Favouritism has been an old scourge of Bollywood, and we have heard numerous tales of the powerful getting away with murder, even as smaller films and filmmakers complain of being wrongly targeted. The latest is the Abhishek Bachchan-Sonam Kapoor starrer Players, which reportedly has Sonam flashing her middle finger, a move that has completely slipped under the censors’ radar.

“It’s a fun action sequence, where Sonam is driving at a high speed, before parking her car rather smartly in a small space. She then flashes her middle finger, in what is supposed to be a fun gesture,” says an observer, still surprised at the scene not getting pulled up for its offensive nature. “Strangely enough, the guidelines are followed much more stringently when it comes to smaller films, whose makers don’t have as much power and authority to fight back,” says a filmmaker on conditions of anonymity.

This was pretty much the case over a song picturised on Rakhi Sawant for Loot and Hrishita Bhatt’s Shakal Pe Mat Jaa, where the censor board came down heavily, maybe because they were both small films. “For instance, John Abraham and Deepika Padukone can term their obscene gestures in Desi Boyz as cute, but not everybody is as lucky,” rues another filmmaker.