Censor board clears Sanju

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) watched Rajkumar Hirani’s Sanju last week and certified the film with no cuts but one. They’ve asked the filmmakers to get rid of a scene showing an overflowing toilet in his prison cell for “aesthetic reasons”, but they have not objected to Dutt being portrayed as a victim of circumstance, rather than a perpetrator.

A source from the board says, “There are reports doing the rounds that members of the censor board had objections to Mr Sanjay Dutt’s portrayal in a positive light. But we are not here to judge a film’s morality. We have evaluated the film in its totality and found nothing objectionable barring fleeting shots and a few dialogues here and there.”

Apparently, references to Sanjay’s “308 girlfriends, not counting prostitutes” had the censor board chuckling! It’s interesting that the CBFC has chosen to distance itself from Dutt’s controversial past. In the past, biopics of several well-known figures, including politicians, have been subjected to intense scrutiny.