New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Tuesday hear a plea challenging grant of certification by CBFC to movie 'The Kerala Story'. The plea filed by journalist Qurban Ali is likely to come up before a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices P S Narasimha and J B Pardiwala.
The bench is expected to hear the petition today. The plea was scheduled to be held on Monday. However, the bench posted the matter for today in view of certain matters to be scheduled in the afternoon yesterday. The hearing in the apex court comes after the Kerala High Court on May 5 refused to stay the release of the movie The Kerala Story saying that the trailer does not contain anything offensive to any particular community as a whole.
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The judge had watched the trailer of the film before passing the orders. The high court while dismissing the plea seeking a ban on the film further said that the producers had published a disclaimer along with the movie saying the film was fictionalised and a dramatised version of events and that the film doesn't claim accuracy or factuality of historic events.
The petitioner has said that the film amounts to hate speech as it has claimed that 32000 Hindu girls from Kerala were “lured” by Muslim friends and forced to join the ISIS terror folds. The movie came under fire after the makers withdrew the figure and called the movie the story of only three women from Kerala, in its trailer description.
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However, the producers of the film submitted before the court that they do not intend to retain an "offending teaser" which contained a statement that "32,000 women" from Kerala were converted and joined a terrorist organisation. The producers argued that the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) had examined the movie and found it suitable for public exhibition.
