'Do not blame the entertainment industry for incidents of rape'

Mumbai, Aug 25: The press conference that followed the screening of Ritesh Batra's directorial debut, The Lunchbox, took a serious turn Friday afternoon when the discussion shifted to Thursday's gangrape case. As prominent Bollywood personalities present at the event condemned the incident, a section of the media wanted to know if films have contributed to the rise of

such incidents.

Director-producer Karan Johar said, "When I heard about the incident, I felt silly even to react. Words like 'appalled', 'disgusted' are empty words. The first thing one feels after learning about such incidents is shame." Irrfan Khan, the leading actor of the movie, said, "The number of such incidents is going to grow more and more because we have not been able to take care of the factors that are causing it. It is a complex problem."

However, they dismissed suggestions by a section of media that item songs have contributed to rape cases. "At times, cinema becomes a soft target. Apart from entertaining, movies also project traditional value system. Why is that not put under scanner?" said Johar. Echoing the same thought, Irrfan said, "Cinema cannot be blamed for forming the psyche of masses."