AR Rahman broke silence after his show was stopped in between in Pune by
the city police as the concert exceeded the allotted time limit of 10PM.
The Oscar-winning music composer, AR Rahman was in the city of Pune on April 30th
to participate in a concert that was organised by Feeding Smiles and 2BHK at The Mills on Raja
Bahadur Mill Road. The live show was stopped by the city’s police after they reminded the
organisers about the 10 pm deadline set by the Supreme Court to prevent noise pollution.
This incident had occurred on Sunday late night. The event was held in an open-air venue near
the Rajbahadur Mills with thousands of fans singing along, dancing, swaying to some of the top
tunes of Rahman of his 30 years of journey in composing songs. Rahman was singing his last
song for the show when he didn’t realise that they had exceeded the time limit. The Mozart of
music was singing his super hit number “Chal Chhaiya Chhaiya” when the officer had requested
to stop the show.
Even as the show was going on, a police officer went upstage and reminded them that they have
to wrap it up pointing to the deadline on his watch. A senior officer of the Pune police had said
that no musical event was allowed after 10 pm as per the Supreme Court orders, so the officers
present at the event had to remind the organisers that the event had to stop and that they had to
abide by the rules and follow the law. Even the organisers cooperated and concluded the event in
a good manner.
A few minuted later, after the officer had told to wind up, the lights went off and the crowd
continued to shriek in displeasure, but the concert was ended. The place was vacated without any
more outward incident by early in the next morning. A video had gone viral on social media
platforms in which we can see that Inspector Santosh Patil indicating the artists to stop the music
as it was already past 10 pm.
The owner of 2BHK, Heramb Shelke had expressed his displeasure on how the incident had
unfolded and said that if the officer wouldn’t have gone on the dias and asked them to stop in a
polite manner they would have stopped it right away. Meanwhile the leader of the Shiv Sena,
Sanjay Raut had tweeted that this kind of rules only apply on common man and not to BJP
leaders. He had pointed out about the incident where a BJP leader had danced in a bar till 3:30 am in Mumbai and had even questioned the law as to whether it is applicable only on people or even leaders as well and that law should be equal for everyone.
However, AR Rahman had broken his silence on this incident and took to Twitter to express his
feelings about the incident. He had thanked everyone who were present at the venue and had
expressed his gratitude for the support that the audience had showed when the incident had
occurred. He even indicated the incident as a ‘Rockstar’ moment on stage.
