Security will be increased at cinemas for the Indian release of the latest Shah Rukh Khan film My Name Is Khan after a row between the actor-producer and a hardline Hindu nationalist party, police said yesterday.
Mumbai police’s joint commissioner for law and order, Himanshu Roy, said officers could be deployed to theaters in the city showing the film, while checks will be made on cinema-goers.
“We will provide the security as long as it is required,” he told a news conference in the city after meeting multiplex owners concerned about possible attacks by activists from the Shiv Sena organization.
“There will be a high level of frisking and personal checking before they are allowed to enter into theatres,” he said, but refused to go into exact details about the security arrangements.
My Name Is Khan — about a man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in San Francisco who falls in love with a Hindu woman against the backdrop of the fallout from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hits screens on Friday.
The release has been overshadowed by the Shiv Sena’s objections to Khan’s comments regretting the absence of any Pakistan players in the forthcoming Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket tournament, which begins next month.
Khan’s parents were born in what is now Pakistan and he part-owns IPL outfit the Kolkata Knight Riders.
The Shiv Sena has been a self-styled promoter of “Maharashtrian pride” for nearly four decades, championing the rights of people from the western Indian state over “outsiders” and the local language Marathi, often with violence. The organization is also vocally anti-Muslim and sees itself as a defender of traditional Hindu moral values.
In November, activists defaced posters for the film Kurbaan (Sacrifice), which showed an actress from behind, apparently naked from the waist up.
Previous targets have included Mumbai-born cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar — for saying he was proud of his roots but was Indian first — and Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan after his wife said she preferred to speak Hindi.
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