'Missing On A Weekend' director sends legal notice to censor board

Director Abhishek Jawkar of the upcoming investigative thriller "Missing On A Weekend" has sent a legal notice to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) for its failure to issue a certification for the film.

Jawkar also said that CBFC didn't provide him a written list of changes it had mentioned verbally.

"It's been 20 days since we applied for a certificate, but they neither issued the certificate nor provided us with the list of cuts, with which at least we could have approached the court," Jawkar said in a statement.

"We made several rounds of their office, but to no avail. I thought of just being patient, but I have run out of patience now. Taking the legal option was not something I was too keen on, but that has strangely become my last hope," he added.

The notice states that the film was earlier slated for release on July 1 and the makers applied for the censor certificate on June 22 but have not received the certificate and also not received the written list of cuts, because of which lakhs of rupees have been lost.

The board suggested 51 cuts in the film, but Jawkar alleges that it was done verbally.

The film is a story of a group of seven friends going on a holiday to Goa, where one gets killed and five go missing. It also shows the issue of alcohol and drugs.

The film has also not gone down well with the Goa government as state Tourism Minister Dilip Parulekar has objected to the state's portrayal and has said that he will write to the CBFC about this.

Talking about this, Jawkar said: "I don't know if the minister actually wrote to the censor board, but I have time and again reiterated that I have not shown Goa in bad light. How can they assume such things by just watching a few seconds of the trailer and not watching the full film? I am ready to show it to them, but at least respond to our concerns first and let the film release."

"Missing On A Weekend" stars Pavan Malhotra, Karan Hariharan, Dishank Arora among others. The film is presented by The Red Bulb Studios and Adept Films.

--IANS

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