India sacks movie censor chief over bribery charge

India has removed the chief executive of its film censorship board after he was arrested on accusations he took a bribe to clear a movie for screening. Rakesh Kumar was arrested on Monday in Mumbai, the centre of the Bollywood movie industry, on charges of taking 70,000 rupees ($1,155) to provide Central Broad of Film Certification clearance for a film. ’He (Kumar)has been removed from his charge,’ an official from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which overseas the censorship board, said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. India's new Prime Minister Narendra Modi ran on a platform of zero-tolerance of corruption and has repeatedly pledged to curb the graft and red tape that have plagued state organisations for decades. Kumar took over as the board's chief executive earlier this year. Soon afterwards he told the Mumbai Mirror newspaper there was a ‘huge backlog of films that needs to be cleared as we are short-staffed’, according to AFP.