Omerta: Hansal Mehta asked to chop off Rajkummar Rao's frontal nudity scene despite A certificate

Rajkummar Rao-starrer Omertà, which is releasing tomorrow after being postponed from its initial date of 20 April, has not made it past the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) unchanged. The board has ordered the filmmakers to remove a scene with Rao involving frontal nudity.Director Hansal Mehta told Mumbai Mirror, "That scene was not intended for titillation. I would never do that. It depicts Omar Shaikh’s violence and his state of mind before he embarked on one of his evil acts. Some member of the CBFC got the essence of this scene but had to ask for it to be done away with because of the guidelines. It doesn’t hamper the film’s narrative in any way so I had to accept it."[caption id="attachment_4437745" align="alignnone" width="825"]

A still from Omerta/Image from YouTube.[/caption]Mehta had earlier said, "We knew that it wouldn't be a cakewalk with the censor board given that the film has a fair bit of violence and strong language. We didn't want cuts that would take away the essence of the film, so we had to wait. The censor board chief and members of the revising committee understood how certain scenes could not be removed since they are essential for audiences to understand how a terrorist's mind works."Omertà is the horrifying true story of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British terrorist of Pakistani descent who has links to multiple militant organisations like Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Qaeda, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Taliban. It has been shot in real locations across London and India. The film premiered to excellent reviews at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, the Busan International Film Festival and a successful screening as the closing film at the 2017 Mumbai Film Festival.