The youth wing members of the NCP staged a protest outside Malad's Movie Time theatre for screening the controversial film Black Friday.
Party workers stalled the film screening for more than fifteen minutes and forced patrons watching the film to leave the hall
The youth wing members of the Nationalist Congress Party on Friday staged a protest outside Malad's Movie Time theatre for screening the controversial film Black Friday. Nearly 25 protesters were detained.
Led by the NCP youth wing secretary, Sherin D'souza, the party workers entered the theatre premises at around 3 pm and started burning the posters of the movie and shouting slogans. The film screening was stalled for more than fifteen minutes and patrons watching the film were forced to vacate the hall.
"I had come to watch the film because I wanted to know what happened during the '93 blasts. But with the NCP stalling the movie, I have no choice but to leave the movie hall," said Vikas Rathod, a college student.
The protestors allegedly damaged the theatre's property before being detained for a few hours. The agitators claimed that the film's screening would spark off communal tension and hurt the sentiments of the Mumbaiites who lost their relatives in the 1993 blasts.
However, NCP leaders did not seem aware of the protest carried out by their youth wing. In fact, they said the protest was carried out by its youth workers in their personal capacity. The party has also stated that it does not support any protest against the film and even promised to take action against the youth wing members who participated in the picketing outside Movie Time.
Shrugging off responsibility, Mumbai Regional Nationalist Congress's general secretary Narendra Varma said, "We strongly condemn this act carried out by the youth wing activists as the party does not believe in violent protests. As far as any film screening is concerned, no one can raise an objection after it has got the go-ahead from the Censor Board."
Filmmaker Ashok Pandit condemned the act. "This is utter dictatorship. We have legitimate bodies like the Supreme Court (SC) and the censor board to decide whether a film should be banned," said Pandit. Anurag Kashyap, Black Friday's director couldn't agree more.
"The Film industry has become a soft target for such incidents and government seems to be doing nothing in this direction," he said.
Mahesh Bhatt, Anurag Kashyap, Madhur Bhandarkar and other members of the film fraternity will meet up today to plan an approach by which they would be able to take up the issue with the Home Ministry.
"If such things happen in Mumbai then we have no right to raise our eyebrow about the protests taking place in other states against films like Traffic Signal and Parzania," added Pandit.
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