Mumbai, June 18: After a period of lull, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has decided to flex its muscles.
On Thursday, activists of the Cine Workers’ Association (CWA) belonging to the MNS landed up at the office of Sony and threatened to stop the shooting of all programmes of the channel in Mumbai. The party is upset because stand- up Pakistani comedian Shakeel Siddiqui would perform in Sony’s Comedy Circus show.
CWA president Amay Khopkar claimed that the channel agreed to the demands.
“ However, Sony requested us to allow the telecast of one show of Shakeel’s performance as the DVDs of the episode to be aired on Saturday have already been sent to Singapore. We have permitted it. But it will have to run a ticker apologising for hurting the sentiments of Indians and also promising not to feature Pakistani artistes in future on their show,” Khopkar added.
A Sony official denied it gave any assurance on running the script apologising for having a Pakistani artist on the show. Mumbai Police commissioner Sanjeev Dayal said he would “ have to look into the facts of the case” as Sony did not file a case against the MNS. Shakeel was earlier ousted from India while performing for another TV channel just after the 26/ 11 attack.
—Agencies