The Pune Police detained around 40 Film and Television Institute of India students on Thursday after they held protests outside the campus. The students said they were staging a peaceful protest against the institute's new chairman, Gajendra Chauhan, who is a television actor and Bharatiya Janata Party member. The FTII administration said Chauhan had officially taken over as chairman of the institute.

According to reports, the students were lathicharged by the police after they blocked a road. Tushar Joshi, Deputy Commissioner of Police, said, "We had asked the students to demonstrate peacefully, but we had to use force because they wanted to block the way to the institute and therefore we had to detain them. We used minimum force."

The institute's students had protested (pictured above) from June to October last year after the Bharatiya Janata Party member’s appointment as the FTII chairman. The students have questioned his credibility for the post and called him a "political appointee".