Pune (Maharashtra), 1st May 2023: Pune Police on Sunday stopped an ongoing mega-concert by Oscar-winner music composer AR Rahman, disappointing thousands of audience members and admirers. The event occurred late Sunday night.
The concert was hosted at a huge open-air site at Rajbahadur Mills, with thousands of fans singing along, swaying and dancing to some of Rahman’s most popular songs from his 30-year musical career.
However, at exactly 10 pm, a senior police officer, waving a torch on the dark stage and signalling, ordered the organisers to immediately halt the show because it had gone over the permissible time limit.
Around that time, Rahman was performing his superhit number, ‘Chal Chhaiya, Chhaiyaa,’ when the cop approached him, pointed to his wristwatch, and asked that the show be stopped immediately, to which the music composer agreed.
As some musicians appeared to disregard the directive and continued to play, the irritated officer approached one of them and warned that if they didn’t wind up, they’d face violations for disregard of time norms.
When the police officer approached the stage and ordered the concert to be stopped, he was met with howls of protest from the fans in the audience who had been enjoying the concert for over two hours.
When this happened the ‘Jai Ho’ composer withdrew from the stage and quietly exited without making any remarks.
The lights went up at the venue minutes later, and the audience continued to scream their displeasure, but the music concert had concluded and the space had been emptied without further disturbance.
