India has blocked the release of a film about the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, saying it glorifies her killers and could trigger violent public protests.
India's certification board said the film lauds the Sikh bodyguards who killed the former PM.
Certification board chair Leela Samson said panel members decided the film could not be released because it posed a threat to public "law and order."
Kaum De Heere, or Diamonds of the Community was scheduled to open Friday. It tells the story of Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards who shot the prime minister dead in 1984 in an apparent retaliatory move for a military operation against Sikhs.
Earlier in 1984, Gandhi ordered army troops into the Golden Temple, the Sikh's holiest site, in Amritsar to look for militants holed up inside who were fighting for a separate homeland for Sikhs. Hundreds of Sikhs died in the military's temple invasion.
A few months later, two of Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her dead, sparking a violent backlash against the Sikh community that left about 3,000 people dead.
