CBFC banned 793 films in 16 years, including titles like Aadamkhor Hasina and Manchali Padosan

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has banned a total of 793 films in the past 16 years, revealed a Right to Information (RTI) inquiry. Nutan Thakur, a Lucknow-based activist, told Indo Asian News Service that the CBFC is responsible for axing 586 Indian films and 207 foreign language films between 1 January, 2000 to 31 March, 2016. [caption id=“attachment_6117371” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] The Censor Board of Film Certification. Image from Facebook[/caption] The CBFC refused to grant certificates to as many as 231 Hindi films, 96 Tamil films, 53 Telugu films, 39 Kannada films, 23 Malayalam films and 17 Punjabi films. Twelve films each in Bengali and Marathi were also banned by the board during this period. While 153 films were rejected during 2015-16, 152 features were banned in 2014-15, 119 in 2013-14 and 82 in 2012-13, the RTI query further revealed. Few of the banned films contained titles suggestive of crime or sex. These include films such as Adamkhor Hasina, Qatil Shikari, Pyasi Chandani, Madhura Swapnam, Khooni Raat, Shamshan Ghaat, Manchali Padosan and Sex Vigyan. Some of the more notable films to get axed include ones like Parzania (English 2005), Asatoma Sadgamaya (Tamil 2012) and Mohalla Assi (Hindi 2015). Mohalla Assi finally saw the light of day in 2018. The film features Sunny Deol in the lead as a Sanskrit teacher and an orthodox Hindu priest. Parzania, based on the Gujarat riots, also saw a delayed release.