Poornima Shetty

A man in Bangalore bought 3 tickets for an afternoon film.He got to his seat on time. Then the cinema played 25 minutes of advertisements before the film began. Because of that, the film finished late. He had work calls booked afterwards. He had to cancel them. So he took the biggest cinema chain in the country to court. His name is Abhishek M R. He is a lawyer in Bangalore. He was 31 at the time. The date was 26th December 2023. The film was Sam Bahadur. The cinema was a PVR INOX. His ticket said the show would begin at a certain time. It did not begin at that time. What played first was 25 minutes of commercials. Not trailers for other films. Advertisements. Now, everybody has sat through this. You reach the hall on time, and then you sit in the dark watching advertisements while the film waits. It is so normal that nobody even thinks of it as a problem any more. He thought it was a problem. He filed a case at the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in Bangalore. His argument was simple. He had paid for a service. That service was advertised to start at a fixed time. It did not start at that time. His own time was taken from him without his agreement, and it cost him his work calls. The cinema chain defended itself. It said the law requires cinemas to play about 10 minutes of public service announcements before a film, so some delay cannot be helped. The commission accepted that 10 minutes may be required. It did not accept that 10 minutes explains 25. The order went against the company. It was told to pay him 20,000 rupees as damages, and 8,000 rupees towards the cost of fighting the case. It was also told to pay 1 lakh rupees to the Consumer Welfare Fund, which is a government fund for consumer protection work. The wording of the judgement is the part worth remembering. The commission wrote that in the new era, time is considered as money, and each person's time is very precious. It said that 25 to 30 minutes is a considerable amount of time to sit idle in a theatre watching unnecessary advertisements. It said people have tight schedules and do not have time to waste. PVR INOX runs more than 900 screens across India and Sri Lanka. He had 3 tickets and a bill, and he did not let it go.