Underlining that the Indian public is “neither gullible nor foolish”, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday said it watched actor Annu Kapoor’s film “Hamare Baarah” and found nothing objectionable in it that was contrary to the Quran or the Muslim community.
The court observed that the film actually aims at the upliftment of women.
“In fact, the film seeks the upliftment of women. The film has a Maulana misinterpreting the Quran and in fact, a Muslim man opposes the same in the scene. So this shows that people should apply their mind and not blindly follow such Maulanas.” “said the high court.
“We do not believe that there is anything in the film that could incite violence. If we believed so, we would be the first to oppose it. The Indian public is neither so gullible nor so foolish,” the court said.
Several petitions were filed in the High Court earlier this month seeking a ban on the film, claiming it was derogatory towards the Muslim community and had distorted what the Quran says.
While the top court initially postponed the release of the film, it later allowed it after the makers said that the objectionable portions would be removed as per the directions of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).
A division bench of Justices BP Colabawalla and Firdosh Pooniwalla said that the first trailer of the film was objectionable but it was deleted and all such objectionable scenes were removed from the film.
The court, however, said it would impose a cost on the film makers for releasing the trailer of the film even before receiving certification from the censor board.
“There has been an infringement in respect of the trailer. Therefore, you will have to pay something to a charity chosen by the petitioner. Costs will have to be paid. This litigation has given the film so much free publicity,” the court said.
The court warned the makers of the film to also be careful and not include dialogues and scenes under the pretext of creative freedom to hurt the sentiments of any religion.
“The creators must also be careful about what they publish. They cannot hurt the sentiments of any religion. They (Muslims) are the second largest religion in this country,” the court said.
The petitioners claimed that the film promotes domestic violence, to which the court said that domestic violence cannot be said to be limited to a single community.