Shabana Azmi slams people for trying to ban ‘The Kerala Story’

Mumbai: Those who want to ban ‘The Kerala Story’ are as ‘wrong’ as those who didn’t want Aamir Khan-starrer ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ to be released, said veteran actor Shabana Azmi amid the row around the Sudipto Sen directed film that hit the screens last week.

Her comments came a day after multiplexes across Tamil Nadu cancelled screenings of the controversial film on Sunday, citing law and order issues and poor public response.

In a tweet, Azmi said no one but the ‘Central Board of Film Certification’ has the right to decide whether or not a film should release.

“Those who speak of banning ‘The Kerala Story’ are as wrong as those who wanted to ban Aamir Khan’s ‘Laal Singh Chaadha’. Once a film has been passed by the ‘Central Board of Film Certification’, nobody has the right to become an extra-constitutional authority,” the 72-year-old actor wrote on the microblogging site.

Azmi was referring to the ‘boycott Bollywood’ trend on social media ahead of the release of ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ on August 11, 2022.

‘The Kerala Story’, starring Adah Sharma, was released in cinemas on Friday and was initially portrayed as ‘unearthing’ the events behind ‘approximately 32,000 women’ allegedly missing from Kerala.

According to the CPI (M) and the Congress in Kerala, the film falsely claims that 32,000 women got converted and radicalised and were deployed in terror missions in India and the world. The filmmakers later changed the figure in the film’s trailer.