Just two days before Udta Punjab hits cinema halls in India, the movie has been leaked on torrent sites, allegedly by someone from within the censor board. Now there have been leaks of unreleased movies on such sites earlier but what is surprising about this leak is that the copy that has been leaked is probably the same one that the Central Board of Film Certification received from the movie makers.

The movies doing rounds on the torrent sites carries the watermark "for censor" as well as time stamp. So it is very much possible that someone from the Central Board of Film Certification might have knowingly or mistakenly leaked the film on the web.

Also Read: Udta Punjab: Court clears film with 1 cut, says it doesn't defame Punjab or encourage drug addiction

Incidentally, the leaks comes days after an increasingly public and bitter fight between the makers of Udta Punjab and the CBFC headed by Pahlaj Nihlani. CBFC had earlier objected to the release of the movie, which is about the drug problem in Punjab. The board suggested 89 cuts in the film before it could be given a certification for release. The movie producers, including Anurag Kashyap, objected to the cuts saying that they were unnecessary. They deemed the cuts "censorship".

Update: Nihlani has told a television news channel that the person who leaked the film online has been identified and that he is not from the CBFC.



The matter was resolved a few days ago, much to the chagrin of Nihlani, after Bombay High Court asked the CBFC to approve the film for release. The court ordered just one cut and said that the CBFC is a body that certify films and not an organisation that can stop the release of a film.

The leaked copies of Udta Punjab are available on almost all major torrent sites though it seems that Torrentz, a popular search engine for such files, has removed the search links for the leaked after it received copyright notices. The latest copy of the film was uploaded on some of the sites just a few hours ago.

Also Read: Udta Punjab fallout: From censorship to certification, government planning total transformation

This is not the first time when an unreleased film has been released on torrent sites. Earlier we saw big-ticket Hollywood films like Fury leaked on the web weeks before their launch.



Also Read: Udta Punjab: 5 reasons to watch the film (and nothing to do with the controversy)