A group of students at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, organised a screening of a documentary on jailed activist Umar Khalid on the university campus on Wednesday evening.
The documentary, "Prisoner No. 626710 is Present", directed by filmmaker Lalit Vachani, was screened as a mark of expressing solidarity with the prisoner, one of the organisers said.
Students themselves sourced the projector and the stand for the screening. They hoped that the event would "evoke inspiration within other universities now to not bow down to the fascist forces."
Khalid, a former Jawaharlal Nehru University student, who was at the forefront of the 2019 anti-CAA protests, has been in custody since September 2020 in a UAPA case over the alleged larger conspiracy behind the Delhi riots.
The screening at NALSAR comes days after a student group at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, cancelled the screening of the same documentary, scheduled on Political Prisoners Day, following opposition from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). The NLSIU student group said that they faced "serious threats of criminal action, intimidation, doxxing, and other forms of harassment" for planning the screening of the documentary.
Earlier, the Central Board of Film Certification had asked the Indian Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad to take action against the proposed screening of the documentary by saying, "Public Screening of a Documentary film that has not yet been Certified by the CBFC is a violation of the Cinematograph Act unless a specific exemption has been sought under the Act".