Paoli Dam's bare skin painted blue in Hate Story posters

As Bengali actress Paoli Dam makes her Bollywood debut in Vikram Bhatt's erotic thriller Hate Story, her posters are being painted blue in the city to hide her bare back following orders of the Calcutta High Court. The film's regional distributors Kushagra Arts and cinema hall owners are now covering the bare skin of the Bengali bombshell by colouring it with blue ink.

Justice Dipankar Dutta of the High Court, yesterday refused to stay an order by the West Bengal Board of Censorship, which had directed the distributors not to display the posters showing the actress in sensuous positions. Describing them as "obscene and provocative", the Censor board had banned two posters - one showing Paoli's bare back and the other which shows her in a compromising position with a man. Six other posters were cleared only after blotting out the bare body of the actress with blue ink.

Admitting that the posters of Hate Story are being modified with ink, director Vivek Agnihotri told PTI from Mumbai that the move by the state government run Censor board would only help in the publicity of his film. "I am getting more publicity because of this. My film is now bigger than it was earlier," he said. With only her bare back visible, and a strategically placed gun and tattoo in the main poster of the film, Paoli created a tremendous buzz all over the country. "If I make a film on football, I will have football in the posters. But this is about sex and so a bare body will be on the posters to tell people what my film is all about," Agnihotri said.

Hate Story is based on a woman's vengeance and how she uses her sexuality as a lethal weapon as she transforms herself from a simple middle class journalist to a sex worker. The film, which also stars Nikhil Dwivedi and Gulshan Devaiah, hits theatres this Friday.