Anirban Bhattacharya and Riddhi Sen: The Reported Unofficial Bans and What Followed
Reports say Anirban Bhattacharya, Riddhi Sen, Subrata Sen and Indranil Roychoudhury faced unofficial bans. What Dev asked for, what the federation and directors body said, and what no report confirms.
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Films in this article
Facts below are taken from published reports available on 21 October 2026. Claims are attributed to the people or outlets that made them. A boycott described by reporters is not a finding by any court.
Several Bengali actors and directors have been described in the press as facing an “unofficial ban”, meaning they were not being hired, after a dispute between directors and the technicians federation (FCTWEI). This article sets out what is reported about two of them, actors Anirban Bhattacharya and Riddhi Sen.
The timeline
- April 2025: the Calcutta High Court (Justice Amrita Sinha) observed that the federation cannot infringe a director’s right to practise their profession, in a case brought by director Bidula Bhattacharya and later by a group of directors including Anirban Bhattacharya (IBNS via IndiaBlooms).
- January 2026: Millennium Post reported that Anirban, director Indranil Roychowdhury and director Subrata Sen had moved the High Court against what they called arbitrary federation interference, and described an unofficial boycott of them. Dev met federation representatives and producers and asked them to lift the restrictions on Anirban. He said he was “saying sorry on behalf of Anirban to the Federation” and that Anirban had been “banned for eight months”.
- 7 April 2026: federation president Swarup Biswas said lifting bans is “not straightforward” given the prolonged legal battle fought by technicians, according to Millennium Post.
- 10 April 2026: Millennium Post wrote that “several actors and directors, including Anirban Bhattacharya, Riddhi Sen, Subrata Sen and Indranil Roychoudhury, have been facing unofficial bans”. Dev urged Prosenjit Chatterjee, working president of the West Bengal Artists’ Forum, to hold talks with Swarup Biswas and asked for the bans on artists to be lifted within 72 hours. The Directors’ Association of Eastern India, whose president is Saibal Mitra, responded positively and said it was ready to withdraw its case and related defamation suits. The same report says some link Dev’s move to casting Anirban in his upcoming film, while many see it as a push for unity.
What is known about Riddhi Sen
The only report we found that names Riddhi Sen as facing an unofficial ban is the 10 April 2026 Millennium Post article above. We found no interview in which he describes it, no statement from the federation about him, and no report on why he was affected or whether anything has changed. We are not repeating any reason because none is published.
What is known about Anirban Bhattacharya
Anirban was last seen before this dispute in Dev’s Raghu Dakat and appears in DeSu7, according to our film page. A later analysis in The Federal said Anirban, Sudeshna Roy and Indranil Roychowdhury had little or no work after the dispute. Other directors who had opposed federation rules later reconciled with it, per Millennium Post.
What we could not confirm
- Whether any formal ban order existed. The reports describe an unofficial boycott, and the federation is not quoted accepting that word.
- Whether the restrictions on Riddhi Sen, Anirban or the directors have formally ended. The federation was announced as dissolved on 3 June 2026 (The Federal), but we found no statement about individual bans.
Questions people ask
Was Riddhi Sen banned?
Millennium Post reported him among those “facing unofficial bans”. Neither he nor the federation is quoted in the reports we found confirming or denying it.
Why was Anirban Bhattacharya banned?
Reports link it to his joining a court case against the federation. The federation’s own explanation is not quoted in them.
Did the court order work for them?
The April 2025 observations concerned directors’ right to practise. We found no order directing anyone to give an actor work.
