16 scenes hurting Brahmins sentiments to be cut in 'Pogaru'

Sandalwood: Latest Sandalwood movie Pogaru, which released last week with high expectation, will now be screened with 16 cuts. The decision was taken in a meeting which was held on Wednesday and director Nanda Kishore agreed to remove as many as 16 scenes after members of the Brahmin community expressed their outrage over hurting of their sentiments.

Nanda Kishore said, "The scenes will be deleted as early as possible and it requires minimum two to three days, as a lot of editing needs to be done and it will be sent to the censored board for re-censor. So again we are clarifying that we did not intend to hurt anyone. All the controversial scenes in the movie will be removed and the viewers won't know the difference. The flow of the movie will not be affected despite deleting certain sequences".

Demanding that the screening of Pogaru should be immediately stopped, member of parliament Shobha Karandlaje, on her social media page wrote, "It has become a fashion to humiliate Hindus & play with our sentiments. Do they have guts to portray other religions in this manner? Screening of #Pogaru film has to be stopped until such objectionable scenes are censored. Hurting Hindu emotions can't be ignored."

Pogaru, which has Dhruva Surja and Rashmika Mandanna in lead roles, was released on February 19. The scenes in question included one where the protagonist places his foot on the shoulder of a priest. The community members objected to several scenes and dialogues that they said hurt the sentiments of Brahmins. This forced the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) to organise a meeting between the film team and Karnataka State Brahmin Development Board on Wednesday. "We will try to include those sequences replacing the original ones. In future, I will ensure that such mistakes are not repeated in my movies" Nanda Kishore added.