A poster of an adult movie near Ranchi Women?s College. Display of such photos often tend to distract people and raises many concerns, feel some. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Aug. 21: Sex sells. And when smut comes for as little as Rs 5 for an hour and a half, there is little wonder the cinema halls in the state capital are drawing in large crowds by screening soft porn films in the morning.

Many of these films are being screened at nine in the morning. By 10.30 am, it?s all over. Therefore, the next time schoolboys leave home early, do not be too sure that they are calling on their private tutor.

Because besides rag-pickers, rickshawpullers and unemployed youth, school students form the largest segment of the audience, confess cinema hall managers.

For cinema halls, it is a win-win situation. For mainstream and big budget films, they charge Rs 25 to Rs 45 in the ?regular? shows. But the smut from the South or foreign flicks are used as ?quickies? at an affordable rate to rake in what they can. Each of these low-budget, C-grade films is screened for a week or so before they make their way to other cinema halls.

The authorities plead their helplessness in curbing obscenity. Because, they claim, all these films have been cleared by the Censor Board and the distributors and exhibitors both produce the censor certificates.

But no effort has been made so far to deploy police officers to watch the film, confiscate a few prints and send them to the Censor Board for verification. Another way out could be to invite a member of the censor board to spend a few days here and check the prints.

In the absence of any official initiative, the cinema halls are getting away by screening films like Ek Raat Mere Saath, Jawani Khilona Nahin, Mashooka, etc. Nor is there any attempt to debar young teenagers from watching these films.

Under the law, both the film and the posters are required to obtain ?censor certificates?. But there is no ?anti-obscenity? cell in the police to keep an eye on deviations and violation of the law. The posters are invariably in poor taste and show women in skimpy and revealing clothes. What?s worse, they are often pasted around educational institutions.

Mouparna and Sharmila Bose, both MCA students at BIT?s Lalpur extension centre, recall seeing men ogling at the posters for several minutes, transfixed.

Obviously, they exert such a powerful influence on the mind of these poor people, young, reprieved and often from the countryside, that many of them would try to save money and watch the films, they conclude.

Manager of Sandhya Talkies, Dinesh Singh, defends the practice by advocating viewers? choice. If people choose to watch these films, he asks, why should the exhibitors be blamed ? If there is no restriction on making these films and the censor board too clears them, he says, there is no reason why an exhibitor should be faulted.

Both Dinesh Singh and B.K. Singh, the manager of Sujata Cinema Hall, vehemently deny charges of interpolation. It is not possible, they insist, to include clips from blue films into prints which come from the distributors. But the viewers claim that such interpolation is the norm and these clips are what attract bulk of the viewers.

Besides exciting or even arousing lustful thoughts in people, points out Usha Narsaria, a clinical psychologist at RINPAS, the posters are a serious safety hazard on the roads.

People driving two-wheelers and even four-wheelers, she points out, often crane their neck to watch them. A serious distraction, she says, the posters should be banned even if the films are not.