The Pune Police on Saturday arrested the division head of Savitribai Phule Pune College’s Centre for Performing Arts, also referred to as Lalit Kala Kendra, and 5 of its college students for staging a play with allegedly objectionable depictions of Hindu deities Ram, Sita and Laxman, reported The Indian Categorical reported.
The play, titled “Jab We Met”, is concerning the backstage lives of actors in a Ramleela troupe. Written, directed and carried out by college college students, it was staged on campus on Friday night. In a video of the efficiency that has been shared broadly on social media, a male actor portraying Sita will be seen smoking a cigarette and uttering expletives.
The efficiency was disrupted by a bunch of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad staff, together with the organisation’s Pune unit chief Harshwardhan Harpude, who later filed a criticism on the Chaturshringi Police Station on Friday night time towards the play’s “objectionable and abusive” content material.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the scholar organisation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – the mum or dad organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Get together.
Pravin Dattatraya Bhole, who has been a professor on the college since 1997, was arrested together with the play’s author and director Bhavesh Rajendra Patil. The actors who had been arrested are Jay Pedanekar, Prathamesh Savant, Hrushikesh Dalvi and Yash Chikhale.
The six have been charged with the Indian Penal Code sections 295A (insulting spiritual beliefs), 294 (obscene acts and songs), 143 and 149 (illegal meeting), 147 (rioting) and 323 (voluntarily inflicting damage). The police have additionally invoked sections 116 and 117 (abetting fee of offence) of the Maharashtra Police Act and sections of the Cigarettes and different Tobacco Merchandise Act.
The primary info report additionally alleges that the performers attacked members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad once they disrupted the play.
Savitribai Phule Pune College has fashioned a fact-finding committee to research the incident. In a press release, the college stated, “Parody of any particular person, legend or historic determine is totally fallacious and prohibited.” The assertion added that it was the college’s accountability “to make sure that nobody takes the regulation into their very own arms”.
A pupil of the Defence and Strategic Research Division of the college informed The Indian Categorical that the allegedly objectionable portion of the play is “set within the dressing room the place the actors are speaking amongst themselves”.
