In what is another example of censorship, an official complaint was filed against the Anurag Kashyap-directed film, Manmarziyaan where some members of the Sikh community protested to a scene where Abhishek Bachchan smokes a cigarette. While Kashyap had stated that he would not be removing the scene since it is impossible to edit a film after its release, the distributors (Eros) went ahead and deleted the scene.

Kashyap was vocal about his disapproval and sarcastically tweeted that all the problems of the Sikh community would hereby be solved – in the tweet, he had also made the phone number of Eros chairman Kishore Lulla public. Hence, Twitter took down the tweet.

The lead actress in the movie, Taapsee Pannu has been equally vocal about her ire regarding this move to censor the movie and naturally, received hateful tweets from trolls. Pinkvilla reports that one tweet read “I swear i wish i was her father, all i need is my belt and a jutti. Shittar mar mar ke I would of taken the actress vala bhoot out from her.”

Actors Arjun Kapoor and Vicky Kaushal were quick to reach to Pannu’s defence.

This is what Pannu tweeted:

According to Hindustan Times, Abhishek Bachchan has taken a different stand on the matter. “Each individual has a right to react and if people have felt bad over some scenes, then I feel there is no harm in deleting those scenes from the movie unless it does not change the narrative of the film,” he said at the Jagran Cinema Summit on Friday.

Vikramaditya Motwane also came out strongly against the studio’s decision to censor the scene.