The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) on Monday informed the Madras High Court Bench here that it had directed the makers of Bahubali to remove two words, ‘parathai’ and ‘pagadai,’ from the Tamil version of the movie.
The submission was made before a Division Bench of Justices R. Sudhakar and V.M. Velumani who were seized of a batch of petitions filed by three Dalit organisations seeking appropriate action for using the words which refer to a group of Scheduled Castes.
R. Alagumani, counsel for one of the petitioners, told the court that his client received a communication from the Regional Officer of CBFC in Chennai on July 31 informing him that instructions had been issued on July 28 to remove the two words from the movie. “However, neither of the two contentious words had been removed so far. The petitioner watched the movie in a theatre in Madurai on Saturday [August 15] and found the two words being used in a derogatory manner in the movie,” he claimed.
Conceding that the council had issued a directive to the filmmakers last month as claimed by the petitioner’s advocate, CBFC counsel R.K. Laxman sought time till Wednesday to ascertain the follow-up action that had been taken pursuant to the directive.
