Phoolan Devi’s portrayal, said Hoon, was “abhorrent and unconscionable and a slur on the womanhood of India". Two days later, Om Pal Singh Hoon, a Hindu Gujjar, filed a writ petition in the Delhi high court, seeking to quash the film’s censor certificate and restrain exhibition in the country. At the hearing, recalls Bedi, Justice Lentin suggested the censor board representative “take a trip to Khajuraho", joking that it was unlikely the Indian government would send him to Rome, to “understand the difference between nakedness, nudity, and obscenity".īandit Queen released in theatres a few months later, on 25 January 1996, after an year-long censorship battle. The FCAT’s unanimous decision overruled the revising committee’s orders, and gave the film an A certificate. To delete or even to reduce these climactic visuals," it said, “would be a sacrilege."
The FCAT asserted that it was “an integral part of the story", one that intended to “create revulsion in the minds of the average audience towards the tormentors and oppressors of women. The revising committee had asked for another scene, where Phoolan Devi is paraded naked in the village, to be cut heavily.
The FCAT believed it was a “powerful scene", demonstrating “Devi’s pent-up anger, emotions, and revulsion", whose reduction “would negate its impact". The revising committee had demanded that 70% of the scene of Phoolan Devi torturing her husband be cut. The FCAT said that deleting the scene would “negate the very impact of the film", which depicted the “maltreatment and cruelty" suffered by Phoolan Devi and her motivation for taking revenge. The censor board also wanted to delete a scene that showed a policeman hitting Phoolan Devi with the butt of a gun. Doshi, and Reena Kumari)-stated that the expletives were “not intended to be taken literally", as they reflected the nuances of the language spoken in the villages of Chambal ravines.
The FCAT-presided over by a retired judge of the Bombay high court, Lentin J., and three members (all women-Sara Mohammad, Sarayu V. They applied to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), the next recourse in the censorship process, challenging the revising committee’s decision. But Bandit Queen’s director, Shekhar Kapur, thought the CBFC had seen his film in a “callous and careless way", and didn’t want to negotiate or accept the cuts.
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