Umar Khalid: NALSAR students screen Umar Khalid docu after screenings cancelled at IIIT-H, NLSIU | Hyderabad News

The screening was a private event restricted to students.

Hyderabad: The screening of Umar Khalid’s documentary, Prisoner No. 626710 is Present, which was cancelled at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H), and National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, was held at NALSAR University of Law in the city on Wednesday evening. A group of students who independently organised the “solidarity screening” said it was held to offer an opportunity “to engage directly with the film’s questions about rights, accountability and the human cost of prolonged incarceration, while expressing solidarity with those affected by these failures of the justice system”.The screening was a private event restricted to students.“The film raises urgent concerns about the delay in the justice system, and about undertrial prisoners being kept in custody for years without their trials even beginning,” one of the students told TOI via email. “When a person remains imprisoned for six years without trial, the delay itself becomes a serious denial of justice. Law cannot, and should not, be used as a tool of violence without convictions. The process cannot become the punishment,” the email added.NALSAR students have called on student bodies across universities to organise similar screenings of the documentary.The documentary has not been certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). The board has stated that screening an uncertified film would violate the Cinematograph Act unless a specific exemption has been obtained.Last week, the screening at IIIT-H was cancelled after the CBFC flagged the issue on X. The institute later said that the proposed event had not been organised or authorised by its management. At NLSIU, too, the event, which was initially postponed, was later cancelled after organisers said they faced threats of criminal action, intimidation, doxxing and other forms of harassment.Prisoner No. 626710 is Present, directed by filmmaker Lalit Vachani, is a documentary about Khalid, tracing his journey from student activist to his arrest in 2020 and subsequent incarceration.Meanwhile, NALSAR vice-chancellor, Prof Srikrishna Deva Rao, said, “NALSAR University of Law did not authorise screening of the documentary film Prisoner No 626710 on its campus. No official permission for the same was given to anybody by any University authority,”