The Sindh Censor Board has stopped the Indian movie Pathaan from being shown without permission.
Since there are so many fans of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan in Pakistan, his recent hit movie Pathaan would have been shown in theatres all over the country if there hadn’t been an unofficial ban. Even though the government stopped screening Indian content in Pakistan, a private company did not follow the rules.
After this, the Sindh Board of Film Censors (SBFC) looked into social media pages that were selling tickets for private screenings of the movie starring Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone. This happened after a report in Dawn on February 1 pointed out illegal screenings at different places in the Defense Housing Authority.
The Sindh Censor Board said in a statement that a company called Fireworks Events was planning to show Pathaan to the public at DHA on February 4, 2023. Tickets were already sold.
Note that SBFC only lets films that have been approved by the board be shown publicly or privately. The SBFC said, “No one may show a film in public or privately using a cinematograph unless the film has been properly certified for public exhibition by the Board.”
SBFC Chairman Khalid Bin Shaheen said that Section 4(10) of the Sindh Motion Pictures Act of 2011 controlled who could show a movie in public or privately and that no one could show a movie without the Board’s permission. So, it makes sense that the screening should be called off right away.
The board told Firework Events, which was in charge of showing Pathaan, that it had to stop right away because of this law and other laws with punishments like jail time of up to three years and fines of up to PKR 100,000. Because of the warning, Fireworks Events had to cancel all of its private showings of SRK’s latest movie.
According to the report, the notice sent to the company said that if they were caught breaking the rules of the Act, they would be punished under Section 18(1), which says that if a film that hasn’t been approved by the Board is shown illegally, the person showing it could go to jail for three years or pay a fine of Rs 100,000 or both. If the crime is still being committed, the fine may be increased by Rs 10,000 per day.
