the permission was indeed denied as the department could not spare the required amount of personnel needed for such a large event. According to the police, proper arrangements were also not in place. Only 10,000 to 12,000 people were expected, but eventually around 30,000 people showed up.
In response to the claim by the police, the event’s organisers Shreyas Media Group have said that the permission was sought weeks in advance. In a statement, the company said, “On 25th of this month, on behalf of Adhyashree Infotainment (Shreyas Media) organization, we applied in the events department of Rachakonda CP office seeking police permission for the Brahmastra pre-release event. The acknowledgment copy was handed back on 26th. It is not true that the application was made at the last minute. We applied as per the rules eight days ago.”
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The statement continued, “The local Circle Officer came to the event area two days ago to supervise the arrangements and advised some precautions. Based on past experiences, this time we arranged to deploy CCTV cameras along with barricades and a large number of bouncers to ensure that all the precautions mentioned by the CO are followed so that no mistakes are made.”
The Hyderabad Police also said that in addition to the late submission of the application, another reason behind the cancellation of the event was because security personnel had to be deployed for the purposes of Ganesh Visarjan. However, Shreyas Media expressed disappointment in their statement and said that they have always co-operated with the law and order authorities.
“They rejected the file despite of the fact that everything was going well… When the matter was brought to the attention of the higher authorities, they said that they would also deny the event permission for security reasons. We have been deeply disappointed by the rejection of the permission, which said that we will give a declaration that we are ready to cooperate with the police in all ways,” Shreyas Media further said in the statement.
According to certain reports, the company has incurred a loss of Rs 2.25 Crore due to the cancelation of the Brahmastra event. A small press meet was later organised for the media at a Hyderabad hotel, where Jr NTR and SS Rajamouli apologised to the fans for disappointing them.