The Bombay high court on 20th January granted three weeks’ transit anticipatory bail to Ali Abbas Zafar and Gaurav Solanki, director-producer and writer respectively of web series Tandav, and Amazon content head Aparna Purohit in the FIR registered against them for hurting religious sentiments and portrayng police poorly. The Uttar Pradesh police landed in Bombay to investigate the case based on an FIR registered there on January 17. Meanwhile, an FIR was registered on 20th January in Bombay too against the makers and artistes of the series at the Ghatkopar police station. Besides Ali Abbas Zafar, Gaurav Solanki and Aparna Purohit, the Bombay FIR also names Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Amit Agarwal, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, some other actors and producer Himanshu Mehra.
The high court transit anticipatory bail enables the Tandav team to apply for regular pre-arrest bail before the appropriate court in U.P. Tandav, a political drama, was caught in a controversy right from the day it started to stream on Amazon Prime Video on January 15. Some politicians and Hindutva outfits have alleged that the series hurt religious sentiments by making fun of Hindu Gods and Goddesses.
It may be mentioned here that the makers of the series had issued an apology on January 18 and had also deleted the allegedly objectionable scenes thereafter.
In a related incident, Twitter on January 20 restricted Kangana Ranaut’s Twitter account briefly for her post on Tandav. The post, since deleted, mentioned that it was “time to take their heads off”, referring to the makers of the web series. Her remark was in response to the Union I & B ministry asking the makers of Tandav to explain the allegations of insult of Hindu Gods in some scenes.