Screening of The Accidental Prime Minister disrupted in Kolkata hall after Youth Congress protest

A group of Youth Congress activists on Friday staged a demonstration outside Hind Inox cinema hall in Kolkata against the screening of the film The Accidental Prime Minister and stopped the screening roughly after 15 minutes of its start. Police reached the spot promptly and removed the protestors. But the movie hall authorities stopped the screening due to security reasons and issued refunds to the moviegoers.

A Hind official told the media, “We have cancelled the screening for the noon show due to law and order situation. We are yet to take a call on the other shows.”

While Youth Congress orchestrated the entire protest, officially West Bengal Congress has disapproved the action and said the party would never “oppose freedom of speech”, which it values deeply as part of its ideology.

The film, directed by Vijay Ratnakar Gutte, was released on Friday and features actor Anupam Kher as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The film is based on Singh’s then media adviser Sanjaya Baru’s 2014 memoir of the same name and details Singh’s relationship with the Gandhi family. But Congress leaders have said that the film is a “gross distortion of facts” and it had hurt their sentiments.