While the new IT Rules is said to broaden the regulatory scope of the government, streaming platforms are censoring content regardless. After the backlash to the Amazon Prime Video series Tandav by right-wing groups, a webseries on the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 was dropped by a streaming platform, director Vishal Bhardwaj told journalist Barkha Dutt in an interview on The Mojo Story. "Darr ke maare (Scared out of their minds), the OTT platforms said we can't touch anything," Bhardwaj said. "I told them it's a fact, it happened in our history. And it's not against our current government, because it was not about the government; our entire nation was being blackmailed, we were at siege." Bhardwaj cited "the fear among the moneymen [and] the OTT platforms" as a reason for his show being dropped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEutXqtiAhA The hijacking was one of India's largest crises around the turn of the century. Taliban terrorists took over a Kathmandu–Delhi flight, demanding — and ultimately obtaining — the release of three terrorists incarcerated in India, who have been reported to have been involved in major terrorist attacks since then. PeepingMoon had first reported in January that a series was in development, with Srinath Raghavan producing; at that time, the OTT platform had not been decided yet. Vishal Bhardwaj had tried to make a film on the hijacking in 2014, but the project reportedly fell through for financial reasons. Censorship in recent years on streaming platforms In the last two years, streaming platforms…
