Framed by lobby of agents: Suspended CBFC CEO tells CBI court while seeking bail

Mumbai: Suspended CEO of Central Board of Film Certification Rakesh Kumar, arrested by CBI on the charge of accepting bribes to give censor certificate to films, today filed a bail application arguing he has been framed by a lobby of agents. His application would come up for hearing before the special CBI court on August 28 when he would complete ten days in CBI custody. [caption id=“attachment_1683189” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] Kumar’s lawyers Mahesh Vaswani and Dharini Nagda today filed the bail plea which contends that he was framed by the agents’ lobby because he had initiated reforms to curb red tape and increase transparency. According to Kumar, when he took charge as CEO in January this year, he found that agents’ lobby and red-tape had resulted in a pile-up of over 250 films seeking certificates. He made efforts to make the whole system more transparent and brought down the pendency to zero. He also says he introduced facility of online registration of applications, facility to check the status of the application and had proposed that all the agents must be registered. He had no powers to clear any film on his own, he says, adding it is the examining committee which decides the fate of the film by majority view. The court had yesterday granted bail to two agents who were arrested earlier in the case. PTI