Rajkummar Rao’s Omerta will now be released on May 4, according to a press release. Originally scheduled for April 20, the film has been moved because it was waiting to be cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification, director Hansal Mehta said. The movie will now be released without any cuts.
“We knew that it wouldn’t be a cake walk with the Censor Board given that the film has a fair bit of violence and strong language,” said Mehta. “We didn’t want cuts that would take away from the essence of the film, so we had to wait. The Censor Board chief and members of the revising committee understood how certain scenes could not be removed since they are essential for audiences to understand how a terrorist’s mind works. Hence the wait and that’s why a decision has been taken to release Omerta on May 4.”.
Omerta is based on the life of British-Pakistani terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was involved in the kidnapping of four foreign tourists in Delhi in 1994 and the kidnapping and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002. Sheikh is serving a life sentence in Pakistan for his role in Pearl’s murder. Rao plays Sheikh in the movie.
“It’s just a small change of two weeks,” producer Nahid Khan said in a press statement. “We don’t mind the delay as long as we have managed to keep the essence of the film intact.”