Sudhir Mishra swears at censor board

Mumbai, Dec 15 (IANS) Director Sudhir Mishra is miffed with the censor board for giving A-ceritificate to his forthcoming film "Tera Kya Hoga Johnny" and wonders why it always happens to him.

Apparently the censor board objected to a sequence showing a policeman trying to rape the young hero (Sikandar Aggarwal) in custody. Mishra put his foot down and refused to cut the sequence.

"Why does this always happen to me? It's almost as if there's a separate censorship code for me from other filmmakers. Invariably my films get into a situation on matters that are allowed to remain in other people's films," he said.

Mishra finds it strange that the censors objected to a sequence of atrocity in police custody.

"It isn't as if I was showing something that doesn't happen. And I didn't even show the boy being sodomised. I showed the cop attempting it. The boy escapes. But so many real-life underage delinquents go through unmentionable torture. Are we not supposed to show that?"

In another sequence, a cop shoots a man and says it happened because his hand accidently moved on the trigger.

"They also wanted me to delete all the maa-bahen ki galis. As if we haven't seen characters abusing in other films! I really don't understand these double standards," said the director.

Rather than fight a long battle with the censor board, Mishra agreed to accept an 'Adults' certificate with relatively lesser cuts.

"I had two choices. I could fight a battle or accept an 'A' certificate with less cuts. There was no time for a fight. I took the 'A' certificate. But I feel we need to have more uniform rules of censorship."

On a happier note the film's leading man Neil Nitin Mukesh has finally agreed to do some promotional activities for the film. And yes the film's young protagonist, the real-life street child Sikandar is 19 now.

"Sikandar is good on the computer. He's qualified to take up a job. But he wants to continue living out of my office where I put him up after picking him up from the streets of Kolkata to play a role in my film," said Mishra.

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Tera Kya Hoga Johnny