Katrina Kaif

Ahmedabad, July 31: What is hot in homeground is not so in the neighbourhood for the Shiv Sena.

High fashion may rule in the Sena stronghold of Mumbai, but the party vented its fury on a fashion show being held on the outskirts of Rajkot in neighbouring Gujarat last night.

Minutes before the annual fashion show of the National Institute of Fashion Design began, Sena activists armed with hockey sticks barged into the venue. They vandalised the ramp, broke tubelights and chairs and ransacked the venue, forcing organisers to cancel the show.

The two-year-old fashion design institute, founded by the Bhansali family, was staging the annual creative designers’ award night, showcasing the talent of the institute’s 250-odd students.

Participants and organisers alike were so scared that the latter chose not to lodge a complaint with police.

The show was set to start at 11 pm and more than 500 people were present at the time of the attack.

Police have registered a case against 50-odd miscreants for disrupting the show. They have arrested eight people, including the Sena’s Saurashtra chief Jimi Advani.

One phone call too many from a Bollywood bad boy to his model-turned-actress girlfriend is believed to have provoked the Shiv Sainiks into disrupting the show at Chokidani resort, located on Rajkot’s outskirts on the Jamnagar national highway.

The resort staff reportedly spread news about the calls.

Katrina Kaif, Aditi, Meher Chanchal and Priya Shah were among the models at the show that failed to take off.

Sources say that fearing trouble, the institute had invited Sena leaders for the show. The party is believed to have assured organisers that like last year, it would create no trouble. Which is why last night’s attack left institute director Nitin Patel dumbfounded.

Neither the Sena nor any other outfit resorted to moral policing last year when the institute held its maiden fashion show.

But this year, sources at the resort say, the Sena was angered when it discovered that the institute was selling tickets for the show at Rs 300-500 even though it had been dubbed a “non-commercial event”.

However, off the record, authorities at the institute say the Sena disrupted the show because the owner of Chokidani resort refused to cough up the sum demanded by the party to allow the event to pass off without a hitch.

But the resort owner says the institute incurred the Sena’s wrath as they had turned the show into a “vulgar commercial event’’.

The attempt to ape western culture in a conservative city like Rajkot did not go down well with “our cultural police’’, Bhupendra bhai said.

The resort owner said he had rented out his premises to the institute for Rs 20,000.