Police in Pune issued notices to the students of the Film and Television Institute of India late on Thursday in connection with confining the institute's director Prashant Pathrabe to his office for several hours in August 2015. They identified 18 new students, in addition to the 17 named in the original FIR filed in the case. Fresh notices were also handed out to 12 students who are out on anticipatory bail. They are to appear in a sessions court in Pune on Monday, when a chargesheet in the case will be filed.

The FTII Students’ Association, in a statement, said: “It is extremely disheartening and shameful to see the administration of a premier government-run institute arm-twisting its students on orders from their superiors, who happen to be the elected representatives of the citizens.” It added that Pathrabe had accused as many as 35 students of preventing him from carrying out his duty of consulting with students and faculty before coming to a decision on assessing the batch of 2008, which is at the centre of a controversy. Even though faculty and students said it was “unjust and ill-timed”, he went ahead with the assessment, which led to the incident that transpired last year, according to the statement.

The Students’ Association alleged that these developments had the support of the FTII administration as well as the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, saying the issue can be viewed in the context of the controversy surrounding the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the government’s “approach and attempts to criminalise dissent”.

The FTII students had been protesting against the appointment of Bharatiya Janata Party worker Gajendra Chauhan as the institute’s chairman. They called off their strike in October last year. The students also questioned the appointment of four Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated filmmakers to the FTII panel. Their strike brought into focus concerns that the government had made high-level appointments to major institutes to push its own ideology.