Madras High Court judge to watch Vetri Maaran’s Manushi to decide on CBFC’s suggestion for cuts

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court, on Tuesday (August 19, 2025), decided to watch the Andrea Jeremiah-starrer Tamil movie ‘Manushi’ during a private screening in Chennai on Sunday (August 24) to ascertain if the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) is justified in suggesting as many as 37 cuts.

The judge took the decision pursuant to a writ petition filed by the film’s producer C. Vetri Maaran, also an acclaimed director, questioning the 37 cuts made mandatory before the CBFC could certify the movie to be fit enough for public screening in cinema theatres.

The film had been produced under the writ petitioner’s production banner Grassroot Film Company and directed by Tamil movie ‘Aramm’ fame Gopi Nainar. The movie’s trailer, released by actor Vijay Sethupathi in April 2024, showed it to be a story revolving around custodial torture of a woman suspected to be a terrorist.

In September 2024, the CBFC’s examining committee as well as screening committee watched the full length movie and refused to issue a censor certificate for the movie on the ground that it had portrayed the State in bad light and it had confused “leftist communism” with “mainstream communism”.

Earlier petition

Mr. Maaran approached the High Court with his first writ petition in June 2025 challenging the blanket rejection of censor certificate. He said he was neither given an opportunity to be heard before the denial of the censor certificate nor informed of the individual views of the censor committee members.

The producer stated he had submitted a representation to the CBFC on March 29, 2025 requesting the constitution of an expert committee comprising of human rights activists to re-examine the movie and sought a direction to the CBFC to consider his representation and issue a speaking order after re-examination.

Then, Justice Venkatesh wondered how could there be a blanket rejection of censor certificate for the entire movie without listing out the objectionable scenes, sequences, visuals, dialogues, audio clips and other aspects which required to be edited out before issuance of the certificate.

On June 17, the judge disposed of the first writ petition after recording the submission of CBFC that it had reviewed the movie as directed by the court and listed out the objectionable portions that required editing. Then, the judge also permitted the petitioner to proceed in accordance with law.

Second petition

Mr. Maaran had come to the High Court with the present writ petition claiming the CBFC had failed to consider the movie in the light of well established guidelines and that it had insisted on editing out even simple dialogues such as ‘saniyan’ (a Tamil term used to scold people).

When the second writ petition was listed before Justice Venkatesh on Tuesday, he said, now, he would have no choice but to watch the movie himself, along with the committee members, to ascertain whether they were justified in suggesting the 37 cuts.

He directed the parties before him to make arrangements for playing the movie in a private theatre at Dr. D.G.S. Dhinakaran Salai (previously known as Greenways Road) in Chennai on Sunday afternoon and asked central government senior panel counsel A. Kumaraguru to ensure the presence of CBFC committee members.