Raanjhanaa was scheduled for release in June, but Pakistan’s Film Censor Board refused to clear it for cinema showings.
Pakistan has banned Bollywood film Raanjhanaa about the love affair of a Muslim-Hindu couple on the grounds that it could offend viewers in the conservative Islamic republic, officials said Friday.
Raanjhanaa was scheduled for release in June, but Pakistan’s Film Censor Board refused to clear it for cinema showings.
“The censor board did not clear this movie because of its controversial story,” Arshad Ali, a senior government official and chairman of the board, told AFP.
While a huge array of Western and Bollywood films can be bought over the counter on pirated DVD in Pakistan, the censor board routinely bans productions deemed too sensitive for cinemas.
Pakistani movie distributors boycotted Hollywood film Zero Dark Thirty about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US troops in Pakistan on May 2, 2011 to the country’s humiliating.
In 2012, Pakistan banned Agent Vinod, India’s answer to James Bond in which an Indian secret agent thwarts Pakistani spies from detonating a nuclear bomb in Delhi.
In 2010, censors also refused permission for Indian film Tere bin Laden, which poked fun at bin Laden. The board claimed it would incite suicide attacks.
