Maharashtra MLA Amin Patel and a resident of the Kamathipura area in south Mumbai have approached the Bombay High Court against the use of the area's name in the Bollywood film 'Gangubai Kathiawadi', and sought it to be censored or deleted. The petition filed by Shraddha Surve, a resident of Kamathipura where a number of brothels operated in the past, was mentioned before a division bench of Justices Gautam Patel and Madhav Jamdar on Tuesday, seeking urgent hearing as the movie is slated for release on Friday.
The bench said it would hear the petition on Wednesday. Besides, a PIL filed by MLA Amin Patel, raising a similar objection, was mentioned before a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M S Karnik, which also said it would hear the plea on Wednesday. This was not the first time that Patel had raised his voice against the film. He had mentioned the film in the Maharashtra Assembly in March last year, seeking a change in the title. Gangubai's alleged adopted son Babuji Shah, had also filed a defamation case against the makers. The Bombay High Court had stayed the defamation proceedings in December. The Sanjay Leela Bhansali-directed film, based on a chapter from writer S Hussain Zaidi's book "Mafia Queens of Mumbai, features Alia Bhatt as Gangubai, one of the most powerful, loved and respected madams from Kamathipura during the 1960s.