FIR against makers of award-winning Guj film for 'casteist'

Makers of the Gujarati film "Hellaro," which bagged the National Award for Best Feature Film at the 66th National Film Awards, were booked for the alleged use of a "derogatory term" in a dialogue to refer to a Scheduled Caste character, police said on Tuesday.

"Hellaro" (The Outburst) was released in theatres on November 8.

"An FIR was registered against the director, producers and dialogue writer of the Gujarati film 'Hellaro' over the utterance of word 'Harijan' by one of its characters, considered derogatory by members of Scheduled Caste to which it referred," an official of Kagdapith police station here said.

The FIR was registered on Monday evening after a complaint was filed by Congress corporator Jamnaben Vegda, who claimed she was agitated after hearing the word "Harijan" being uttered by one of the characters in the film a few minutes post-interval.

Vegda said she had watched the film in a theatre on Sunday.

"In a scene, a village sarpanch asks a dhol player to which caste he belongs to. To this, the character of the dhol player uses the derogatory word to identify himself," Vegda claimed.

"The word is derogatory for the people belonging to the Scheduled Caste community, and Central as well as Gujarat governments have issued circulars banning use of the word," the complainant said.

Director Abhishek Shah, as well as producers Ashish Patel, Aayush Patel, Mit Jani, Pratik Gupta, and dialogue writer Saumya Joshi and others have been booked under sections 3 (1) and 5, among others, of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the police official said.

He said the matter has been transferred to SC/ST Cell of the police for further investigation.

The National Award winning film has been officially selected as the opening film at the Indian Panorama at the 50th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to be held between November 20-28.

The movie, set in a remote village in Kutch in 1975, tells the story of a young girl, and is a "strong statement on women empowerment against patriarchal society", the National Award jury members had said.