Notwithstanding her winning the prestigious Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Payal Kapadia’s troubles back home persist as she has another date with Pune Court on June 26 due to previous Police action against Kapadia and 34 others for protests in 2015 to oppose actor-turned-politician Gajendra Chauhan’s appointment as the president of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).However, the former FTII student is unlikely to attend the hearing since the Sessions Court in Pune, where the case is being heard, has exempted all 35 students from recording physical presence in the courtroom.
Payal, a former film direction student at FTII from 2015 to 2018, on Saturday, became the first Indian filmmaker to win the Grand Prix award for her directorial debut feature All We Imagine As Light.
However, her path to glory hasn’t been that smooth.
She was among many students who staged one of the longest protests in FTII’s history by boycotting classes and all other academic activities for 139 days. On August 17, 2015, tempers ran high at FTII’s Law College Road campus as the protestors allegedly gheraoed and confined the institute’s then-director Prashant Pathrabe in his office.
The Deccan police later booked 35 students including Payal with prosecution subsequently filing a charge sheet in the case on March 14, 2015. In the chargesheet, she was listed as accused number 25.
Apart from the wrongful confinement of the director, students were also charged with rioting. Five of the 35 students were even arrested. Eventually, the students returned to academics as the government did not concede their demands while Chouhan completed his term.
For over nine years, the case has dragged on at Sessions Court in Pune with students seeking their discharge from the case.
“We want to file a discharge application as police have taken random names of students and booked them. As the prosecution is relying on a Digital Video Disc (DVD) having video footage of the incident, we have asked them to share a copy of that DVD,” said Chinmay Inamdar, an advocate representing all the 35 students.
In 2022, Inamdar filed an application at Sessions Court seeking a copy of the DVD from the prosecution. “The Police have not shared with us the video footage or the copy of the DVD they claim to have,” he said.
All through the nine years, FTII alumni who were part of the protest and charged in the case faced some problems.
“The case has still not come to the trial stage while some of us have faced problems such as getting a Passport. In some cases, even scholarships of students were also suspended,” said Ameya Gore, who was one of those at the forefront of the protests and was even arrested in the case.
In Payal’s case, FTII, which had suspended her scholarship, later supported her by bearing travel expenses as she travelled to Cannes for the screening of her film Afternoon Clouds in 2017.
After Payal won the latest laurels at Cannes, FTII on Sunday congratulated her with a message: “It is a moment of pride for FTII as its Alumni create history at Cannes…We congratulate Payal Kapadia for winning the Grand Prix Award, Santosh Sivan for receiving the Pierre Angénieux Tribute Award, Maisam Ali for his debut at ACID & Chidanand S Naik for winning La Cinef. Their achievements are taking Indian Cinema to greater heights.”
The government’s publicity arm Press Information Bureau (PIB) in its release on Sunday listed put support Payal received.
“Payal’s film was granted official Indo-French co-production status by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, under the signed Audio-Visual treaty between India and France. Permission for shooting the film was also granted by the Ministry in Maharashtra (Ratnagiri and Mumbai). The film received Interim approval for 30% of the qualifying co-production expenditure under the Incentives Scheme of the Government of India for Official Co-production,” the PIB release stated.
