Offending portions removed from 'Udaipur Files': CBFC to Delhi HC

New Delhi, July 9
The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) on Wednesday apprised the Delhi High Court that the alleged offending portions of the film 'Udaipur Files' have been removed.

A Bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Anish Daya was hearing a batch of pleas, including a plea filed by Maulana Arshad Madani, the President of the Islamic cleric's body Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, seeking a prohibition on the release of the film based on the Kanhaiya Lal murder case.

The movie, slated to be released worldwide this Friday, revolves around the brutal murder of Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor in Rajasthan’s Udaipur, in June 2022 by Mohammad Riyaz Attari and Ghaus Mohammad by slitting his throat.

In its order, the CJ Upadhyaya-led Bench recorded Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma’s statement that before the film was certified, the CBFC proposed certain cuts, and the producer of the film had implemented them.

Further, the Delhi High Court asked the film’s producer to arrange for a private screening of the movie and the trailer on Wednesday itself for the counsels appearing in the matter.

It will take up the batch of pleas for further hearing on Thursday (July 10).

The petition filed by Maulana Arshad Madani claimed that the release of the film 'Udaipur Files' has the potential to inflame communal tensions and disrupt public order, severely undermining the fabric of religious harmony in the country.

The plea sought to quash the CBFC certification granted to the movie, claiming violation of Section 5B of the Cinematograph Act, 1952 and the Guidelines for Certification of Films for Public Exhibition.

As per the petition, the movie trailer, released on June 26 on YouTube, is replete with dialogues and instances that had led to communal disharmony in the very recent past and carries every potential to again stoke the same communal sentiments.

“The trailer contains dialogues and narrative elements that clearly fall within the ambit of hate speech directed against a particular community of the country, and the language, imagery, and narrative adopted in the trailer are not only inflammatory but deliberately communal,” it said.

Purportedly, the film also explicitly mentions the alleged controversial statement made by politician Nupur Sharma, which had resulted in communal violence and, in turn, the gruesome murder of Kanhaiya Lal.

The petition stressed that the trailer, and by implication the movie that is set to follow, depicts verbatim the same content which resulted in widespread tensions as well as the registration of various FIRs against Nupur Sharma.